“You can’t squint hard enough to make this gray.”

December 17, 2015 5:06 AM

Navy SEALs, a Beating Death and Claims of a Cover-Up by Nicholas Kulish, Christopher Drew and Matthew Rosenberg [The New York Times] U.S. soldiers accused Afghan police and Navy SEALs of abusing detainees. But the SEAL command opted against a court-martial and cleared its men of wrongdoing.

Abuse of detainees is among the most serious offenses an American service member can commit. Several military justice experts, who reviewed a Naval Criminal Investigative Service report on the case at the request of The Times, said that it had been inappropriate for the SEAL command to treat such allegations as an internal disciplinary matter and that it should have referred the case for an Article 32 review, the equivalent of a grand jury, to consider a court-martial.

- Full N.C.I.S. Investigative Report [The New York Times] [.PDF]

The New York Times obtained the Naval Criminal Investigative Service report on the detainee abuse episode in Kalach through the Freedom of Information Act. The full document is 129 pages; the following 115 pages do not include photographic exhibits. The report was redacted by the United States Navy. In nearly all cases, the redactions are of the names of American service members

- A Guide to the N.C.I.S. Investigative Report [The New York Times]

The findings of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service inquiry into the detainee-abuse case are included in a report, which was redacted by the United States Navy. In nearly all cases, the redactions are of the names of American service members. Links to excerpts from the report appear below.

- SEAL Team 6: A Secret History of Quiet Killings and Blurred Lines [The New York Times]

Almost everything about SEAL Team 6, a classified Special Operations unit, is shrouded in secrecy — the Pentagon does not even publicly acknowledge that name — though some of its exploits have emerged in largely admiring accounts in recent years. But an examination of Team 6’s evolution, drawn from dozens of interviews with current and former team members, other military officials and reviews of government documents, reveals a far more complex, provocative tale.

posted by Fizz (26 comments total)

Even before the beatings, some of the SEALs had exhibited troubling behavior. According to the soldiers and Afghan villagers, they had amused themselves by tossing grenades over the walls of their base, firing high-caliber weapons at passing vehicles and even aiming slingshots at children, striking them in the face with hard candy.

WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK?!!
posted by Fizz at 5:18 AM on December 17, 2015 [8 favorites]

I'll have to read the rest of this later, but based on what I've read so far, I'm actually not surprised. I've never heard anything good about SEALs from U.S. Army Soldiers who have worked with them in Afghanistan.
posted by A Bad Catholic at 5:25 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

This particular part of the article also makes you want to pull your hair out and scream:

What happened in Kalach involved just one death in a conflict that has taken thousands of lives, but it had broader consequences. Instead of winning over the local population, the goal of the mission, the reported abuse further alienated villagers. It drove some previously cooperative Afghans to leave for Taliban-controlled areas, residents said.

posted by Fizz at 5:31 AM on December 17, 2015 [6 favorites]

"winning hearts and minds"

maybe in the #winning sense at least
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:38 AM on December 17, 2015

Given how many rules/policies/laws had to be broken to get bin Laden, this really doesn't surprise me. In his case it may have been justified, but the problem with being allowed to bend the rules once is that it becomes accepted behavior (as any parent will tell you).
posted by TedW at 5:39 AM on December 17, 2015

Navy SEALs, a Beating Death and Claims of a Cover-Up by Nicholas Kulish, Christopher Drew and Matthew Rosenberg

There needs to be a comma in there, or some other way to delineate the title from the list of authors.
posted by zamboni at 5:43 AM on December 17, 2015 [5 favorites]

"winning hearts and minds"

Yeah, you know how, when you fuck somebody up real good? Hunt them down and kill them like animals? So you get to pull out their heart and/or brain and keep it in a jar on your trophy shelf? That's what they're talking about when they use this phrase, right?
posted by nushustu at 5:44 AM on December 17, 2015

I hope so.
This is tragic, thanks for posting it and it serves as an example of freedom of press and accountability for hard rock slinging bad guys.
posted by clavdivs at 6:01 AM on December 17, 2015

Given how many rules/policies/laws had to be broken to get bin Laden, this really doesn't surprise me. In his case it may have been justified, but the problem with being allowed to bend the rules once is that it becomes accepted behavior (as any parent will tell you).

