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First Sgt. Hatley and the Beauchamp TNR Affair
Updated below
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A U.S. Army sergeant outed as a murderer in today’s NYT seems to be the same one that led the unit involved in last years New Republic / Beauchamp controversy. Then he denied atrocities Beauchamp reported on.
In July 2007 a U.S. soldier under the pseudonym Scott Thomas wrote about the war in Iraq at the The New Republic’s Shock Troops blog. Scott Thomas described some disgusting behavior by his fellow soldiers. Such included running over dogs with Bradley fighting vehicles and playing with a child’s scull found in a mass grave.
The rightwing media, the Weekly Standard, the National Review and many others, went nuts over these reports. The blogger’s name was disclosed as Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a member of Alpha Company, 1-18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division, and after some heavy push and pull and an army investigation, The New Republic said it "cannot stand by these stories."
At the time of that controversy, a mil-blogger in the U.S. wrote to Beauchamp’s company senior non-commissioned officer, identified as First Sgt. John E. Hatley, and got this response:
My soldiers conduct is consistently honorable. […] Again, this young man has a vivid imagination and I promise you that this by no means reflects the truth of what is happening here. I’m currently serving with the best America has to offer. […]
Sincerely,
1SG Hatley
Today the NYT reports about willful killing of Iraqis who were taken prisoners by the U.S. troops.
In March or April 2007, three noncommissioned United States Army officers, including a first sergeant, a platoon sergeant and a senior medic, killed four Iraqi prisoners with pistol shots to the head as the men stood handcuffed and blindfolded beside a Baghdad canal, two of the soldiers said in sworn statements.
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After the killings, the first sergeant — the senior noncommissioned officer of his Army company — told the other two to remove the men’s bloody blindfolds and plastic handcuffs, according to the statements made to Army investigators, which were obtained by The New York Times.
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The soldiers, all from Company D, First Battalion, Second Infantry, 172nd Infantry Brigade, have not been charged with a crime.
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The accounts of and confessions to the killings, by Sgt. First Class Joseph P. Mayo, the platoon sergeant, and Sgt. Michael P. Leahy Jr., Company D’s senior medic and an acting squad leader, were made in January in signed statements to Army investigators in Schweinfurt, Germany.
In their statements, Sergeants Mayo and Leahy each described killing at least one of the Iraqi detainees on instructions from First Sgt. John E. Hatley, who the soldiers said killed two of the detainees with pistol shots to the back of their heads.
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Last month, four other soldiers from Sergeant Hatley’s unit were charged with murder conspiracy for agreeing to go along with the plan to kill the four prisoners, in violation of military laws that forbid harming enemy combatants once they are disarmed and in custody.
Is the First Sgt. John E. Hatley who led Beauchamp’s unit the same one that murdered handcuffed prisoners?
Different units you say? Beauchamp’s unit was part of the 1-18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division and the NYT associates Hatley with the First Battalion, Second Infantry, 172nd Infantry Brigade.
But those units are one and the same. The unit changed its name:
On 16 March 2008, 1st Infantry Division’s presence in Europe formally ended when the 2nd (Dagger) Brigade in Schweinfurt, Germany reflagged as the 172d Infantry Brigade.
Indeed:
The 172nd Infantry Brigade was activated with the following unit redesignations:
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1st Battalion, 2nd Infantry (reflagged from 1-18 Infantry)
It is extremely unlikely that one battalion has two First Sergeants with the name John E. Hatley.
A few month after Hatley ordered and took part in the murdering of prisoners he denied some relative harmless though brutal behavior Beauchamp described, "this by no means reflects the truth of what is happening here." Indeed, what was really happening was much worse. The soldiers in his company (including himself?) were "the best America has to offer." Really?
The TNR should look into retracting its retraction of Beauchamp’s accounts.
UPDATE:
- The Stars & Stripes confirms the unit conversion.
- First Sergeant Hatley seems to be up for promotion.
