US military orders court-martial for contractor in Iraq

[Barrett808]

Source: Associated Press

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military on Sunday ordered a court-martial for a civilian contractor charged with aggravated assault while working as an Army translator in Iraq — the first such military prosecution since the Vietnam War.

Alaa "Alex" Mohammad Ali, who holds dual Iraqi-Canadian citizenship, is accused of stabbing another contractor four times during a fight Feb. 23 on a base near Hit, 85 miles west of Baghdad. The victim suffered chest wounds.

In 2006, Congress gave the military authority to prosecute crimes allegedly committed by civilians working for the armed forces.

Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, referred the case, the military said in a statement.

"This is the first time a civilian will be tried by court-martial" under the 2006 amendment, it said.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080511/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_contractor_hearing

[Elspeth]

1. Civilians can be court-martialed?

Hmm

[babylonsister]

2. News to me, too. nt

[Posteritatis]

8. Contractors are (ostensibly) under military discipline nowadays

They were made subject to the UCMJ a couple of years ago, though enforcement has been spotty.

[Elspeth]

9. Ah, ok. But why are their overall behaviors exempt?

We have seen how contractors have gotten away with outrages that the uniformed could never get away with.

[Posteritatis]

11. I think it's partially a dependence issue

There are a lot of contractors - from out-and-out mercenaries to more mundane drivers, paper-pushers, etc - doing a lot of different jobs in the military. At this point they're such a huge support structure that the institution would have a lot of trouble functioning properly (or, in some cases, at all) without their assistance and involvement. I forget the official term for it, but for all practical purposes they're a parallel army welded to the hip of the military proper.

Ideally, they should be under consistently-enforced regulations, either military or civilian, Neither would bother me, and if either were in place I would not have much of a problem with the whole contractor issue (or even the mercenary issue, if they were playing by the rules) at all. But they're not, and things have gotten to the point where they're accustomed to that. If contractors started getting court-martialed for, well, all the things they probably deserve to get court-martialed over, it's suddenly nowhere near as appealing a job and the military would start losing these guys by the thousands or more.

The two institutions are so tightly interwoven that I'm not sure if the military could handle a collapse, or even the threat of a collapse, of what's more or less become the bulk of its support and logistics; the guys with stars on their shoulders are far from idiots and have to be well aware of that. Even if there are folks who want to fix the discipline situation and get things back to where they should be - and there absolutely are, even if they may not be the majority - they're stuck in a pair of situations that they don't seem to have the ability to simply get out of, even if they wanted to.

It really sucks.

[Mojorabbit]

3. Then why

are they saying they can't prosecute the kbr rape cases?

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Because the guy in this story is not white

not American.
There is no "equal justice" in Bush World.

Be interesting to see if Israel says anything, or just decides to let him be
a victim.

[krkaufman]

6. Exactly. I doubt he'd be seeing the same treatment if his name were Dave Parker. n/t

[tom_paine]

10. Beat me to it. I was confused for a moment upon seeing the headline.

But then I realized when I saw the accused's name, and that he was Iraqi-Canadian, I knew.

See, it goes like this:

Free nations, like the Old USA (1776-2000, RIP), have LAWS. Now, perfectly just and equal application of the law is probably an impossibility, given the limitations of the primate genome and mentality, but Free Nations TRY to achieve this, and even if they fail, the TRYING is key to moving closer to that perfectly equitable application of law and justice that is probably a dream that can only be approached incrementally, but never achieved.

Slave Nations, like Bush-Occupied Imperial Amerika, Putin's Russia, and Commie China (to name the Big Three Totalitarian Nations of the World), don't have LAWS, we have RULES. Rules do not apply to Party Elites, Bushie, United Russia, or ChiCom, only to their opposition and the Filthy Little Nobodies that make up the subject populations of these countries.

The Bushies who drugged and raped that woman, being white Bushies, broke no rules, the rules not being applicable to them, only White Democrats and People of Color.

This poor guy probably saw the white guys getting away with serial rapes and murders (and I guarantee you what we have heard is only the tiniest tip of a very huge iceberg that is the natural creation of a tyrannical and lawless nation fielding and army of the same), and probably just wanted to get his "piece of the action".

But whoopsie, "No Soup For You, Sand N*****r. The rules DO apply to YOU."

Just another day in the life of a totalitarian tyranny. Amerika is no different, at bottom, than Putin's Russia or Commie China, though we peasants are, for the moment, treated much nicer and the hammer has yet to fall (look out if the Bushies hit us again like they did on 9/11).

Not that I am condoning this man's actions. I just KNEW something had to be funny though, when I saw that headline. If only that guy was white and Bushie, he'd be enjoying his freedom to drug and rape Iraqi women and the occasional American woman like the rest of his white Bushie pals.

[greengestalt]

4. but not embezzling

I still remember the story of a bridge the US millitary blew up for "Strategic" purposes when the Iraqi Army was in full flight.

Local contractors, like the one that made it, could have done it for US$100,000 paying their workers generously. This was a two lane paved bridge across the Tigris.

Halliburton went in, charged US$25 million. And went half over cost. Their workers were people imported from other countries and paid so little they begged for food from Iraqis on work breaks.

[jody]

7. If this court martial is legal under U.S. law, then it's a travesty of justice for Bush to prevent

court martial of every other contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan who has committed a crime under the UCMJ.

I use "prevent" correctly because as commander in chief, Bush has the ultimate authority to order that contractors who have committed a crime be prosecuted under the UCMJ.