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LTC Allen B. West 4th Infantry Division, Iraq
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LTC Allen B. West 4th Infantry Division, Iraq
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Letters & Essays Index News Links Player Contact Info Feedback / Contact Back to YAP's front door |
Sign the Petition on behalf of LTC WestA Hatchet Job on its Face
Most of the impassioned essays being submitted in support of LTC West take a conciliatory tone, such as: "Okay, LTC West erred by violating Article 128 of the UCMJ, but it was for a good cause and the ends should justify the means." Well, something along that line.
I'm buying none of it. The charge is bogus on its face.
First, it is entirely proper -- as pretext -- to question whether the UCMJ alone, without exception or latitudes, should be the ruling doctrine in a combat zone. The "Punitive Articles" of the UCMJ that are being called into play here suggest the proper context for their application to be domestic in nature. Certainly not the stuff of a combat zone ROE (Rules of Engagement) or even combat zone ROI (Rules of Interrogation -- whatever those might be).
Article 128 is titled "Assault." It is preceded by Article 127 "Extortion" and followed by Article 129 "Burglary." Further on down are Article 130 "Housebreaking" and Article 131 "Perjury." Do those sound like appropriate articles for judging the conduct of a soldier in a war zone?
The charge of "Aggravated Assault" under UCMJ Article 128 would seem to require quite a stretch of reason to force that seeming domestically jurisprudent Article into the context of a field grade officer's conduct in combat zone.
Conduct that, lest we lose sight of it, resulted in a successful mission -- the extracting of information from a militant Saddam loyalist which surely prevented a planned attack on LCT West's own troops the very next day, plus the subsequent arrest of three co-conspirator Saddam Fedayeen the interrogatee gave up due to LTC West's bold actions.
And this, AFTER a team of professionally trained female Army interrogators, presumably staying within the polite confines of the ROI du jour, and after hours of effort, failed entirely to get any useful information out of the interrogatee.
Aside from the contention that those particular Articles are grossly inappropriate by which to judge the right or wrong of military conduct in a combat zone, the very charge of Aggravated Assault rings even more preposterous.
Without getting "lawyerly," it shouldn't be too much to presume that even a modestly literate lay person can discern, by a thoughtful reading of UCMJ Article 128, that LTC West is guilty of neither Aggravated Assault nor of even "common" Assault.
Below is Article 128 in its entirety. There's just not much to it.
928. ART. 128. ASSAULT
(a) Any person subject to this chapter who attempts or offers with unlawful force or violence to do bodily harm to another person, whether or not the attempt or offer is consummated, is guilty of assault and shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.(b) Any person subject to this chapter who--
(1) commits an assault with a dangerous weapon or other means or force likely to produce
death or grievous bodily harm; or
(2) commits an assault and intentionally inflicts grievous bodily harm with or without a
weapon; is guilty of aggravated assault and shall be punished as a court-martial may
direct.That's it. Note in the opening line (a) that common Assault is defined as requiring a person "attempt[s] or offer[s]" with "unlawful force or violence" to do bodily harm to another person, whether or not the attempt or offer is consummated...
If it is to be contended that LTC West actually "attempted" to do bodily harm to the Iraqi detainee by his pistol shots, then he should be charged with abysmally poor marksmanship, not Assault. Indeed, colonel West "attempted" and succeeded in NOT doing any bodily harm to the detainee.
But most damning to these preposterous charges is the definitive word in that Article that effectively negates any consideration of bringing charges against colonel West under Article 128. That word is "unlawful." Since when is it unlawful for a Army colonel to discharge his weapon in a combat zone?
It is not unlawful for police to discharge weapons in places where ordinary citizens would be considered lawbreakers if they did the same. Clearly, LTC West was, on that date in mid-August when this "incident" occurred, entirely entitled, authorized and legal according to any sensible law, as a military man in uniform in a hot combat zone, to discharge his pistol in the presence of his mortal enemy.
And we haven't even gotten to "Aggravated Assault" yet. But we don't need to. As you can see, the first line of the definition of Aggravated Assault begins with: (b)(1) "Any person subject to this chapter who commits an assault..." That's far enough.
If LTC West's actions and circumstances do not qualify him for charges of "common" Assault, he can't be guilty of Aggravated Assault, since the definition of Aggravated Assault depends first on the act qualifying as common Assault. Aggravated Assault, as it is described in the Article, is simply a potentially more lethal form of Assault, and with no qualification for even common Assault, there can be no Aggravated Assault.
LTC West is not guilty of Assault because he did not attempt to do (or actually do) the dirtbag any bodily harm, and it simply can't be unlawful for a on-duty soldier to discharge his weapon in a safe manner in a combat arena.
Additionally, since it is not uncommon for soldiers in a combat zone to apply "...force or violence to do bodily harm to another person..." (the enemy), it must be presumed that the Army won't find them in violation of any regulation for being so boorish as to engage the enemy in a firefight.
If Article 128 is to apply to LTC West in this very screwy deal, should we brace for a whole season of courts-martials when the Army and Marines start rounding up those bad boys who committed Article 130 "Housebreaking" -- by their rude forcible entries into Saddam's several palaces?
And heaven forbid if one of them nabbed an ashtray as wartime souvenir during one of those "Boys Gone Wild" forays -- that's Article 129, you know.
It would seem advisable for LTC West and his defense attorney to abandon any more conciliatory rhetoric about "knowing it was wrong" or any such ingratiating admissions. What LTC West did was RIGHT, and he did it VERY WELL to boot. What's wrong is that this good battalion commander has had his military career ruined by being relieved of his command.
This whole affair is preposterous on its face and reeks more of a concerted attempt to pull a hatchet job on LTC West, or some pencil-necked Army prosecutor looking to put a feather in his/her cap by nailing a field grade officer to the wall, than it does that the Army has a rogue colonel on its hands.
Whatever the case, the least sensible contention is that LTC West violated any reasonable and sensible ROE or Convention of War. The Article being applied to this "incident" is as inappropriate as any other civil law so obviously aimed at defining punishable conduct in a domestic context.
No cop in any metropolitan setting in the US could survive, let alone function effectively, under interpretations of what constitutes proper and permissible conduct that would even come close to paralleling the grotesquely inappropriate standard that is being foisted on LTC West. And he's operating in a declared war zone.
It's high time for 4th ID CG Maj. Gen. Odierno to back graciously away from this one while he still can. Reinstate LTC West to his command (or sign his retirement at present rank and pay-grade if West has had enough of "This Kinder and Gentler Person's Army"), offer him an apology and a Letter of Commendation for his records, and hope to hell the truth of how this hatchet job ever got this far never sees ink or air time.
Do trust, this thing stinks so badly that somebody is sure to start pawing through it all to find out exactly that -- the truth. Complete with the heretofore unnamed instigators of this rather apparent back-stabbing, and figures who might rather prefer the anonymity of dark recesses brought into the harsh spotlight of scrutiny.
The further the hatchet job against LTC West goes -- the surer that eventuality. And therein could lie quite a story.
Steve Harrison
16 November, 2003
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