Army ‘Kill Team’ Leader Wanted a Necklace of Fingers

[Panaconda]

Army ‘Kill Team’ Leader Wanted a Necklace of Fingers

By Spencer Ackerman
September 30, 2010

Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs didn’t just stock up on bootleg DVDs and mess-hall snacks, like a typical deployed soldier. During his deployment to Kandahar, Gibbs kept a water bottle with two wads of cloth wedged into it. Wrapped in the cloth were fingers that he chopped off two corpses. One of his fellow soldiers said Gibbs wanted enough for a necklace.

That’s according to Army investigation documents leaked to the Washington Post. Gibbs, 25, is the alleged ringleader of the “Kill Team,” a rogue execution unit from the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division that’s on trial for the murder of three Afghan civilians and may have killed a fourth. His fellow Kill Team members say that Gibbs’ impunity didn’t just extend to Afghans: he threatened to murder the mother of a soldier who didn’t keep his mouth shut.

Even though the team didn’t mind documenting its kills — some kept photographs — the documents suggest that Gibbs took it much further, possessing a certain comfort with mutilation. Investigators found bone fragments the water bottle where he kept his severed fingers, and he also kept teeth. Evidently, he thought little of removing parts of dead bodies: Gibbs told soldiers that it would be funny to include them in care packages, just to mess with people. He got away with that and more in Iraq, he told his friends, and the tattoos of skulls and pistols on his calf were testaments to the body count he racked up. (The Post reports that the Army is now also investigating Gibbs’ earlier Iraq tour.)

...

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/09/army-kill-team-leader-wanted-a-necklace-of-fingers/

[undeterred]

1. Sociopathic behavior parading as patriotism.

[democrank]

2. Sickening

[sakabatou]

3. WTF?!

[Luciferous]

4. Disgusting.

[hendo]

5. As a good Lawbringer, everyone knows to bring fingers to Sonora Cruz NT

[Poll_Blind]

13. Uncouth comment. Your karma has gone down.

PB

[hendo]

14. Well, at least you got the reference ;) NT

[depakid]

6. Making news down under, too

Skulls tattoo a twisted memento of US soldier's kills

http://www.smh.com.au/world/skulls-tattoo-a-twisted-memento-of-us-soldiers-kills-20100930-15zdw.html

[Canuckistanian]

7. Geoffrey Dahmer wanted a chair made from skulls

What's the difference here? Treat the Staff Sergeant with as much dignity as Dahmer.

Lock him away in an Afghan jail and let his fellow prisoners decide what to do with him.

[w8liftinglady]

8. this isn't the first time..nor shall it be the last,unfortunately

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/09
http://www.crimesofwar.org/thebook/dead-and-wounded.html
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=9143

When you mind-f&ck troops enough-when there is no humane rationale any more...this is the outcome.this is why we need to continue to speak out against the war.

[Odin2005]

9. Sick Fucker!

[leftstreet]

10. K&R

[maryf]

11. K&R nt

[MrScorpio]

12. What a sick, fucking bastard

Hope he rots in Leavenworth.

[COLGATE4]

15. SSgt Cro Magnon