Just wanted to share some really devistating news with all of you and ask for some prayers (for those who do) and well wishes for my friend and her family.
My friend heather is in the military as is her husband. I'll call him M, and they are both stationed in California. He was just serving his 2nd tour in Iraq this year, he was there last year at this time for 8 months, this current tour was suppose to be 9 months, he only served 5 months this time.
I don't know how much news everyon watches, especially about the war anymore but some of you might have heard about a group of marines that were under investigation for conspiracy, murder, kidnapping and assault.
I'm not exactly sure on all of the details but this is what his wife relayed to me, he was pulled out of Iraq and put into protective custody because he was involved in the conspiracy part of this event. His statement is that he had nothing to do with the assault, the kidnapping or the murder, but he was instructed by the group of marines to do something (that would be considered conspiracy) and he did it.
Apparently (again, this was just relayed to me by his wife) the sargent thought this whole elaborate plan out to kill some Iraqi (why, I don't really know) and one of the days when M was on patrol, his marines told him, "todays' the day". He's a hospital corpsman in the Navy, not a marine so he's kind of an outsider. He claims he did what he did (conspiracy part) because he was afraid if he didn't, they would kill him, they wanted to kill someone and he was afraid that if he didn't cooperate he might be the target.
He's talking and cooperating with the investigation, and one night when he came back to his rack there was a message on it saying, "we know you've talked and we are going to kill you" so now he's in protective custody inside the brig.
I know some of you may want to judge him, I myself asked his wife, "what the heck was he thinking?" But if you stop for a moment and think about it, unless you are someone who's been over there, seen what he's seen (over 100's of murders right before his eyes), deal with what he deals with everyday over there, it's unreasonable to judge him. That's what I had to tell myself at least. Stress and war and seeing what he does everyday can make even the most reasonable men and women do bad things, things they would never do if they had the time to sit and think about it.
Others may want to know, "why didn't he report this to anyone?" The honest truth is you never know how far up the chain of command something like this goes, and he could have been reporting it to a Senior who was in fact involved in the situation. That could have had even worse consequences for M than doing what he did (like them killing him). Either way, he was pretty much screwed.
I'm mad at the military because they sent him over there for this 2nd tour with diagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) but he had not recieved any treatment yet for it. Initially he was in denial... yes, his bad. But he decided to seek help and then found out he was going to be deployed again within the next few months.
I know I keep rambling, but I'm really upset over this news. He has a 1 year old daughter and a wife and things just don't look good at all.
So any thoughts and prayers you all can send his way would be much appreciated!
Thanks!
My friend heather is in the military as is her husband. I'll call him M, and they are both stationed in California. He was just serving his 2nd tour in Iraq this year, he was there last year at this time for 8 months, this current tour was suppose to be 9 months, he only served 5 months this time.
I don't know how much news everyon watches, especially about the war anymore but some of you might have heard about a group of marines that were under investigation for conspiracy, murder, kidnapping and assault.
I'm not exactly sure on all of the details but this is what his wife relayed to me, he was pulled out of Iraq and put into protective custody because he was involved in the conspiracy part of this event. His statement is that he had nothing to do with the assault, the kidnapping or the murder, but he was instructed by the group of marines to do something (that would be considered conspiracy) and he did it.
Apparently (again, this was just relayed to me by his wife) the sargent thought this whole elaborate plan out to kill some Iraqi (why, I don't really know) and one of the days when M was on patrol, his marines told him, "todays' the day". He's a hospital corpsman in the Navy, not a marine so he's kind of an outsider. He claims he did what he did (conspiracy part) because he was afraid if he didn't, they would kill him, they wanted to kill someone and he was afraid that if he didn't cooperate he might be the target.
He's talking and cooperating with the investigation, and one night when he came back to his rack there was a message on it saying, "we know you've talked and we are going to kill you" so now he's in protective custody inside the brig.
I know some of you may want to judge him, I myself asked his wife, "what the heck was he thinking?" But if you stop for a moment and think about it, unless you are someone who's been over there, seen what he's seen (over 100's of murders right before his eyes), deal with what he deals with everyday over there, it's unreasonable to judge him. That's what I had to tell myself at least. Stress and war and seeing what he does everyday can make even the most reasonable men and women do bad things, things they would never do if they had the time to sit and think about it.
Others may want to know, "why didn't he report this to anyone?" The honest truth is you never know how far up the chain of command something like this goes, and he could have been reporting it to a Senior who was in fact involved in the situation. That could have had even worse consequences for M than doing what he did (like them killing him). Either way, he was pretty much screwed.
I'm mad at the military because they sent him over there for this 2nd tour with diagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) but he had not recieved any treatment yet for it. Initially he was in denial... yes, his bad. But he decided to seek help and then found out he was going to be deployed again within the next few months.
I know I keep rambling, but I'm really upset over this news. He has a 1 year old daughter and a wife and things just don't look good at all.
So any thoughts and prayers you all can send his way would be much appreciated!
Thanks!