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Move over, Bowe Bergdahl. The desertion case against a Marine just got weirder
- Thread starter ShouldaWouldaCoulda
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It has no obvious connection with the Bergdahl case. There are lots more of these situations than we would like to think.
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Water Cross
Glory may be fleeting, but obscurity is forever
This is a weird case. This soldiers desertion case is far stranger than the one that could be levied against Bergdahl.
That he turned himself in after all that transpired per the article, and we can't even begin to know what the military is withholding besides.
Who's next?
That he turned himself in after all that transpired per the article, and we can't even begin to know what the military is withholding besides.
Who's next?
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Forest Wolf
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This Marine and his story far exceeds Bergdahl's desertion tale.
Excerpted:
The background on Hassouns case, explored a bit in this Checkpoint post last month, is astonishing. Hassoun, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, disappeared from a Marine base outside Fallujah, Iraq, on June 19, 2004. At the time, it was believed that he was captured by militants.
A video of Hassoun was distributed a week later showing him captured and blindfolded, prompting the Pentagon to announce that he had been captured. At one point, he was reported on Islamist militant Web sites to have been beheaded.
The claims turned out to be bogus. Hassoun re-emerged at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in July 2004 and then held a news conference at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., saying that he was not a deserter and had been kidnapped.
Shortly beforehand, two people had been killed and several wounded in a firefight near his familys home in northern Lebanon, where the relatives had been trading gunfire with another clan taunting them over Hassouns ties to the United States.
The Marine Corps charged Hassoun with desertion in December 2004, following a five-month investigation into his disappearance. It also charged him with the theft of a 9mm pistol he allegedly took from his base in Iraq, and with wrongful appropriation of a government vehicle.
Hassoun vanished again the following month, in January 2005, after failing to return to Camp Lejeune after taking leave to see family in Utah, authorities said. Little was heard about him again until 2011, when his family contacted a publicist in Los Angeles to seek a $1 million book and movie deal, according to an Associated Press account at the time. The publicist told the AP that Hassouns brother said the missing Marine was living in Lebanon with family.
The Marine officials are cagey in releasing more information so far? Geeze Louise! This reads like a bad Hollywood script! What else is there?
Excerpted:
The background on Hassouns case, explored a bit in this Checkpoint post last month, is astonishing. Hassoun, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, disappeared from a Marine base outside Fallujah, Iraq, on June 19, 2004. At the time, it was believed that he was captured by militants.
A video of Hassoun was distributed a week later showing him captured and blindfolded, prompting the Pentagon to announce that he had been captured. At one point, he was reported on Islamist militant Web sites to have been beheaded.
The claims turned out to be bogus. Hassoun re-emerged at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in July 2004 and then held a news conference at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., saying that he was not a deserter and had been kidnapped.
Shortly beforehand, two people had been killed and several wounded in a firefight near his familys home in northern Lebanon, where the relatives had been trading gunfire with another clan taunting them over Hassouns ties to the United States.
The Marine Corps charged Hassoun with desertion in December 2004, following a five-month investigation into his disappearance. It also charged him with the theft of a 9mm pistol he allegedly took from his base in Iraq, and with wrongful appropriation of a government vehicle.
Hassoun vanished again the following month, in January 2005, after failing to return to Camp Lejeune after taking leave to see family in Utah, authorities said. Little was heard about him again until 2011, when his family contacted a publicist in Los Angeles to seek a $1 million book and movie deal, according to an Associated Press account at the time. The publicist told the AP that Hassouns brother said the missing Marine was living in Lebanon with family.
The Marine officials are cagey in releasing more information so far? Geeze Louise! This reads like a bad Hollywood script! What else is there?
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The military is doing what the criminal justice system in the US is obligated to do: Keep information of a pending investigation confidential until the trial. After the trial, it becomes public record.
There have been more than 40,000 desertions since 2000. I have no doubt some of them are interesting stories.
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We don't really need to hear deserters' "stories". We need to hear that they've been put up against a wall and faced a firing squad.
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- May 26, 2014
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And theres more! 
What I want to know is why he was free to do as he wished after the first of his offenses?
Something is off here.
What I want to know is why he was free to do as he wished after the first of his offenses?
Something is off here.
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- May 26, 2014
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And on C-SPAN live! Send the message to our military and the world over as to what we do to deserters. Because, and especially with Bergdahl, their crime causes the deaths of others. Like those soldiers that went looking for Bergdahl when they thought he'd been abducted!
Their families should be able to attend his execution. While one of them should be in the line of riflemen carrying out the sentence.
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Considering that there have been more than 100,000 desertions from WWII to today and only one of them has been executed, a firing squad is clearly not what "we do to deserters."
And what's this "we" stuff? It would be the military that convicts and the military that carries out the sentence, so any "we" should be people in uniform.
Oh, wait. You're Canadian. We already know what Canadians do with American deserters: Accept them. But that's okay--I was never upset about that, not even during the Vietnam war.
Two interesting paradoxes:
Civilians trumpet torture while the military abhors it.
Civilians trumpet firing squads while the military avoids them.
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GondwanaLand
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That's admirably bloodthirsty from a guy who has had his head chopped off a tongueless man on an executioner's block, Eddard.
But, well, as we are not at war, the penalty for desertion is not death. Sorry.
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Again, as I told your friend, as we are not at war, such an execution is simply not one of the possible punishments for desertion.
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1: ....Eddard Stark is a fictional character. Therefore, what happened to him is irrelevant in the real world. I shouldn't have to point that out.
2: I think you're forgetting how "A Game of Thrones" began, aren't you? By Eddard Stark bringing justice to a deserter.
The case could be argued that those who deserted from postings in Afghanistan and Iraq DID desert during times of war.
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GondwanaLand
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I'm not the one who chose a username based on a fictional character.
It certainly did - one who had seen an enormous threat to the Kingdoms. and of course the end of Ned was his obsession with his "honor". It was a very interesting dichotomy, the beginning and the end, both with beheading due to blind embrace of a code.
Sure, it could be argued (of course it could also be argued that Bergdahl farts green mustard *shrug*).
For the argument to have even a prayer of succeeding (because, y'know, most deserters aren't executed even in times of war), you'd have to, you know, show us the declaration of war by congress in either country. So let's see it. Even one will do. Let's see that declaration of war. Until you've got that, you've got no valid argument.
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Always nice to hear from someone who's never served and has no compassion for those who have.
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But but but... the "war on terror", that's a real declared war against a bona fide real world nation state, isn't it?
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And I don't see how that's relevant.
What he saw does not change what he did. If Ned had let it pass, the Night's Watch would have been in even more serious trouble than it already is from being understaffed, because then people could just come and go as they please.
(also, I'm still reading "A clash of kings", so please don't spoil anything that might happen from about the middle of that book)
Indeed. Ned is the closest thing Westeros has to a Christian: Doing what's right, regardless of the consequences.
Except the first was justified, the second was not. The one who passed the first sentence was within his rights to do so. The second was an illegitimate usurper.
Ned was right. Joffrey was wrong. And I'm still hoping to see that little *censored* come to an end far less swift than Ned's, at some point.
No, it could be argued, on the same level that it could be argued that Osama bin Laden was behind 9/11
"De facto". Have you heard of it?
I have lots of compassion for those who have served. I have no compassion for deserters and traitors.
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There have been over 100,000 desertions since 1940. There has been only one execution for desertion since then.
It's not going to happen with this one. It's not even on the table.
The chickenhawks can stop frothing at the mouth.
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