Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is being Charged with 17 Counts of Murder on Friday. Before everyone gets all riled up please remember Bales is Still a Soldier under UCMJ Law (Uniform Military Code Of Justice). The Legal System is completely different under the UCMJ. First there is a Court Martial, then he still has the right to Legal Counsel & an Investigation. Next where is the Evidence? There were NO Autopsies because the Alleged Victims were Buried Immediately according to Muslim Law. on top of all that, Bales had PTSD, Serious Mental Health Issues yet the Army continued to Deploy him to a Combat Zone, thus Bales can't even be Discharged right now. Higher Standard My Foot! The Man had a Brain Injury, was Mentally & Physically Stressed Out! The Army knew this Man had Serious Mental & Health Issues yet they continued to Deploy him to a War that America should have been out of long ago. So Even if its Fast-Tracked it may take Years to Prosecute because this is NOT a Civilian Case! So everyone needs to Calm Down. The U.S. Military does NOT treat its Soldiers like Trash when they get into Legal Trouble. Especially when they have Served for Several Years as a Good Soldier when On-Duty. His Military Record is Outstanding even if his Personal life was a little messed up. So everyone needs to just calm down. Let's focus on getting Out of Afghanistan NOW to prevent other Tragedies like this from occurring.
Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales will be charged with 17 counts of murder in connection with a shooting spree in an Afghan village that left women and children dead and severely tested U.S.-Afghan relations, a U.S. official said.
The official declined to be identified because the charges have not been publicly released yet.
Bales will also face six counts of attempted murder and six counts of aggravated assault, as well as dereliction of duty and other violations of military law, the Associated Press reported, citing an unidentified U.S official.
Bales is being held in a solitary cell in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. The charges are to be read to him today.
Bales, who was on his fourth combat tour, allegedly sneaked from his military outpost in Kandahar province at 3 a.m. March 11 and walked to two villages where he shot, stabbed and burned villagers, including nine children.
The military originally said Bales was suspected in the killing of 16 Afghan villagers, but changed that Thursday to 17, raising the number of adults by one but without explaining why.
The massacre followed the accidental burnings of Qurans at a U.S. base in Afghanistan, which touched off waves of deadly rioting. No one has suggested a motive for the shootings, but the massacre has highlighted the issues of combat stress and frequent deployments.
Bales, 38, joined the Army on Nov. 8, 2001, two months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Friends say he was driven by patriotism, but Bales' financial businesses had gone bust, and regulators were investigating him for allegedly bilking an Ohio couple of their retirement savings.
He deployed three times to Iraq before Afghanistan. During his second deployment, he fought in Najaf to recover a downed helicopter. His platoon leader praised him, and in a newspaper article, Bales recalled it as one of his proudest moments. He arrived in Afghanistan in December. His unit provided security at a small outpost.
Two days before the killings, one of Bales' fellow soldiers lost a leg after stepping on a mine, said John Henry Browne, Bales' civilian attorney. Bales also suffered a minor head injury in 2010 as a passenger in a Humvee that flipped, Browne said. "I'm not putting the war on trial, but the war is on trial," Browne said.
Staff Sgt Robert Bales Enlisted in the U.S. Army out of Patriotism soon after the 9-11 Attack on the World Trade Center. After 4 Deployments & a Brain Injury he's now being treated like Trash.
Staff Sergeant Robert Bales began a series of journeys a decade ago, by plane and car and Humvee and on foot. He started out and has ended up, at least for now, in the Midwest: he is from Ohio, and, on Friday, was flown to Kansas, to the prison at Fort Leavenworth.
Bales had gone to Iraq three times; in 2007, in Najaf, in the middle of a battle, his unit was sent to protect a helicopter that had crashed down: “It was like a match lit up. It looked like a toy with a candle lit underneath it,” he said at the time, according to an Army news release.
In 2010, he was driving in a Humvee when it rolled over, and his head was banged up. He flew to Afghanistan in December—his lawyer, John Henry Browne, told the Times that he didn’t want to go:
The family was counting on him not being redeployed…He and the family were told that his tours in the Middle East were over.