@Doc
Just as you somewhat regret your initial post as a reaction to the posts you’ve read, I sincerely regret and apologize for the tone and tenor of my posts to you, in reaction to your post, for similar reasons, and withdraw my unwarranted assertion you are not a ‘free thinker’.
However, I do not regret nor apologize for my posts specific content.
I ask you to please understand I am not attacking you or any one else personally.
It is your arguments and rationalizations that are challenged
To summarily execute, defenseless, unarmed, surrendered, captured prisoners, in the manner alleged, i.e. a bullet to the brainstem whilst handcuffed, can only be considered an indefensible capital War Crime.
It is alleged that the summary executions occurred in cold blood, when under such circumstances, the executed could pose no possible threat whatsoever and in fact by the LAWS OF WAR (LOW) and the GENEVA CONVENTIONS (GC) and leastly Section 918, Article 77 of the UNIFORM CODE of MILITARY JUSTICE (UCMJ) … (Murder), the prisoners were fully entitled to all the protections thereof by the very soldiers alleged to have executed them.
You ask others to try to understand the circumstances of the alleged offenders.
Then I ask you to impartially and objectively try to understand the sheer terror and probably last trembling, physically uncontrollable moments, in the minutes and then final drawn out seconds of those human beings, as they waited for their inevitable death … summary execution by a bullet in the brainstem, on the side of a dusty road, near a canal/river … ?
Did they wonder if their families would ever discover their fate ?
Did they wonder at the fate of their loved ones without them ?
Did they wonder if their bodies would be properly treated in accordance with their faith ?
Did they perhaps contemplate it could or would mean the end of their family line, if they were fighting as a result of dead kin … what we euphemistically refer to as, collateral ?
For senior, experienced and by all accounts highly competent NCOs to have summarily executed prisoners in their direct care, under such circumstances, can never be defended. Never.
At best, the arguments you have put forward could only be considered as mitigating circumstances at sentencing, they are not a defense.
In fact, part of your arguments, re the competency and experience of the alleged perpetrators, should actually lead towards awarding of the heavier penalty, in such circumstances, as there can therefore be no possible argument that the senior NCOs concerned could not possibly be fully aware of their legal responsibilities re LOW, GC & UCMJ. There can be no confusion or doubt as to them not fully understanding or comprehending exactly what they were alleged to have done, the capital crimes they were committing.
I ask you again, under the exact same circumstances, would you also be passionately defending a senior, experienced, competent, enemy combatant, who summarily executed handcuffed, unarmed, defenseless, captured and surrendered US servicemen, in cold blood ?
If the answer is no, then why not ? Why not ?
In issues of conduct in war, that’s the real and only adequate standard, with blind justice via the test of reciprocity. Conduct in accordance with the Laws of War and all relevant articles. So that to some small degree the already unconscionable horrors of conflict are not any worse. Anything else results in all loss of humanity, what little can be found in war, and even more and greater evil and further injustice as a consequence …
Us good, them bad, just doesn’t cut it. Pleading for an exemption from the rules by which humanity exists, and lawful warriors fight, due to disingenuous arguments of ‘particular circumstance’, and favor, don’t cut it.
The two NCOs, who have confessed, can now at least attempt to reconcile their consciences and assuage and learn to live with the guilt and possible self-loathing. We should wish them speed and success given their some small recovery of honor by open admission and acknowledgement.
In regards to references to honor. True Honor, demands Honorable conduct, no matter the circumstances, no matter the emotional or any other costs, no matter the peer pressure, in accordance with the LOW, GC & UCMJ, in fact to attempt to ‘fight back’ and retain some small sense of simple decency and base humanity.
Anything less, and one is, at best, simply a paid mercenary, behind the cloak of a uniform or ‘orders’, and/or, perhaps, a fig leaf of misperceived, misunderstood, or misled (?), patriotism and duty.
Respect and Peace, Salaam or Shalom, to you Doc, from a fellow former pawn.
Posted by: Outraged | Aug 31 2008 10:25 utc | 76
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