{"id":84790,"date":"2019-02-04T10:38:26","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T14:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=84790"},"modified":"2022-01-13T20:32:29","modified_gmt":"2022-01-14T01:32:29","slug":"war-crimes-prosecution-against-navy-seals-takes-a-double-hit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=84790","title":{"rendered":"War crimes prosecution against Navy SEALs takes a double hit"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A Navy SEAL who allegedly staged a re-enlistment ceremony over the body of a dead Islamic State prisoner during the Battle of Mosul in Iraq and also hovered a drone over the corpse may have acted in \u201cpoor taste\u201d but didn\u2019t commit a war crime, a Navy judge has ruled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On Friday, two military judges delivered a pair of big wins for two Navy SEALs on trial for alleged war crimes by tossing out key charges against the special operator at the center of the case, Chief Special Warfare Operator\u00a0Edward \u201cEddie\u201d Gallagher<\/a>, and the officer in charge of his platoon, Lt. Jacob X. \u201cJake\u201d Portier, who stands accused of covering up the incidents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Gallagher is accused of stabbing to death a wounded Islamic State prisoner of war and attempting to shoot innocent civilians with his sniper rifle near Mosul in 2017.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Also among the allegations is that Gallagher staged the re-enlistment ceremony\u00a0over the dead ISIS teenager\u2019s body\u00a0<\/a>near the Iraqi city of Mosul on May 3, 2017, amid some of the U.S. forces fiercest fighting against ISIS in Iraq. Prosecutors also say he hovered a drone over the body.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But the military judge, Navy\u00a0Capt. Aaron Rugh<\/a>, determined that those are not prohibited acts under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Things were much easier for me to understand when we drank to\u00a0victory from the skulls of our dead enemies.<\/p>\n

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That ruling is also likely to be a big win for platoon leader Portier, who also faces a raft of charges alleging that he covered up his chief petty officer\u2019s war crimes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Military prosecutors charged Portier with lying to his superior officer, Lt. Cmdr. Robert Breisch, about whether he saw \u201canything criminal\u201d at Gallagher\u2019s reenlistment ceremony. Portier allegedly said: \u201cThere was nothing criminal. It was just in poor taste,\u201d according investigative files obtained by Navy Times.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If the judge overseeing Portier\u2019s separate court martial case agrees with Rugh, however, then Portier told the truth and his charge must be tossed out, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt is honorable for a Navy SEAL to reenlist on the battlefield, the same battlefield where he was willing to sacrifice his own life to protect our nation,\u201d Portier\u2019s civilian defense attorney, Jeremiah J. Sullivan III, told Navy Times.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I see nothing “poor” about taste here, but maybe that’s\u00a0just me.<\/p>\n

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Source: War crimes prosecution against Navy SEALs takes a double hit<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Navy SEAL who allegedly staged a re-enlistment ceremony over the body of a dead Islamic … War crimes prosecution against Navy SEALs takes a double hit<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":667,"featured_media":84791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83,185,177,5,226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-crime","category-dumbass-bullshit","category-politics","category-veterans-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/667"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/84791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}