Military officials had kept Bales’s name secret since last Sunday, when he left his base and walked by himself for about a mile until he came to a village house, and went inside. When he walked out of that house he went to another, and then another.
Bales has two children of his own, a girl and boy ages three and four. In the three houses he allegedly shot and killed nine children, four of them under the age of six, and seven grown-ups, too. Bales is thirty-eight. His namelessness was never going to last long, or be useful.
(It still hasn’t been released officially: Bales’s name was leaked, and first reported by Fox News.) The explanation was that his wife and children needed to be kept safe, but they were moved from their home in Lake Tapps, Washington, and sent to Joint Base Lewis-McChord days ago.
(Reporters who walked up to their house found a front porch “cluttered with empty boxes and a snow sled, while toys, a barbecue grill and a weathered hot tub sat in the fenced backyard,” according to the Times.) Transporting Bales hastily from Afghanistan to Kuwait only made both of those countries angry, in Kuwait’s case because the press figured it out before the government there did.
Without a name, Bales had been a phantom of suppositions. Browne had begun to make some of them solid, as had military officials who spoke to the press.
Browne told reporters that Bales had lost part of a foot in Iraq; that was in addition to the head injury. He also said that Bales saw a friend’s leg blown off last week.
Military officials told the Times that Bales had been drinking the night of the murders, and that he was having trouble with his wife.
Browne said that the drinking story was “very offensive,” according to the Post, and that Bales had a “very strong marriage.” Browne has hardly said a sentence that wouldn’t fit in a a closing statement in a defense built around post-traumatic stress disorder or diminished capacity—the loving husband and father broken by the war. But not all explanations can double as absolutions.
One shouldn’t stigmatize veterans by implying that this is normal behavior; but one doesn’t want to isolate them, or leave them stranded on a difficult path, by cheerfully failing to recognize real pain.
The decision to pack Bales on a plane and out of Afghanistan may lead to other journeys.
Will the villagers who saw him that night, like the woman who saw another woman taken by her hair and slammed against a wall, be brought to the trial to testify? (The answer may turn on Bales’s right to confront his accusers.)
The dead left behind in the villages had names and stories and maybe strong marriages, too.
We saw some of their faces in images in which mourners lifted up quilts to show their bodies. Now we are getting snapshots of Bales; neither set should banish the other.
Shock echoed down the street in Lake Tapp, Wash., where Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, named as the suspect who allegedly went on a rampage, murdering 16 Afghan civilians, was remembered as a family man and "good guy."
"I just can't believe Bob's the guy who did this," neighbor Paul Wohlberg told the Associated Press. "A good guy got put in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Neighbors painted a picture of the career soldier as a family man who spoke little about his deployments.
Kassie Holland, a neighbor, told the Associated Press that she would see Bales playing with his daughter Quincy, 4, and son Bobby, 3.
"My reaction is that I'm shocked," she said. "I can't believe it was him. There were no signs... He always had a good attitude about being in the service. He was never really angry about it. When I heard him talk, he said, it seemed like, yeah, that's my job. That's what I do. He never expressed a lot of emotion toward it."
Bales' platoon leader in Iraq described him to the Washington Post as an exemplary soldier who "saved many a life."
"Bales is still, hands down, one of the best soldiers I ever worked with," Army Capt. Chris Alexander , 28, told the newspaper.
Bales, 38, remains locked up today in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he is being housed in a private cell away from other inmates.
Charges are expected soon against the career soldier, who was flown out of Afghanistan and arrived at the Army prison Friday night.
Bales is accused of breaking into several Afghan homes in the middle of the night last Sunday and killing 16 civilians, mostly women and children. He could face the death penalty if found guilty.
Pentagon officials said that Bales' being brought back to the U.S. does not necessarily mean that his military court proceedings will be held in the U.S., holding out the possibility that they could be held in Afghanistan. The Afghan government is demanding that Bales be tried in Afghanistan.
Details of Bales' military record have also emerged and they depict a soldier who has seen intense combat and lost part of a foot.
