There’s a difference between second guessing strategic decisions and passing moral judgements about life and death decisions which we have not had to make for ourselves.
tkeela: AGAIN I ask you to provide links to the news sites where you are getting your information.
Cite?
Cite?
Cite?
[Article 87: Missing Movement](http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ucmj2.htm#887. ART. 87. MISSING MOVEMENT)
I’m not calling the entire 343rd cowards. Please indicate where I have done so. I said:
AND
FACT: The fuel was not contaminated.
FACT: The fuel was delivered, safely and without incident, by other soldiers.
FACT: 19 soldiers failed to appear at the designated time and palce for assigned duties.
FACT: 18 are under investigation.
FACT: 5 have already been reduced in rank.
FACT: There is a maintenance stand-down to assess the condition of the vehicles in question.
FACT: This “stand-down” is an investigation, and is not an admission that the vehicles are as bad as the 19 soldiers claim.
Oh Cynical One:
Okay, folks, Straw Poll:
[ol]
[li]Who’s been shot at before in armed conflict?[/li][li]Who’s served in the miltary, and has some reasonable basis in experience for judging the situation?[/li][li]Who’s had even some in-service familiariztion with the UCMJ?[/li][li]Who’s received medals for conduct during war?[/li][/ol]
Let’s see…thats: Me; Me; Me; and…yep, Me.
I make that preliminary qualified judgement from my limited yet valid military experience. As of now, with the cited information available, I stand by it.
If I am later shown to be in factual error, I stand ready to retract and apologize.
The cites are all the ones that have been posted in this thread. If people took the time to read their own sources and follow them up as well as they try to do on this board they might have a clue as to what the real story is.
And for the record…I’ve not only been under fire I’ve been shot, twice.
semper fi…
Is that certain now? As of last night, the news was that samples had been sent out for testing. I’ve not seen the results of those tests yet. Have you?
Congratulations. I was in the Navy. I didn’t get shot at, though.
And you’re still in no moral position to pass judgement in these guys.
Would you like me to use that word you like to throw around, strawman? You answer part of what you are asked and then proclaim you are 100% right. Ok you are 100% right about 50% of what you have been talking about.
Again I will ask you. Are you just arguing that in this case only there is no mutiny. If so I tend to agree with you although all the facts are not in.
You appear to be arguing that a charge of mutiny can not be made when a group of soldiers refuses to obey an order together.
In this you are 100% wrong. There is no need to take over command. Just to nullify the authority. No violence, no change in leadership nothing but the act of disobeying is needed. There have been cites and quotes and personal experience cited and you bring nothing. You aren’t even using the proper definitions of the words you are using. Reread the posts and the cites and the quotes. Please let me know where you are getting your opinion. If you have cites, give them. If you are pulling it out of your ass keep it to yourself.
Yes it is
Yes you are correct. You just don’t understand how the word abrogate is being used. You don’t have to remove the rightful authority you just have to abrogate or nullify it. Having a bunch of troops who refuse orders nullifies the authority of those above them. Nullifies as in negates.
Probably not.
You are right, intent needs to be proved. But there is no time period needed. Please cite. A persistent refusal does not mean a pattern of refusal. It means you keep on refusing. It could be the same order that you refuse. If an officer says take that hill three times in a row and the group refuses three times in a row that is a persistent refusal. Lets say that same officer says take that hill and the group says no. The officer then threatens them with mutiny and they agree to the mission. There was no persistent refusal. They can still be charged with disobeying an order or some other lesser charges but not mutiny.
I get that you don’t believe this was a case of mutiny. I get it. If your view of this case is causing you to over-state your opinion of the charge of mutiny please clarify your opinion. As you have stated it your view of the law is flawed. Why it is flawed has been pointed out to you. If you have any proof please present. Start with your qualifications, any classes you attended anything you read. Something.
None of your cites support this assertion. There is a Geenral on record as denying that the fuel was contaminated but public statements by the brass in this war have a very poor track record of truthfulness. It seems that this particular shipment of fuel had already been rejected once because it was contaminated with water. I have not seen any denial by the military that such is the case. Your categorical declaration that the fuel was not contaminated is simply not yet supported by the evidence.
With the same trucks or different trucks? With an escort or without one? Was it the same shipment of fuel or a different one? The articles don’t really say. If it was a different shipment of oil carried out with better equipment and an escort, then it really casts no light on the soundness of the initial mission.
No one has disputed this.
Yep.
Um…no…this is nowhere in your linked news stories. In fact, the military is denying that any of these guys have even been arrested, much less disciplined.
Your ABC links won’t load for me, though, so maybe it’s in there.
]
Nor is it a denial.
Squink:
Which news service? I have several articles from different sources in this thread in which BG Chambers asserts that the fuel was not contaminated.
tkeela:
I have reread every article posted to this thread and have not found:
Granted, the last one, as an amalgam, is partly true as a claim made by the soldiers.
13th COSCOM commander BG James Chambers has refuted that they were toting contaminated fuel and that they were unescorted. He has further claimed to have launched two investigations into the matter; one to determine the unit’s maintenance status, the othe rinto the soldier’s conduct.
DtheC
Well, shit. With our combined experience, if we can’t pass moral judgement on a couple dozen combat soldiers, how do you get off passing moral judgement on the Bush Administration and the entire Pentagon for lack of Body Armor for every dead soldier in Iraq?
