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2006-09-24 Home Front: WoT

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Posted by Steve White 2006-09-24 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11129 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Many JAGs want to give the captured terrorists most of the privileges of civilians, or even soldiers, accused of criminal acts.

[Rinses off salt] Okay, where's exJAG when we need her? This sounds like a ration of bullshit. Lawyer or no, OPSEC has to take precedence.

Now the JAGs are aware of the circumstances under which U.S. troops are fighting, and the importance of OPSEC (Operational Security, keeping info about your activities from the enemy). Even so, many JAGs seem to lose their perspective, and advocate strongly for giving the terrorists the information. Operators believe the JAGs are grandstanding, especially by saying one thing to uniformed people, and something else to the media and Congress. The situation has divided the JAG community as well, and it's getting ugly.

If we are forced to pass up many more of those Taliban funeral opportunities, you bet this is going to get ugly. Something does not compute. Whether it is careerists interfering with common sense warfare or congenital litigators obsessed with the law's letter and not its spirit, something is rotten in ~~Denmark~~ Washington DC.

On top of all this, the size of the JAG force has grown some ten percent since the end of the Cold War, while everyone else has shrunk by about a third. As a result, the senior JAGs in each service wants to be three star generals, instead of the current two star.

This fact alone is highly indicative of a general societal malaise whose main symptom is litigiousness. That these lawyers are clamoring for high leadership positions and standing at odds with those who are in harms way spells disaster. Something is screwy in St. Louie.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2006-09-24 00:44|| 2006-09-24 00:44|| Front Page Top

#2 Simple solution is to fire and retire them. Just a reminder to them about who is actually running things.

Posted by Sock Puppet of Doom 2006-09-24 01:07|| www.sockpuppetofdoom.com]">[www.sockpuppetofdoom.com] 2006-09-24 01:07|| Front Page Top

the size of the JAG force has grown some ten percent since the end of the Cold War, while everyone else has shrunk by about a third

Same thing happened at CIA, no?

Posted by JSU 2006-09-24 01:10|| 2006-09-24 01:10|| Front Page Top

#4 With respect to my experience with JAG's, Dentists and Navy Doctors some didn't seem to be transformed by 90 days of marching in formation at Newport into actual military officers. Those that had prior military experience or spent significant time attached to ships acted like military officers while those wh oexisted in isolated enclaves didn't see to get it.

Posted by Super Hose 2006-09-24 01:10|| 2006-09-24 01:10|| Front Page Top

#5 This is exactly the same article entitled "Let's Kill All the Military Lawyers" that was posted on Thursday.

JAG Corps training and climate varies by branch. The Marine Corps is the most operator-friendly, followed by the Army, then the Navy, then the Air Force. Further, I'd estimate that a majority of JAG officers are prior service, or got their commissions through OCS or ROTC. And direct commissionees are not always idiots, frequently driven to the military by the left-wing crapola crammed down their throats in law school. And the efforts of JAG Corps NCOs to turn their officers into warriors are heroic.

Most JAG officers, at least in the Marine Corps and the Army, have served in combat zones by now.
The size of the JAG Corps has increased because the number of regulations commanders are expected to comply with has multiplied.

I can't respond in much depth to an article that names no specific officers, initiatives, or concrete positions advocated. However, if "many" JAG officers "want" to give captured terrorists privileges, it is because the laws made by Congress and the President, and regulations issued by SecState and SecDef, require them to take this position. I know many of them do it with extreme reluctance and distaste.

As always, if you don't like the law, blame the people who make it: Congress, the cabinet, and judges. The JAG Corps is not moving left; the political climate is moving left. The JAG Corps only reflects what civilians give us. None of us are in any position to make law.

Now, that is the last time I'm going to respond to verbal vomit that calls for the death of US soldiers.

Posted by exJAG 2006-09-24 01:53|| 2006-09-24 01:53|| Front Page Top

#6 Apologies, exJAG, even though I didn't post this. For some reason I didn't notice the identical text from the other day. Thank you for responding anyway.

Now, that is the last time I'm going to respond to verbal vomit that calls for the death of US soldiers.