Bales, who enlisted shortly after the 9/11 terror attacks, was first deployed in November 2003 when his unit spent a year in Mosul, Iraq.
In June 2006 he and his unit were sent back to Iraq and their year-long deployment was given a three month extension until September 2007. During that time, he saw duty in Mosul in the north, Bagdad when the city was pressed by militants, and then to Baquba where his unit took major casualties.
His final Iraq deployment was from September 2009 to September 2010 in Diyala province, which was also a hotbed of insurgent activity.
In December 2011, he was ordered to Afghanistan.
Bales' alleged murderous rage is in stark contrast to what he said after a fierce battle in Zarqa, Iraq, in 2007.
"I've never been more proud to be a part of this unit than that day for the simple fact that we discriminated between the bad guys and the noncombatants and then afterward we ended up helping the people that three or four hours before were trying to kill us," he told Fort Lewis' Northwest Guardian.
"I think that's the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy, someone who puts his family in harm's way like that," Bales said at the time.
John Henry Browne, Bales' lawyer in Seattle, told The Associated Press Thursday that the soldier had witnessed his friend's leg blown off the day before the massacre.
Bales reportedly spent his entire 11-year career at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state and lived not too far from the base. Originally from the Midwest, he was deployed with the Second Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division in December.
Browne said that he was highly decorated and had once been nominated for a Bronze Star though he did not receive it. He also lost part of a foot because of a combat injury.
"He's never said anything antagonistic about Muslims. He's in general very mild-mannered," Browne told the AP.
Bales reportedly left Camp Belambay, where he was stationed to protect Special Operation Forces creating local militias, in the middle of the night wearing night-vision goggles, according to a source. The shooting occurred at 3 a.m. in three houses in two villages in the Panjway district of southern Kandahar province.
In the first village, more than a mile south of the base, he allegedly killed four people in the first house. In the second house, he allegedly killed 11 family members -- four girls, four boys and three adults.
According to a member of the Afghan investigation team and ABC News' interviews, he then walked back to another village past his base and killed one more person. He reportedly returned to the base on his own and turned himself in calmly.
An official told ABC News that the soldier had suffered a mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the past, either from hitting his head on the hatch of a vehicle or in a car accident. He reportedly went through the advanced TBI treatment at Fort Lewis and was deemed to be fine.
He also underwent mental health screening necessary to become a sniper and passed in 2008. He had routine behavioral health screening after that and was cleared, the official said.
When the soldier returned from his last deployment in Iraq he had difficulty reintegrating, including marital problems, the source told ABC News. But officials concluded that he had worked through those issues before deploying to Afghanistan.
On Thursday, Browne said that Bales' marriage was "fabulous."
Afghan political leaders have called for the shooter to be tried publicly in Afghan courts, but U.S. military officials say the case will be handled in U.S. military courts. A U.S. military official says Afghan officials were made aware of the transfer before it occurred.
American troops should pull out of outposts in Afghan villages and return to their main bases, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday, Karzai's office said.
The statement comes days after an American soldier was accused of leaving an outpost and killing 16 Afghan men, women and children in their villages.
Karzai called the shootings in Kandahar province a cruel act against the people of Afghanistan, and told Panetta that Afghans have lost trust in international forces, the presidential palace said in a written release.
Afghans took to the streets of one city Thursday to demand that the U.S. suspect be prosecuted in Afghanistan, while an Afghan lawmaker accused the United States of showing "a fake video ... to convince the Afghan people that it was the act of only one soldier."
Muhammad Naim Lalai said he was one of several Afghan officials shown a surveillance video on the soldier's base in Kandahar province.
"We were shown a video in which a soldier climbs the wall of a military base and then goes indoors and pulls his bullet-proof jacket off and then puts his arms up to surrender himself," Lalai told CNN, expressing doubt that the video was genuine.
The United States has not confirmed it showed footage from the base to Afghans, but a U.S. official has confirmed there is a video showing the suspect laying on the ground outside the base and then attempting to "low crawl" back into the outpost.
