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Thread: Marines falsely accused of war crimes vindicated after 12 years

  1. #1
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    Marines falsely accused of war crimes vindicated after 12 years

    Marines falsely accused of war crimes vindicated after 12 years

    In 2007 a US Marine special operations unit was ambushed by Taliban forces. The Marines successfully broke contact with only one minor casualty. The Taliban released a "press release" claiming that the Marines wantonly killed civilians. The Afghan government "kicked" the unit out of the country. Despite being cleared a year later, the military did not set the record straight and the unit members careers were basically over.

    The commander of the unit has fought for his and his Marines' rights ever since and recently the Navy Board of Corrections of military records recommended to the US Navy that MAJ Gavin should be promoted to LTC and given back pay (that is a lot of money).

    Hopefully the Navy will clear the members of the unit as well, although none of them have challenged their treatment.

    A Marine veteran who fought the Pentagon for 12 years over a war-crimes case brought against him and six others will have his permanent record wiped clean, an extraordinary affirmation of his claim that their reputations were destroyed by the military’s effort to imprison the men.

    The Marines were members of an elite commando force expelled from Afghanistan in 2007 amid unproven allegations that they massacred innocent bystanders in the frantic minutes following an ambush. They were cleared of wrongdoing more than a year later, after the case was heard by a military court, but have maintained that senior leaders did little to set the record straight and, consequently, fostered the stigma that has dogged them ever since.


    A report approved in January by the Navy Department is a major victory for retired Maj. Fred Galvin, the Marines’ commanding officer. Its conclusions, he says, are a rebuke of those who condemned his men before the facts were clear, the investigator whose work was shown in court to be sloppy and the generals who refused Galvin’s pleas for public absolution.


    In its ruling, the Board for Correction of Naval Records said Galvin, 49, should be considered for a retroactive promotion. If granted, he would be entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars in back salary and future government pension benefits, as he was forced to retire in 2014 after his superiors relied on “inequitable and unjust” performance appraisals, the report states, to prevent him from advancing in rank. Of the seven swept up in the case, Galvin is the only one to pursue such vindication.


    More broadly, the board’s determination closes one of the Afghanistan war’s darkest chapters, an episode that unleashed international outrage only to be proved a fabrication engineered by the Taliban to fuel distrust of the U.S. military. Those involved fought for their lives that day only to be denounced by senior officers who had an obligation to protect their presumption of innocence.


    “This was a big betrayal,” said Steve Morgan, a retired Marine officer and decorated combat veteran who in 2008 was part of the court panel that found Galvin’s Marines acted honorably on the battlefield. The panel also memorialized the failures committed by the Marines’ superiors during and after the investigation.
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    Justice delayed is justice denied.
    Any time you give a man something he doesn't earn, you cheapen him. Our kids earn what they get, and that includes respect. -- Woody Hayes​

  3. The Following User Says Thank You to DGUtley For This Useful Post:

    Peter1469 (02-02-2019)

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    It is a shame the US relied on Taliban propaganda to shun these guys.
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    Amazing.
    Any time you give a man something he doesn't earn, you cheapen him. Our kids earn what they get, and that includes respect. -- Woody Hayes​

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