I can't blame you in the least.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2006-09-24 02:17|| 2006-09-24 02:17|| Front Page Top

#7 Thanks, Zen. If it was up to me -- up to a lot of us -- there is a simple way to handle, for example, the rules requiring country-club treatment and Constitutional protections for captured detainees: do not capture any.

If there's concern with losing the intel value, I say beat it out of 'em, then execute them right there on the battlefield. Nothing bloody or torturous, just "talk or die," then kill them anyway. It's that or keep allowing the enemy to beat us with our own stick.

It's not how we're used to doing business, but it would be perfectly consistent with the Geneva Conventions (as unlawful combatants are not protected). It would neatly sidestep all the silly rules that give the enemy so much traction in the media, as well as outraegous Supreme Court decisions that have turned the battlefield into a crime scene.

The fact that the enemy benefits more from Gitmo than we do is the best argument for closing it, and shifting to a no-prisoners policy. We're not fighting like we mean it, and that must change.

Posted by exJAG 2006-09-24 03:26|| 2006-09-24 03:26|| Front Page Top

#8 When all of this was starting up, I had some compunctions regarding battlefield conduct. After the beheading of our soldiers and other American hostages, the "take no prisoners" philosophy begins to make a lot more sense. This is especially so in light of the "catch and release" program that so many of the Islamic governments conduct. Saudi Arabia is the most egregious offender in this category.

I argued strongly against reintegrating the Taleban into Afghani society, to much opposition by those around me. The net result has been a prolonged terrorist insurgency that continues to cost coalition lives. More than anything, our enemy recognizes absolutely no Rules of Engagement. As with the Taleban funeral gathering, there are numerous aspects of our war-fighting methodology that must come under review and be subjected to revision.

exJAG, I'll add that there are many here who feel the exact same way you do about battlefield capture and interrogation. While I've taken much heat for it, I've never backed down from my support of intensive or rough interrogation techniques. My reasoning is rather simple. If I were caught in the act of perpetrating a terrorist attack, I know my life would be worth pigeonshit on a stick. Anyone who cares to commit these sorts of atrocities must face the certainty of grueling interrogation and the easy possibility of a bullet in the head thereafter.

By no choice of our own, we are now in this for the long haul. Short of exceptionally drastic disincentive measures, like the threat of nuclear annihilation (which I support), there is nothing but several more years slogging through this sort of muck. Islam has declared war upon us and as, .com, another notable contributor at this board has observed, all this "Order of the Garter" shit is going to fall by the wayside before this is over.

Islam is the final refutation of multiculturalism. Non-integrating populations simply have no place in pluralistic societies. Whatever utopist dream that envisioned multiculturalism must now be discarded as we undertake disinfecting this world of the toxic meme known as Islam.

In light of Islam's congenital predisposition to ultra-violence, I have increasingly fewer doubts that nuclear weapons will eventually be brought onto the table, if not into play. A strong deterrent or simply the need for wholesale retaliation will probably necessitate their use. If we do not immediately utilize their role as a deterrent, it will result in some undreamt of and unimaginable atrocity being wreaked upon America that will make 9-11 look like a picnic.

All of our politicians must immediately dismiss any notion of treating our foes as equals of any sort. They most definitely are not. We are faced with psychotic fanatics who have zero value for human life and would not flinch to take it by the millions if they only could.

Somewhere along the line, America's leaders need to comprehend this and allow our armed forced to rewrite their order of battle accordingly. If we do not, there will most assuredly be a tremendous loss of life on our shores at some future date.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2006-09-24 05:08|| 2006-09-24 05:08|| Front Page Top

#9 Our military is a product of our society, with that said our law schools are not exactly right leaning.
This is a legal quandary for the combatant. We have been engaged with an enemy that has no flag, and that signed no accords. The theater in which Im engaged we cannot move unless the JAG has approved. We need solutions, we know the problems.

Posted by Joe of the Jungle 2006-09-24 06:23|| 2006-09-24 06:23|| Front Page Top

#10 Listen to me OSJA, you WILL support the troops. I do not support your clinton era policy at all. I worked with your fruity lawyers before and I know how much of a world apart they really are from our soldiers. Get rid of those ALCU lawyers immediately and re-learn the UCMJ. The guys we are fighting have NO CODE. Get with the team or we will abolish your useless office alltogether.