Also Thursday, the Afghan Taliban announced they were suspending an office they opened this year in the Gulf state of Qatar, designed to enable talks with the United States.
The Taliban's e-mailed blamed what the group called the Americans' "ever-changing position." The move came after the Taliban threatened to behead Americans in retaliation for Sunday's killings.
The U.S. suspect was flown out of the country Wednesday before Panetta met Karzai in Kabul on Thursday morning.
Karzai pressed Panetta for international forces to hand over security control of the country to the Afghan military by 2013 instead of 2014, his office said.
"President Karzai asked for the transition to be completed by 2013. He did not ask that all international troops leave the country by then," his spokesman, Aimal Faiz, said. U.S. President Barack Obama said Wednesday that a summit of NATO leaders in May in Chicago will "determine the next phase of transition," including "shifting to a support role next year ... in advance of Afghans' taking full responsibility for security in 2014."
Panetta was wrapping up a two-day trip, the first by a high-ranking American official since Sunday's killings in the Panjwai district of Afghanistan's Kandahar province. Panetta's trip was scheduled before the attacks.
In Qalat, a city near the two villages at the center of the rampage, protesters chanted anti-American slogans, called for justice and demanded the soldier be publicly prosecuted in Afghanistan.
The demonstration was organized by religious leaders, according to Muhammad Jan Rasuli, the deputy governor of the Zabul province.
The unidentified Army staff sergeant was transferred out of the country on the recommendation of advisers to Gen. John Allen, the commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
"We do not have the proper facility in Afghanistan to detain him for longer than he is being held," said Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.
A Defense Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the man was flown to Kuwait, which has the U.S. military legal infrastructure and personnel to deal with the suspect. The official was not authorized to release details to the media.
The soldier is accused of leaving the remote outpost of Camp Belambay on foot early Sunday and heading to neighboring villages outside the base.
In the villages, the soldier opened fire as he went house to house, killing nine children, three women and four men, witnesses and Afghan authorities said. The U.S. military has not confirmed the number of casualties.
Three military officials told CNN there is still no understanding of what made the suspect murder Afghan civilians, a potential capital crime that Panetta says the soldier has acknowledged.
"We don't know what made him snap. Did he see a buddy get killed? Did something happen out there in the days before this incident? We just don't know," said one military official familiar with initial investigation reports.
The soldier, who is based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, belongs to the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, according to a congressional source who was not authorized to speak publicly.
He was on his first tour to Afghanistan but had deployed to Iraq three times.
In 2010, he suffered a traumatic brain injury in a vehicle accident. But few details have surfaced about motive or why an infantryman would turn his gun on civilians. Military authorities have presented a determination of probable cause to allow them to keep the sergeant in detention, an International Security Assistance Force official told CNN.
Meanwhile, an Afghan man who stole a vehicle that exploded Wednesday after he crashed it near the runway at Camp Bastion about the same time as Panetta's arrival has died from his injuries, Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti told reporters.
The Afghan was wearing a "desert utility uniform," similar to the ones coalition troops give to translators and other unarmed locals working with them, a defense official said. Coalition troops searched the man after putting out the flames and apprehending him, but they did not find an explosive device on him, according to the official. No motive or the Afghan's intent was known.
Despite some protests and local violence, the country has not erupted the way it did last month when American troops burned copies of the Quran and other Islamic religious materials. Military officials said the materials had been seized from Afghan prisoners because they contained extremist messages.
"The War Does NOT End When We Say Its Over. For Many The War Just Begins. To All The Veterans. Thank You For Your Service." Patrick Kennedy
Via a Mandatory Draft I want EVERY Federal Gov't Official including Congress Members & Pentagon Officials, to immediately allow their Adult Sons & Daughters to fight in the Afghan War to help Defend Karzai's (Afghan President) Corrupt Government, then tell me its Wise Foreign Policy” for U.S. Troops to remain in that region of the world.
War Is Hell!
God Bless Our Men & Women Who Serve This Country Via the U.S. Military!
