Armed Polite Society

Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: cassandra and sara's daddy on August 23, 2013, 02:40:24 PM

Title: sgt bales
Post by: cassandra and sara's daddy on August 23, 2013, 02:40:24 PM
and he just got life w/o parole
  feel bad for his family
Title: Re: sgt bales
Post by: roo_ster on August 23, 2013, 03:18:44 PM
They ever figure out why he went all slaughtery?
Title: Re: sgt bales
Post by: Angel Eyes on August 23, 2013, 03:23:17 PM
PTSD and a traumatic brain injury suffered on a previous tour may have had something to do with it.
Title: Re: sgt bales
Post by: cassandra and sara's daddy on August 23, 2013, 03:30:21 PM
yea  and there was some incident earlier or within a day or 2

it chaffs that i see his family as suffering

and it doesn't feel right
Title: Re: sgt bales
Post by: RoadKingLarry on August 23, 2013, 03:30:58 PM
Wasn't there also reports of booze and drugs early on?
Title: Re: sgt bales
Post by: cassandra and sara's daddy on August 23, 2013, 03:31:56 PM
Wasn't there also reports of booze and drugs early on?


not sure irc  but i thought there were roids in play
Title: Re: sgt bales
Post by: MillCreek on August 23, 2013, 04:40:48 PM
His general court martial went on about 60 miles south of me, and the crime and trial has gotten extensive media coverage in the Seattle/Tacoma area.  His defense attorney, one of the finest criminal defense counsel in the state, was able to negotiate the death penalty off the table.  They did not present a medical defense for his actions.  Various issues of steroids, TBI, PTSD, liquor and anti-malaria drugs were run up the flagpole earlier and did not get anywhere much.  The prosecution pointed out that similar issues came up in several thousand US troops, and none of them went off post twice, making two trips in the dead of night, and slaughtered 16 civilians, dragged their bodies into a heap and set their bodies on fire.  

I honestly don't know if there was a medical reason, but he apparently was able to function just fine in life up until that point.  He had a previous civil judgement against him for fraud, he was having marital problems and he was pissed that he was passed over for promotion.  The sole issue at sentencing was if he would be eligible for parole after serving 20 years or not.  The jury decided against it, so he will serve the full sentence.
Title: Re: sgt bales
Post by: tokugawa on August 23, 2013, 07:13:15 PM
makes one wonder-  maybe this is an  unintended consequence of restrictive ROE- every once in a while someone goes bonkers. if you have to hold back all the time and watch obvious bad guys get away without engaging, it would be natural for a suppressed rage to build up.
 Sort of like road rage- I have seen folks go all foamy at the mouth when it was quite obvious they were just using the minor incident as a place to focus rage from some other unrelated event. 
 Who knows, I ain't no shrink. =(
Title: Re: sgt bales
Post by: MillCreek on August 23, 2013, 07:51:58 PM
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/08/23/2746102/prosecutor-says-bales-has-no-moral.html

Title: Re: sgt bales
Post by: Tallpine on August 23, 2013, 07:54:50 PM
makes one wonder-  maybe this is an  unintended consequence of restrictive ROE- every once in a while someone goes bonkers. if you have to hold back all the time and watch obvious bad guys get away without engaging, it would be natural for a suppressed rage to build up.
 Sort of like road rage- I have seen folks go all foamy at the mouth when it was quite obvious they were just using the minor incident as a place to focus rage from some other unrelated event. 
 Who knows, I ain't no shrink. =(

So he goes off and kills women and children?  =(
Title: Re: sgt bales
Post by: Fitz on August 23, 2013, 09:20:28 PM
I look at it this way

Either he's evil

Or he's mentally defective enough to kill women and children in a psychotic break


Either way, he needs to die
Title: Re: sgt bales
Post by: tokugawa on August 24, 2013, 12:36:30 AM
In no way am I apologizing for him- but it would be interesting to know why-he certainly had nothing to gain, and no possible way to avoid discovery-

 "The People of the Lie", written by M Scott Peck-   in that book  he delves into this a little- he was one of the Army shrinks assigned to find out why the My Lai massacre happened.

 I also wonder how much of this sort of thing went on during WW2- and was never reported , being a "total" war.  Is it less wrong to put an entire city to death via firebomb, than to shoot 20 civilians?

 War is not a moral enterprise. Maybe that is our mistake, to think it is even remotely possible to make it so.
 Just to make a wild guess, I would postulate that Sgt. Bales came , for one reason or another, to a place where he simply did not care anymore, about anything at all.  Perhaps that is what evil is. What was the satanic saying? "Do what thou will, shall be the whole of the law?"