Afghan killing suspect arrives at Lewis-McChord for hearing
JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. - A U.S. soldier accused of an Afghan killing spree was flown to Washington state from Kansas on Saturday in preparation for a military court hearing next month, his attorney says.
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales has been held at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., since the killings last March. He was flown Saturday to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, where a pretrial hearing in the case is set to begin on Nov. 5, said his attorney, John Henry Browne.
The hearing, known in military parlance as an Article 32 hearing, is expected to last two weeks. Afghan villagers who witnessed the attacks are expected to testify by video from Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan.
Browne said he plans to fly to Afghanistan to cross-examine the witnesses, while other members of the defense team remain at Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma.
Investigators say Bales, a father of two from Lake Tapps, was equipped with a 9-mm pistol and M-4 rifle outfitted with a grenade launcher when he walked off his base in southern Afghanistan on March 11, attacked two local villages and burned some of the victims' bodies.
Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, an investigating officer must determine the sufficiency of the charges against a defendant before the case can proceed to a court martial. The officer reviews evidence and hears from witnesses during the Article 32 hearing, then makes a decision.
Bales faces 16 counts of premeditated murder; six of attempted murder; seven of assault; one of possessing steroids; one of using steroids; one of destroying a laptop computer; one of burning bodies; and one of using alcohol.
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales has been held at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., since the killings last March. He was flown Saturday to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, where a pretrial hearing in the case is set to begin on Nov. 5, said his attorney, John Henry Browne.
The hearing, known in military parlance as an Article 32 hearing, is expected to last two weeks. Afghan villagers who witnessed the attacks are expected to testify by video from Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan.
Browne said he plans to fly to Afghanistan to cross-examine the witnesses, while other members of the defense team remain at Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma.
Investigators say Bales, a father of two from Lake Tapps, was equipped with a 9-mm pistol and M-4 rifle outfitted with a grenade launcher when he walked off his base in southern Afghanistan on March 11, attacked two local villages and burned some of the victims' bodies.
Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, an investigating officer must determine the sufficiency of the charges against a defendant before the case can proceed to a court martial. The officer reviews evidence and hears from witnesses during the Article 32 hearing, then makes a decision.
Bales faces 16 counts of premeditated murder; six of attempted murder; seven of assault; one of possessing steroids; one of using steroids; one of destroying a laptop computer; one of burning bodies; and one of using alcohol.
Sleazy child killer.
This man was a superb soldier up to the time this happened. Everyone has their limit. He reached his and snapped. It is a logical result of Clinton eviscerating the military after the end of the Cold War, for the supposed "Peace Dividend." It has led to repeated deployments within a 4 years enlistment for most of our military personnel If you think we had problems in our society with the amount of PTSD after Viet Nam - stand by. The numbers after Iraq and Afghanistan will make Viet Nam pale in comparision.
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Coupled with the performance of the current SecState, the Clinton's seem to be the gift that keeps on giving. I wonder what the outcome will be when it becomes widely known that our murdered Ambassador (who was gay) was repeatedly raped by the terrorists, before he was murdered by smothering. Of course, Team Obama doesn't want you to know that. That's why they will only use the generic term "tortured" when they speak of what happened immediately before his death.
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It has been reported by the foreign press, but not by Obama's lapdogs here in America...
 @Derek2mk Oh, I see. It was all Clinton's fault. Not Srgt. Bales' fault and certainly not the Bush administration's fault for sending our troops to at least one war we had no business even getting into. Talk about stretching your mind to such a degree that the brain completely falls out and total nonsense starts to sound like a logical conclusion.Â
 @Derek2mk This has nothing to do with "Clinton's", just your being a Republican and wanting to complain about something.  Remember GW Bush, Republican, was in office 2000 to 2008.  I didn't hear you complain then.  Go smake another joint...
@RandyH Our troops strengh in all armed services have been drastically reduced since the Reagan years. We abandoned the "Two War" doctrine, wherein we had enough people to fight two wars at once. For the last few years we have been fighting two wars with half a military, incidents such as this are the only logical result. You can't keep sending men and women back to the horrors of war, and not expect the end result to be PTSD, drug/alcohol abuse, destroyed marriages, and murder. Go view the edition of PBS's Frontline "The Lost Platoon." It details it very well. Â
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As for the rest of your gibbering, Socrates said: "When the debate is lost, slander is the tool of the loser."