For many, the issue of post traumatic stress disorder among war veterans is an uncomfortable one, even taboo. But that hasn’t stopped writer/director K. Lorrel Manning from tackling its complexities in the movie, Happy New Year.
“A lot of men and women are suffering in silence,” said Manning. “It takes tragedies like what happened in Afghanistan for people to start talking about it.”
Indeed, the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians allegedly at the hands of a U.S. soldier is forcing a public dialogue. Manning is hoping his movie can keep the momentum going.
The Directors Guild of America in Manhattan is hosting a special benefit screening of Happy New Year Thursday. Proceeds will fund a PTSD facility in Israel.
The movie, filmed at the Bronx Psychiatric Center, follows two friends who served together in Iraq who are reunited at a veterans’ facility on New Year’s Eve.
The idea came to Manning over time but started in 2004 when he read the book, “Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq.”
“I wasn’t really following the war effort at that point but I couldn’t put this book down,” he said. “It changed my life.”
Later, while doing another project in Chicago, he met a police officer who was an Iraq war veteran, and their conversations lit a spark.
Manning wrote a one-act play and asked his friend Michael Cuomo to play the lead role.
That play evolved into a short film, then the opportunity came to make a feature-length film.
Neither Manning nor Cuomo have served in the military. To tell the story accurately, they spent nine months interviewing 80 veterans from various wars.
To prepare for his role as Staff Sgt. Cole Lewis, Cuomo spent four weeks in a simulated boot camp with a drill instructor and used a wheelchair for a month (his character is paralyzed from the waist down).
“I would wheel around the city at night, kind of incognito,” he said. “I wanted to feel what it was like to see the world from that position and feel how the world sees you.”
While the subject matter may be difficult, even off-putting for some, Cuomo believes there are people willing to put aside their personal politics and focus on the humanity in the story.
“The idea of thinking that your life is heading in a certain direction, then experiencing something catastrophic that changes your course, and how you deal with that, is a dynamic I think anyone can relate to,” he said.
Happy New Year has been well received at 16 film festivals nationwide, picking up some notable endorsements along the way.
Among its fans is retired Army Col. Jack Jacobs, who received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism in Vietnam.
“I’m a career soldier so I’m invariably not happy with war movies,” he said. “(But) I was absolutely enraptured by Happy New Year because the characters seemed so real. I knew all of them.
“It’s a really moving piece,” Jacobs continued. “It’s hard to say you enjoyed something that actually causes you a little bit of pain, but I absolutely enjoyed it.”
For more information about the Happy New Year screening, call (212) 586-4034.
Pres. Obama says the "U.S. is Heartbroken over the Killings of Innocent Afghan Civilains". What about Innocent Soldiers Defending their Country?
War Is Hell!
Attention Everyone!
Please Don't Bash U.S. Military Personnel Currently Serving To Defend Our Country. Those SAME Members of the U.S. Military You are choosing to Blast & Criticize, are the SAME Military Personnel Working Hard each day to Protect You & Defending Your Rights as an American Citizen.
So unless You Have EVER Served in the U.S. Military Or Unless You have members of Your Immediate Family Who served in the U.S. Military, Please Refrain from Criticizing members of the U.S. Military.
Especially U.S. Soldiers who have been Deployed Multiple times.
Have you EVER served in the U.S. Military? Have you EVER completed Basic Training? Have you EVER served in a Combat Zone? Have you EVER been Shot at by Iraq or Afghanistan Citizens? Have you EVER suffered a Brain Injury or PTSD as a result of serving in Iraq or Afghanistan?
If your response is "NO" to those questions, than why are you complaining about the Actions of U.S. Soldiers currently serving in Afghanistan?
I have a Husband who retired from the U.S. Army after 23 Years of Active Duty Service. He served in Vietnam & Saudi.
My husband personally witnessed 2 of his Friends getting their heads Blown Off by the Vietcong. Witnessing such Tragedies Still affects him years later because he is a Human Being. And during his time in Vietnam my husband was Injured.