There's also that horrible part of war where the enemy becomes dehumanized. And this is sadly something that can be done by both people within and outside of the military complex. How the media, politicians, and military talk about and engage with the "enemy" all contribute towards this kind of dehumanized behaviour.
posted by Fizz at 6:04 AM on December 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

For some insight into the SEAL mentality, you should listen to the recent interviews of Jocko Willink on Joe Rogan's (reddit discussion) and Tim Ferriss's podcasts. Like a number of former military folks, he is on the leadership training speaking circuit now, so he's not exactly addressing this or other controversies. But he spends a significant amount of time on these two podcasts talking about his experience in Iraq, and it's not hard to draw a line between the way he talks about his time there and some of the reports coming out now.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 6:08 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Has anything good ever come from a military or police unit that is shrouded in secrecy, and yet publicly lauded?
posted by tocts at 6:08 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

That's rhetorical, right.

I would say no, but there a few weird exceptions.
posted by clavdivs at 6:12 AM on December 17, 2015

I see this as systemic. When your political leaders advocate for torture, indefinite detainment without appeal or even representation, and debate the slaying of innocent family members for political or religious ends while campaigning for President, is it any surprise when the boots on the ground take them at their word? This isn't confined to just the SEALs.

Welcome to your next al-Qaeda and Daesh recruiting tool. Expect to see this coming to an over militarized SWAT team near you.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:19 AM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

monju_bosatusu I got through 1 minute and 15 seconds of that Willink podcast and I am glad that I saw that much but the karma willies jumped out of my computer and my fingers clicked that close button real direct. It was almost like oopsie-daisily launching a pit bulldog fight video.
posted by bukvich at 6:21 AM on December 17, 2015

Even before the beatings, some of the SEALs had exhibited troubling behavior. According to the soldiers and Afghan villagers, they had amused themselves by tossing grenades over the walls of their base, firing high-caliber weapons at passing vehicles and even aiming slingshots at children, striking them in the face with hard candy.

Violent people are violent.
posted by dortmunder at 7:09 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Canada had this scandal in 1993. The Somalia Affair led to the disbanding of a regiment.
posted by Fraxas at 8:03 AM on December 17, 2015

Sorry to say but this has been going on a long long time...we "protect" our citizens from what takes place in wartime. I know of such things going back WWII and Korean War.
posted by Postroad at 8:21 AM on December 17, 2015

Sorry to say but this has been going on a long long time...we "protect" our citizens from what takes place in wartime. I know of such things going back WWII and Korean War.

So... What? Move along? Business as usual?
posted by cmoj at 8:30 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh good, further proof that America is, in fact, the villain.

When other countries do these kinds of thing, the movies that come out use them as the villains. Luckily, Hollywood is here in the US so get to keep putting out movies that pretend we're still the good guys.

I mean, the reality is that there are no "good guys" and "bad guys" but if we're going to use that narrative we should at least try to actually be the good guys. Stuff like this is going to happen in war-time, if you're the villain, you encourage it, if you're the good guys, you put a stop to that shit right the fuck now and throw the book at the perpetrators no matter how many Bin Laden's they've shot.
posted by VTX at 8:37 AM on December 17, 2015

I mean, the reality is that there are no "good guys" and "bad guys"

The bit where the well-armed adult soldiers are firing slingshot at children suggests we can draw some pretty bright lines here.
posted by mhoye at 9:45 AM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

As the article points out, the mission of the outpost was doomed the minute some bright REMF decided to send SEALs to do a Green Beret mission. That's like bringing a bag of sledgehammers, machetes and razor blades to varnish an antique wood table.

The lack of discipline displayed by the SEAL unit, if as widespread in the SEAL organization as is implied in this thread, is really disturbing. It makes other episodes like this one inevitable. There's a place for hard-asses, even brutes, at the tip of the spear. But those brutes better be on a damned tight leash or this kind of shit will continue, and the consequences for America's reputation will be severe. These guys are supposed to be consummate pros, and they're permitted to act like drunken farmboys on a hunting trip. In fact, most farmboys will exhibit better firearm safety than was described in the article.

Then of course, there's the individual SEALs and their CO. Between this situation and the Army's common use of CO discretion to prevent rape charges, I think it's high time that discretion be eliminated altogether. The resulting perception of immunity is contrary to discipline and weakens the ability of the Armed Services to accomplish their mission.
posted by BigLankyBastard at 9:49 AM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

Just finished reading the main article, I'm not exaggerating when I say that I have seen Soldiers given harsher punishments for missing medical and dental appointments.
posted by A Bad Catholic at 9:57 AM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm not exaggerating when I say that I have seen Soldiers given harsher punishments for missing medical and dental appointments.