Dude…whatever. That’s only twice more than me and I’m not even in the military. 
Can we please stop pretending that military experience is required to state an opinion in this debate? I don’t require people in debates on unemployment or outsourcing to hold an MBA or a masters in economics. I’m sure no one needs a bullet in their ass to know that it hurts. I’m willing to bet that most of us would not want to see soldiers unnecessarily risking their lives for pointless missions. And I am also willing to bet that soldiers, by virtue of their decision to join the military, are aware that they may have to risk life and limb in the completion of their duties. It is like joining the fire department and prefering not to be exposed to any excessive heat or flame. It’s part of the job.
The debate, as I see it, is to what extent are soldiers allowed to refuse an order that seems unnecessarily dangerous or immoral? Is it any different from soldiers refusing to participate in the Normandy landings because riding a Higgins boat into overwhealming Nazi machinegun and artillery fire is a “suicide mission”? What if every soldier at Valley Forge said “fuck this shit…I’m not fighting until I get some real shoes!”. How about if all the Allied bomber pilots said “no way! I’m not flying over Germany without proper figher escort”?
No I have not been in a war. I get the impression though that in war, you don’t always have the luxury of waiting for the latest and greatest equipment to arrive. Everything becomes a matter of risk vs reward. Do I risk putting this aircraft into action in order to protect that unit who needs air cover. Do I risk this convoy to get ammo and fuel to that base under siege.
One important thing to note is that someone else had to go and fulfill these guys mission. I wonder what they would tell their families if that unit had come under fire? “Tough break…good thing that wasn’t me”?
I don’t want to sound as if I am passing judgement on these folks. I don’t know all the facts yet. The knee-jerk reaction, however, seems to be to assume that their refusal was justified.
Loach,
I’m only talking about this case, not about whether a charge of mutiny can be supported by a refusal of orders in a more general sense. In fact, I already said as much. A concerted and persistent refusal to follow orders can be considered mutinous if theintent of such a pattern is to usurp or override (or as you say “nullify,” I was trying to search for the right word in a previous post which is why I used the word “abrogate”) authority.
There was no such intent in this case. There was no pattern or persistence or even a truly direct refusal of orders and the defiance was limited to a specific order for a specific reason.
Thank you for clearing that up.
Huh? This doesn’t even make sense. I say we shouldn’t pass moral judgement on the personal courage of soldiers who have been put into situations that we have not. How is that analogous to passing judgement on a CIC for starting an unnecessary war?
5 were transferred
http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=2446760&nav=2CSfS8HQ
to be sent home with a general discharge
http://www.sltrib.com/nationworld/ci_2427741
discharged
http://www.al.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-9/1098099540286440.xml&storylist=alabamanews
The fuel was denied in Taji because it was contaminated
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/state/9950365.htm
I’ve got an “as it happens” update with this event on the AP. I’m not gonna try to cite every article I’ve read so far.
Seems like some have made up their minds already. Why bother.
DtheC:
It was in the MSNBC article I linked to in this post. If you check the date and time of that post, and the date and time of the MSNBC artcle it now links to, you will note a discrepancy. MSNBC changed the story.
Well, the story now says that the military is denying that any disciplinary action has been taken, so your assertion that five guys have been busted in rank has no current support. It seems that 5 guys have been transferred, though, so I’m guessing that MSNBC must have garbled the report somehow and subsequently corrected it.
The father of one of the soldiers. Not exactly the most unbiased source.
But not necessarily unusable as I have stated before.
But he’s not the only person that said this. There are at least three other “biased” reports from family members and a staff sargent that said the same thing and one is even recorded on an answering machine by one of the members involved.
Unusable fuel for a tank maybe…but this fuel was supposedly to be used in helicopters. The problem was that the previous load was diesel delivered for tanks and that when they refilled the containers weren’t purged and the new fuel had accidently been mixed with the diesel. When they tried to deliver the load originally they were refused and had to take it back. That’s when they found themselves under fire…loaded with fuel…and no escort. It was a five day trip and they barely escaped with their asses intact. They were told to take it somewhere else even though the SAME fucked up fuel was STILL in the trucks.
BTW this MSN | Outlook, Office, Skype, Bing, Breaking News, and Latest Videos
is one of y’alls cites. Read it again without the blinders. I still don’t approve of insubordination but understand that while they have a duty to follow orders…the US has a duty to provide support where it’s needed. This is a case where support wasn’t provided. WTF do you think when the other unit finally did make the delivery it went with a full crew and an armed escort.
CBS, monday night. Chambers did say on sunday, that the fuel had been tested, and found clean, but we’ve yet to see any sort of official report. While I agree with you that the contamination story has the look and feel of soldiers doing a CYA maneuver, generals are not necessarily above such tactics either; especially with a story as fucked up and over-reported as this. The actual content of the stories today seems nearly as low as it was during the shark attack frenzy of summer 2002.
t-keela five biased reports don’t make one good source. Not saying its not true but still biased. I think you miss understood about the fuel. Tanks and helicopters use the same fuel. Aviation fuel has more stringent requirements for filtering, water content etc, but its the same. This fuel may have been found unsuitable for aviation and was instead going to where it can be used. The soldiers may not have bothered to find out before the mission. If the fuel was truly unusable by any standards then they have a valid argument unless they were being ordered to take it where it would be disposed.