My Father Served in the U.S. Army during War time. My Uncles & Cousins served in the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy & Marines. Now my Son & his Fiancee’ are also Serving in the U.S. Army.
I am Tired of Arrogant People, Especially Arrogant BLACK Men & Women, who NEVER served One day Defending this Country, Criticizing Members of our Armed Services.
I am also Tired of Politicians from both sides of the Aisle, using Our U.S. Military Personnel as Pawns to win Elections.
If Your Religion disavows War or Military Service, I respect Your Decision NOT to Serve in the U.S. Military. But please don’t use Your Religion as an Excuse to Bash or look down upon our Brave Men & Women who choose to Defend this Country via U.S. Military Service.
I Don’t Condone the type of Violence which took place last weekend when that Army Sergeant Killed 16 Afghan Civilians but who are we to Judge?
Who are we to Judge?
NONE of us except GOD, the U.S. Army & that Army Sergeant knows what really happened or what that Man has experienced during each of his Deployments to Iraq & Afghanistan.
Since he was Suffering from a Brain Injury why was he Still being Allowed to Serve or why was he Still being Deployed to another Dangerous War Zone?
I can bet he was either BLACK or Latino! I could be Wrong but in this instance I don’t think I am.
BLACK & Latino Soldiers are Often Deployed more frequently to Combat Zones than WHITE Soldiers.
For BLACKS & Latinos serving in the U.S. Military, Racial Discrimination is Still a Major Issue!
Now Add Racial Discrimination to the Stress of trying to Stay Alive while serving in a War Zone.
So unless You plan on Immediately Enlisting into the U.S. Military & Defending the United States Of America (Your Current Home), then please take that Anti-Military Sentiment Somewhere else! I didn’t Stutter.
Suspected insurgents fired on an Afghan government delegation on Tuesday investigating the massacre of 16 civilians by a U.S. soldier, officials said, hours after the Taliban threatened to behead American troops to avenge the killings.
Two of President Hamid Karzai's brothers, Shah Wali Karzai and Addul Qayum Karzai, were with senior defense, intelligence and interior ministry officials travelling to the scene of the massacre in Najiban and Alekozai villages, in Kandahar's Panjwai district, when insurgents opened fire.
Karzai's brothers were unharmed in the brief gunbattle during meetings at a village mosque, but a soldier and a civilian were wounded. The area is a Taliban stronghold and a supply route.
"The Islamic Emirate once again warns the American animals that the mujahideen will avenge them, and with the help of Allah will kill and behead your sadistic murderous soldiers," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement, using the term with which the Islamist group describes itself.
As the first protest broke out in Jalalabad city over the weekend shootings, the Taliban said Afghan government demands for an open trial of the U.S. Army staff sergeant being held for the slayings would not blunt civilian hostility towards Western combat troops.
The unnamed U.S. soldier - said to have only recently arrived in the country - is accused of walking off his base in Kandahar province in the middle of the night and gunning down at least 16 villagers, mostly women and children.
A U.S. official said the accused soldier had suffered a traumatic brain injury while on a previous deployment in Iraq.
The shootings, which came just weeks after deadly protests across the country over the inadvertent burning of Korans by U.S. soldiers, triggered a protest by around 2,000 students in the eastern city of Jalalabad.
The demonstrators chanted "Death to America" and demanded Afghan President Hamid Karzai reject plans to sign a strategic pact with Washington that would allow U.S. advisers and possibly special forces to remain in the country beyond the planned withdrawal in 2014.
U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking after a phone call with Karzai - who is said to be furious over the latest deaths - said the shootings had only increased his determination to get American troops out of Afghanistan.
However, Obama cautioned there should not be a "rush to the exits" for U.S. forces who have been fighting in Afghanistan since late 2001 and that the drawdown set for the end of 2014 should be done in a responsible way.
The soldier, from a conventional unit, was based at a joint U.S.-Afghan base used by elite U.S. troops under a so-called village support programme hailed by NATO as a possible model for U.S. involvement in the country after the 2014 drawdown.