 @Derek2mk Your delusion knows no bounds. You actually think you're winning the debate. This is an isolated case, otherwise this kind of stuff would be happening all over the place. Bales is by far the person most responsible for this. The rest are just excuses offered by people like you for one reason only - because he's an American. Your conclusions are completely illogical and based on tenuous at best links between hand picked events and your obvious bias. Why don't you ask the question of what business did we have to fight these 2 wars? Our army is decimated? We are spending 400 times on the military annually than Russia! And by far more than all the rest of the countries in the world combined. How much more spending would you like? What Obama administration is now doing is changing the way we spend money on the military. The wars we now fight are unconventional so the spending on conventional military toys is stupid and a total waste of resources. We don't need a giant air force, navy and armored divisions. We need to channel our resources into anti-guerrilla warfare which is precisely what the Obama administration has done.
 @Derek2mk Yes, and by his fellow soldiers accounts, Robert Yates, was also an exemplary soldier, and by coincidence perhaps, served proudly at Fort Lewis. A Career military man, a self described "family man", Robert Yates is sitting (for the rest of his stinking life) in prison. Robert Yates also killed 16 women and children. I guess it's like you say, everyone has their breaking point that they might just go out and slaughter little kids. Oh, but wait, that's not true at all, even one little bit. Only psycho's have that breaking point, obviously.Â
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Lol!
@Neko El Gato @Derek2mk No, I doubt he was a "psycho" as you put it. Maybe you are too young to remember My Lai, the Concertration Camps of occupied Poland, The Armenian Genocide of WWI - but there are atrocities in *every* war. After a man has seen too much, they become callous towards death.
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Seeing friends die, the horror of young men ripped apart, being splattered with the entrails of your buddies has an effect on people. Don't bother asking a combat veteran, they are doing their best to forget such things. But soldiers are human beings, and they can be pushed to mental illness by seeing and experiencing too much. There is a limit to human endurance, incidents such as this are the result.
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Between 13-15 feb, 1945, 722 RAF/527 American heavy bombers dropped 3900 tons of bombs on the town of Dresden, Germany. There were 25,000 - 50 000 civilan causualities. Innocent men, women, and children. The town was of no military value, and at that point, the war was very nearly won. Sir Arthur Harris was simply contuing his policy of carpet bombing German cities to "break the will of the German people."
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Was that any less murder? Â
 @Derek2mk It's good of you to mention My Lai, one of the best examples of American double standards when it comes to war crimes. Only one perpetrator of that horrific massacre (comparable to anything the Nazis did during WWII) was convicted and even he ended up serving just 3 and a half years under house arrest before being pardoned by Nixon.As for the carper bombing of Dresden, while that was horrible, it is in no way similar to what Bales did. No one ordered him to go and massacre a bunch of villagers in their sleep. It was his own initiative, it's his personal responsibility and no amount of excuses is good enough. He should pay for what he did.
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The funny thing is that people like you would agree with me and be calling for his head on a steak had his crime happened on American soil, let alone in your neighborhood. Also, I never see people like you being particularly interested in excusing the actions of terrorists, even in cases when they were driven to them by US military's murder of their entire families. In case when foreign nationals murder Americans the only explanation you're interested in hearing is that they're simply evil and hate our freedom.
 @Derek2mk You drank their Kool-Aid, I see. And because Stevens was single, that automatically means he was gay? OK. Wow. Big leap. (Gulp, gulp, gulp.) I've seen the images, too, but don't agree with your interpretation. But then, some people are willing to believe anything to demonize others. How does it feel to be a tool for the right-wing elitists? By the way, what flavor was that Kool-Aid?
@Mikey It is a fact that Ambassador Stevens was openly gay, and widely known if you care to research it. Hillary Clinton was proud that he was. Sending him to an unstable country, still ruled by armed militias (with Al Qeada present) was pretty much a suicide mission.
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Don't believe it? Google "American Ambassador raped before murder."
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Is the Tea Party in control of the foreign press?
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If found gulity, he needs to serve the full time. This is not good for anyone really.
I'm sure the PPB would be happy to hire him if he can get the charges dropped or reduced, or if those that are supposed to testify happen to get blown up by a car bomb or something.
Odd comment that has nothing to do with the content of the story.
 @Just Lookin It has everything to do with this article. This is the kind of guy the PPB would hire, heck it's probably the type of candidate they seek out.
you seem to have issues with PPB. My opinion is that this is not the type of person they want on the force. It is kind of funny at times, when people think they know what groups or organizations are looking for.
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