Posted by newc">newc 2006-09-24 06:42|| 2006-09-24 06:42|| Front Page Top

#11 Part of the problem is that the lawyers have now created a political culture around their process. They, like the communist and other utopians, believe theirs is now the way to a perfect orderly society. In the process they have abandoned the anchor upon which their very legitimacy rests. To return to Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence -

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Law is simply an extension of government. By separating the law from the consent of the governed, the legal class has sought to impose its concept of government and society upon that society without consent. While I see lawyers and special interest advocates promoting more law, I only see more and more the resentment and growing anger among far too many others with the implementation of rule through dictate from the bench. A bench that everyday becomes closer and closer to an aristocracy. To believe that somehow, magically, military lawyers in the middle of the legal culture are somehow immune to this compulsion, is unwarranted.

Posted by Hupaving Flineng5859 2006-09-24 09:55|| 2006-09-24 09:55|| Front Page Top

#12 It seems that politick or power-seeker unelected bureaucrats want to introduce something like the Miranda or "the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree" rules into the Military. Then, like the Police Force, Soldiers will be fighting with two feet in one boot!

Crytocracy is comming!

Posted by SwissTex 2006-09-24 10:27|| 2006-09-24 10:27|| Front Page Top

#13 I can't wait to see the comments on my post:

Squirt with no vowels offs ArchDuke

Posted by 6 2006-09-24 11:01|| 2006-09-24 11:01|| Front Page Top

#14 Hell that ain't it.

ArchDuke Alive!
War Fought By Mistake.

Posted by 6 2006-09-24 11:02|| 2006-09-24 11:02|| Front Page Top

#15 Process is what people focus on when they have no convictions. (See: the EU. the UN.)

There's an unfortunate intersection here in that the legal climate in the US has also focused very heavily on process over content since the 1960s. Many of us have been concerned about this for a long while. It's one reason I support Bush -- his SCOTUS nominees tend to balance that out a bit.

Posted by lotp 2006-09-24 11:40|| 2006-09-24 11:40|| Front Page Top

#16 exjag, I wanted to post to this the other day but work took me from the net. I understand your ~~frustration~~ anger. When I was a LT I always said we should kill the lawyers. Someting a young and dumb LT would say. As I grew older I realized it was the commanders who let the JAG officers run the units. I came to realize later that when the JAG says "not a good idea", it does not mean they are in command and the final answer is no. That just means if it goes bad they might have a hard time defending you. When commanders give too much weight, inappropriate, in an opinion of a JAG officer you get commands that won't leave the wire. The JAG are there to advise so a commander can make an informed decision, then they are there to help defend him.

Posted by 49 Pan 2006-09-24 21:23|| 2006-09-24 21:23|| Front Page Top

#17 don't have time to read the posts but I heard or read that this was all about the Jag Corps wanting an extra star. To do this they want to grow the community. I find this plausible as I know of one other community that believes that if you bloat yourself like a tick then you'll get more respect.

Posted by anon 2006-09-24 21:39|| 2006-09-24 21:39|| Front Page Top

#18 The "Moving Left" title for the artical is kind of bogus. Does it really matter if a military officer believes the collectivism would be an effective way to farm in Iowa? I don't think it really matters. Anti-military and anti-American military officers could be a big problem whether they are JAGs or any other community. My beleif about Navy JAG's is that their time in law school is more formative than their time in OCS. I don't think that's as big a problem in the USMC. I don't have any idea about the army.

I would rather see all Navy specialties (none line officers) staffed with LDO's or JO's that transferred outside of line status after a sucessful tour as a line DivO. The would have to be a system of scholaships set up to feed good junior enllisted into law school and other specialties like Industrial Hygene.

My beleif was formed not from observation of JAG's who don't do ship duty except maybe on staffs or carriers, but from observations of the Supply Dept on a tender. The Suppo encouraged his JO's away from interest in seamanship or other shipboard activities as non-career enhansing. Intra - Supply Corp politics were encouraged.

Posted by Super Hose 2006-09-24 22:34|| 2006-09-24 22:34|| Front Page Top

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