Such bases provide support to local Afghan security units and provide a source of security advice and training, as well as anti-insurgent backup and intelligence.
"CAN NO LONGER BE CALLED ROGUE"
A spokesman for Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wisa said that tribal elders in the area of the massacre would urge against protests and work to dampen public anger if the investigation process was transparent.
"They are supporting the government and will accept any conclusion by the investigators. Today we have meetings with people in the area and all will become clear," spokesman Ahmad Jawid Faisal said.
NATO officials said it was too early to tell if the U.S. soldier would be tried in the United States or Afghanistan if investigators were to find enough evidence to charge him, but he would be under U.S. laws and procedures under an agreement between U.S. and Afghan officials.
Typically, once the initial investigation is completed, prosecutors decide if they have enough evidence to file charges and then could move to an Article 32 or court martial hearing.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Monday that the death penalty could be sought in the U.S. military justice system against the soldier, but portrayed the shooting as an isolated event that would not alter withdrawal plans.
While Afghan MPs in parliament called for a trial under Afghan law, Karzai's office was understood to accept that a trial in a U.S. court would be acceptable provided the process was transparent and open to media.
Analysts said the incident would complicate U.S. efforts to reach agreement with the Afghan government on a post-2014 security pact before a May summit in the U.S. city of Chicago on the future size and funding of Afghan security forces.
Thomas Ruttig of the Afghanistan Analysts Network said that despite NATO and White House references to the killings as the work of a "rogue" soldier, other similar events had happened before, including a "kill team" apprehended in Kandahar in 2010.
"In the stress of an environment of escalated violence - by both sides, but particularly after Obama's troop surge in early 2009, it looks as if most soldiers simply see Afghanistan as a whole as ‘enemy territory' and every Afghan as a potential terrorist. This can no longer be called ‘rogue'," Ruttig said.
NATO's top commander in Afghanistan, Marine General John Allen, has promised a rapid investigation of the massacre, while security was being reviewed at NATO bases across the country.
Today during a Press Conference Pres. Obama denounced the recent Afghan Civilian Killings & Vowed the Responsible U.S. Soldier will Pay. Dear God Help Us!
The Taliban is now threatening to Behead Several U.S. Soldiers currently serving in Afghanistan in Retaliation for the 16 Afghan Civilians Killed last Weekend.
I hope Pres. Obama is NOT choosing to Pander to War Hungry GOP Lawmakers regarding bringing our Troops out of a Corrupt Country where Anti-American Sentiment is Increasing Daily.
And….
Via a Mandatory Draft I want EVERY Federal Gov't Official including Congress Members & Pentagon Officials, to immediately allow their Adult Sons & Daughters to fight in the Afghan War to help Defend Karzai's (Afghan President) Corrupt Government, then tell me its Wise Foreign Policy” for U.S. Troops to remain in that region of the world.
War Is Hell!
Attention Everyone!
Please Don't Bash U.S. Military Personnel Currently Serving To Defend Our Country. Those SAME Members of the U.S. Military You are choosing to Blast & Criticize, are the SAME Military Personnel Working Hard each day to Protect You & Defending Your Rights as an American Citizen.
So unless You Have EVER Served in the U.S. Military Or Unless You have members of Your Immediate Family Who served in the U.S. Military, Please Refrain from Criticizing members of the U.S. Military.
Especially U.S. Soldiers who have been Deployed Multiple times.
Have you EVER served in the U.S. Military? Have you EVER completed Basic Training? Have you EVER served in a Combat Zone? Have you EVER been Shot at by Iraq or Afghanistan Citizens? Have you EVER suffered a Brain Injury or PTSD as a result of serving in Iraq or Afghanistan?
If your response is "NO" to those questions, than why are you complaining about the Actions of U.S. Soldiers currently serving in Afghanistan?
I have a Husband who retired from the U.S. Army after 23 Years of Active Duty Service. He served in Vietnam & Saudi.
My husband personally witnessed 2 of his Friends getting their heads Blown Off by the Vietcong. Witnessing such Tragedies Still affects him years later because he is a Human Being. And during his time in Vietnam my husband was Injured.