Was just coming here to say this. Do what you want to innocent people, apparently, but god help you if you buck the bureaucracy.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 10:52 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I mean, the reality is that there are no "good guys" and "bad guys"

The bit where the well-armed adult soldiers are firing slingshot at children suggests we can draw some pretty bright lines here.

What is described here comes from the top down, not the bottom up. The individual soldier is responsible for his decisions, but only in a certain context can what he's done be evaluated. This could mean either a medal or a courts martial. The act in this case was on the individual, but its disposition (therefore it's validation) lay with the command structure. Complicity has several faces.

By the way, Nation Building has never worked out very well for us. Notions of winning hearts and minds always evolve into grabbing them by the balls. It's the way the machine works. We evolve from saviors to invaders as soon as we take over police functions. Although some military folks are trained in police functions, generally speaking a combat soldier courts a whole different set of reflexes.

My military time (8 years, 63-71) showed me the underside of this shit. We were heavily infused with the Geneva Convention's tenets regarding prisoners. To our unit (the 173'd Airborne Brigade) prisoners were a tremendous asset. Many of them worked for us as scouts. The theory here is that once they realize that they won't be tortured or killed, our generous material assets provide for them better than sleeping in a hole and wondering if the Buffs were going to pound them that day. You see, we were killing them at a ratio of about 22-1 when I was there. Okay, that's the simple view of it, but it made sense to us--I learned this theory in basic infantry training.

We had some issues with the QCs and ARVNs treatment of prisoners, and sometimes we were too late or otherwise encumbered to do anything about it. I personally witnessed a squad of VN Rangers form a line and take a kick or punch at a bound and kneeling prisoner. Our team leader put a stop to it when we came onto the scene, and for a moment the six of us were eyeball to eyeball with a dozen VN Rangers. Our interpreter took off right away, but through hand signals and dick waving we took charge of the prisoner and got him onto a helicopter. I don't know where he ended up. If he went to Saigon I guess we only postponed whatever was in store for him.

Our teams seldom took a prisoner. Two exceptions are during an op with the infantry battalions, or if we were tasked with a mission to capture someone alive. Generally it was easier to capture a prisoner when 80 or 90 boonie rats are in the assault, because you will often over run a position before the VC can abandon it. But on a patrol with only six people, it's tricky to get one without killing him. Shooting them in the feet in ambush is a good way to make sure you don't hit any major blood vessels, but then you still must bind his hands, and you neede to assign two guys to carry him.

Good guys and bad guys. I knew a guy from the Cav who survived a horrid ambush because he just happened to get wounded, and was under the bodies of three of his brothers on that raid. During the night he heard American GI's begging them not to shoot, then, bang, until all the wounded were dead. A VC soldier took his rifle and web gear, not realizing he was still alive. He lay in that spot until around noon the next day, when his unit came for the bodies.

I don't meant to try to justify bad deeds. I absolutely deplore the mistreatment of prisoners, on both practical and moral grounds. War is sometimes more terrible than you can imagine. It's one thing to suspend one's disbelief during a movie, and yet another to carry the memory of your actions with you forever. Valor among the members of many units is a given, but it paints with broad strokes. I am glad I don't have to be judged only by the worse thing I ever did.

To make sense of shit like this, it's not that hard, most of the time, to draw a line down the chain of command and notice who fucked up, and how. The grunt is the guy with the blood on his hands, is all that means. Up the chain, ass-covering is the name of the game until you get to the policy level. At that point, our foreign policy objectives are the structures that generate the forces that let SEALs do their job. The intermediate commanders hold heavy responsibility for oversight and training, and to my mind, they share the responsibility with their subordinates for the deeds.

If you really need a bright line, maybe it should get drawn closer to the theorists than the people they send to do the deeds--the operative physics here requires that shit flow down hill, so the higher up you start, the better.
posted by mule98J at 10:58 AM on December 17, 2015 [31 favorites]

mule98J: given the relative quiet of this thread there's no way your comment will get the recognition it deserves, so I just wanted to say that I really appreciate you taking the time to be so open and honest about your experiences.
posted by Ryvar at 11:10 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Captain Smith said that he had found inconsistencies in the soldiers’ accounts when they were questioned five months later

Gosh, multiple guys didn't have lock-step accounts of something that happened five months ago? I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

Thank you, Specialist Walker & the other guys who reported. I wish they were all more like you.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 2:44 PM on December 17, 2015