A ‘National Clown Show’

A ‘National Clown Show’: Navy SEAL Who Served In Eddie Gallagher’s Platoon Speaks Out | Forbes

12/1/19
A former sniper who served in the same platoon as embattled Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher said the months-long conflict between the military’s top leaders and President Donald Trump over Gallagher’s war crimes case has “turned into a national clown show that put a bad light on the teams.” Speaking publicly for the first time in an interview with the New York Times, former sniper Chris Shumake said Gallagher’s case “has blown up bigger than any of us could have ever expected, and turned into a national clown show that put a bad light on the teams,” adding that Trump is “trying to show he has the troops’ backs, but he’s saying he doesn’t trust any of the troops or their leaders to make the right decisions.” Shumake’s sentiment is shared by other current and former military leaders, who disagreed with Trump and wanted to see Gallagher face a Navy review board to determine whether he would be demoted. Gallagher was acquitted of murdering a young ISIS fighter but was convicted of taking a photo with his corpse earlier this year.

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True enough.

Trump’s Intervention in SEALs Case Tests Pentagon’s Tolerance | New York Times

Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher’s case pits a Pentagon hierarchy committed to enforcing longstanding rules of combat against a commander in chief with no military experience but a finely honed sense of grievance against authority.

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Months before deploying, he sent a text to the SEAL master chief making assignments, saying he was “down to go” to any spot, no matter how awful, so long as “there is for sure action and work to be done.” “We don’t care about living conditions,” he added. “We just want to kill as many people as possible.” Before deployment, he commissioned a friend and former SEAL to make him a custom hunting knife and a hatchet, vowing in a text, “I’ll try and dig that knife or hatchet on someone’s skull!”
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He was in charge of 22 men in SEAL Team 7’s Alpha Platoon, which deployed to Mosul, Iraq, in early 2017. But his platoon was nowhere near the action, assigned an “advise and assist” mission supporting Iraqi commandos doing the block-by-block fighting. The SEALs were required to stay 1,000 meters behind the front lines. That changed on May 6, 2017, when an Apache helicopter banked over a dusty patchwork of fields outside Mosul, fixed its sights on a farmhouse serving as an Islamic State command post and fired two Hellfire missiles reducing it to rubble. Chief Gallagher saw the distant explosion from an armored gun truck. When he heard on the radio that Iraqi soldiers had captured an Islamic State fighter and took him to a nearby staging area, he raced to the scene. “No one touch him,” he radioed other SEALs. “He’s mine.”
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When the captive was killed, other SEALs were shocked. A medic inches from Chief Gallagher testified that he froze, unsure what to do. Some SEALs said in interviews that the stabbing immediately struck them as wrong, but because it was Chief Gallagher, the most experienced commando in the group, no one knew how to react. A week later, Chief Gallagher sent a friend in California a text with a photo of himself with a knife in one hand, holding the captive up by the hair with the other. “Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife,” he wrote.
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As the deployment wore on, SEALs said the chief’s behavior grew more erratic. He led a small team beyond the front lines, telling members to turn off locator beacons so they would not be caught by superiors, according to four SEALS, who confirmed video of the mission obtained by The New York Times. He then tried to cover up the mission when one platoon member was shot. At various points, he appeared to be either amped up or zoned out; several SEALs told investigators they saw him taking pills, including the narcotic Tramadol. He spent much of his time scanning the streets of Mosul from hidden sniper nests, firing three or four times as often as the platoon’s snipers, sometimes targeting civilians.</snip>

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One SEAL sniper told investigators he heard a shot from Chief Gallagher’s position, then saw a schoolgirl in a flower-print hijab crumple to the ground. Another sniper reported hearing a shot from Chief Gallagher’s position, then seeing a man carrying a water jug fall, a red blotch spreading on his back. Neither episode was investigated and the fate of the civilians remains unknown. So SEALs said they started firing warning shots to keep pedestrians out of range. One SEAL told investigators he tried to damage the chief’s rifle to make it less accurate. By the end of the deployment, SEALs said, Chief Gallagher was largely isolated from the rest of the platoon, with some privately calling him “el diablo,” or the devil.
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Rogue Valley said:

A ‘National Clown Show’: Navy SEAL Who Served In Eddie Gallagher’s Platoon Speaks Out | Forbes



True enough.

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Shumake is correct; Trump's actions are harming our military.

Trump is just using and abusing the military for his own personal gain.

No wonder Trumpists are cheering on the pardon. This guy truly is a despicable human being.


Just remember: the ugliness is the point.

Like I said on another thread, Trump should have kept his nose out of this. The man wouldn't know discipline if it slapped him upside the face, but now he's trying to interfere with the military who does take discipline very seriously. From reading the above on Gallagher, it sounds like he had reached a rogue stage where anyone was open game. And we know the old saying-one bad apple.

For some reason the title had me thinking this thread was going to be about the democratic presidential candidates.

aociswundumho said:

For some reason the title had me thinking this thread was going to be about the democratic presidential candidates.

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Well, Trump used to be a Democrat and was close friends with Democrats.