UPDATED 6-5-2013  Army ‘Trying to Kill” Robert Bales; Military Resists Insanity Defense as Psychological Questions Swirl

2/26/13  Bales Attorney: “The Army is trying to kill my client.”

 

John Henry Browne, lawyer for accused Mass Murderer Army Sgt Robert Bales feels the Army’s approach in the Bales Massacre hearings is to skirt any psychological defense and execute him as fast as possible. There’s no denying, in light of new atrocity accusations made by Bi-Polar de facto despot Hamid Karzai against US Forces, that executing Bales would be politically expedient.

On January 13 the Court Martial proceedings took a turn in Bales favor with the decision to allow a Sanity Board, to be comprised of civilian doctors, to evaluate Bales mental state. When you consider what he’s accused of insanity is NOT a hard sell.  While this is a positive for Bales, medical and psychological science vicariously benefits. It would  possibly give us what we all want, to possibly see what went wrong in the mind of Bales to drive him to such extremes.

In previous posts I detailed Bales attack and how he massacred 16 civilians, the majority of which were women and children, in a blood orgy on March 11, 2012. It is by far the most horrifying story to come to light during all of America’s long war in Afghanistan.

Is Robert Bales Insane?

Its sure looks that way. The psychological factors said to be at work the night of the massacres include PTSD, steroid use, valium abuse, excessive consumption of alcohol, financial problems and a strained home life.

If all or most of the assertions are true the idea that a man in a drunken blackout, under stress and raging on steroids, may have had some kind of psychotic break is definitely conceivable. It almost seems inevitable. This begs the question- How the HELL was he ever sent into combat yet alone allowed to remain so deployed? This is the last guy you want carrying a gun or to have to trust with your life in combat. Why WAS Robert Bales, a man with apparently overt psychological problems, even there?

The most likely scenario is that Bales is another example of how our Government treats our military like shit. Bales had an existing and available history which, in time of peace would have probably gotten him discharged. His personal life and finances were a wreck. He already done 3 combat tours meaning he had already fought for longer in harm’s way than any American soldier did during all of World War II. How could Robert Bales EVER have been sent back into a combat zone, armed and dangerous? He had to be regarded as being an equally dangerous threat to his comrades as the enemy.

One is left to wonder what the outlook on this case would be had Bales killed Americans instead.

Has the US Military lowered its Standards?  

Bales, Manning and Hasan Cases Analyzed and Compared

 

Robert Bales joins the ranks of Bradley Manning and Major Nidal Hasan as a stunningly terrible personnel decision by the United States military, especially the Army, since the war began in 2001. Interestingly, Hasan and Bales are receiving far more humane treatment than Bradley Manning, who never killed anyone.

In previous posts I have addressed both Major Hasan’s horrible killing spree as well as Bradley Manning’s whistle blowing as reasons to question American Military methods and standards, especially competence.   Major Hasan, a failed Doctor,  had been

repeatedly reported for openly expressing  Extremist Islamist ideas more associated with our enemies than a Major in the United States Army.  Despite having every reason to discharge the conveniently self radicalized Major he was astonishingly given a combat assignment. Already two beers short of a six pack, Hasan flipped out and murdered a bunch of people and wounded many others in Fort Hood, Texas. This is as sad as it was preventable.

Private Bradley Manning, a disaffected whistle blower, represents a completely unjustifiable decision by the United States Army to allow such a young soldier, so low in rank, around extremely sensitive top secret material with any sort of flash drive or the re-recordable CD’s he used to download damning video of atrocities in Iraq as well as a hoarde of unflattering documents and video that will be to this war what the Pentagon Papers were to Vietnam.

The war in Afghanistan is classic, textbook mission creep. We are basically staying so that when the Karzai administration inevitably falls we can say we did our best.  These troubling cases show a deeply flawed American Army struggling to maintain its war time size without a draft.

Is the military is being undermined with incompetence from the top down? It’s an open question.  The last three top US Commanders to have the job sport the adjective ‘Disgraced” in front of their names, whether justifiably of not. The actual prosecution of the hugely unpopular war itself is increasingly being seen by the public as a complete mess and a disservice to the soldiers tossed into a cauldron of danger where political directives and manpower issues trumped common sense.