My Father Served in the U.S. Army during War time. My Uncles & Cousins served in the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy & Marines. Now my Son & his Fiancee’ are also Serving in the U.S. Army.
I am Tired of Arrogant People, Especially Arrogant BLACK Men & Women, who NEVER served One day Defending this Country, Criticizing Members of our Armed Services.
I am also Tired of Politicians from both sides of the Aisle, using Our U.S. Military Personnel as Pawns to win Elections.
If Your Religion disavows War or Military Service, I respect Your Decision NOT to Serve in the U.S. Military. But please don’t use Your Religion as an Excuse to Bash or look down upon our Brave Men & Women who choose to Defend this Country via U.S. Military Service.
I Don’t Condone the type of Violence which took place last weekend when that Army Sergeant Killed 16 Afghan Civilians but who are we to Judge?
Who are we to Judge?
NONE of us except GOD, the U.S. Army & that Army Sergeant knows what really happened or what that Man has experienced during each of his Deployments to Iraq & Afghanistan.
Since he was Suffering from a Brain Injury why was he Still being Allowed to Serve or why was he Still being Deployed to another Dangerous War Zone?
I can bet he was either BLACK or Latino! I could be Wrong but in this instance I don’t think I am.
BLACK & Latino Soldiers are Often Deployed more frequently to Combat Zones than WHITE Soldiers.
For BLACKS & Latinos serving in the U.S. Military, Racial Discrimination is Still a Major Issue!
Now Add Racial Discrimination to the Stress of trying to Stay Alive while serving in a War Zone.
So unless You plan on Immediately Enlisting into the U.S. Military & Defending the United States Of America (Your Current Home), then please take that Anti-Military Sentiment Somewhere else! I didn’t Stutter.
President Barack Obama on Tuesday said he viewed the killing of 16 Afghan civilians, allegedly by a U.S. soldier, as seriously as if those killed had been Americans. "The U.S. takes this as seriously as if it were our own citizens and our own children who were murdered," Obama said at the White House.
Obama said he was directing the Pentagon to do a very thorough investigation of the weekend killings. He said the inquiry would "follow the facts" wherever they lead, and that anyone found responsible would be prosecuted fully. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the death penalty is possible if the soldier is convicted.
Earlier Tuesday thousands of people took to the streets in eastern Afghanistan to protest the killings, burning an effigy of Obama and calling for the killer to be tried in Afghanistan.
Demonstrators in the city of Jalalabad chanted "Death to America -- Death to Obama" and blocked the main highway to Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, Britain's Daily Telegraph reported.
"Jihad (holy war) is the only way to get the invading Americans out of Afghanistan," one banner read, according to the newspaper.
The demonstrators also demanded that President Hamid Karzai reject plans to sign a strategic pact with Washington that would allow U.S. Advisers & Possibly Special Forces to remain remain beyond a 2014 deadline for foreign combat troops to leave Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, militants attacked an Afghan government delegation that was visiting the site of the killings, the BBC reported.
"I can confirm that the Taliban have launched an attack from several directions against a government delegation," a senior official told the BBC. "At this stage, our forces are returning fire.''
Nine children and three women were among those killed in the massacre. According to reports, a 38-year-old staff sergeant had left his base in Panjwai district early on Sunday and broke into the victim's homes. Some of the bodies were burned.
The soldier had no history of behavioral problems but had been treated for traumatic brain injury after a previous deployment to Iraq, senior U.S. defense officials told NBC News.
U.S. officials rushed to draw a line between the shooting over the weekend and ongoing efforts of a U.S. force of around 90,000, and have been bracing themselves for reprisals as Afghans weary of the decade-old Western military presence vent their anger.
The Afghan Taliban threatened on Tuesday to behead U.S. troops in revenge for the massacre.
"The Islamic Emirate once again warns the American animals that the mujahedeen will avenge them, and with the help of Allah will kill and behead your sadistic murderous soldiers," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in an emailed statement, using the term with which the Islamist group describes itself.
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