Army LTC accused of aiding the enemy
Reading this story, it’s obvious this Army Lieutenant Colonel broke just about every law, regulation, and policy in existence in Iraq. A nice, long stay in Leavenworth is the minimum he should get.
BAGHDAD — A U.S. officer has been accused of aiding the enemy — a charge that carries the death penalty — for allegedly providing an unmonitored cell phone to detainees while he commanded an MP detachment at the jail that held Saddam Hussein, the military said Thursday.
Army Lt. Col. William H. Steele faces nine charges in all, including fraternizing with a prisoner’s daughter, storing and marking classified material, maintaining an inappropriate relationship with an interpreter and possessing pornographic videos.
Wow, where should we start? Let’s start with the big stuff and move our way down.
First, allowing a detainee to use your cell phone is absolutely preposterous. At my FOB, only select Iraqis were allowed to have a cell phone on their person while on post, and those were folks who had been vetted through and through. Plus, their cell phone numbers had been logged for possible electronic monitoring. I can’t even imagine handing one to a detainee and then walking away.
Fraternizing with a local woman (or man) was forbidden. Fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee you are holding is wrong on so many levels - like the fact that she could be pumping you for information or special favors while you are, well, pumping her. That fact that he was also doing it with an interpreter - who could have been a plant by the enemy - only compounds this guy’s issues.
I’m not sure what is going on with the “storing and marking classified materials”. That could be he was taking them back to his hooch at night, or putting it electronically on a insecure computer. That sounds like an add-on charge, just to build the case more. That’s also probably the case with the charge on pornography. We weren’t supposed to have it, and you could get in trouble, but we rarely went after soldiers for it. It had to be pretty blatant to bother with.
The alleged incidents occurred from October 2005 to this February, starting when Steele was commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment at Camp Cropper on the western outskirts of Baghdad and in his later post as a senior patrol officer for the provincial transition team headquarters at nearby Camp Victory, the main U.S. military base.
Camp Cropper replaced Abu Ghraib as the U.S. military’s holding facility for detainees. I see this MP commander learned nothing from the actions of the previous MP commander.
Guys like this give everyone in the military a black eye. Assuming this is all true, I do hope he goes away for a long time.
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I hope his punishment is larger than Karpinski’s demotion if this is all true.
It may not be fair, but the country holds the military to a higher standard… I just wish they also gave a higher level of respect.
Found your site through this morning’s stand-to - will be back.
Thanks for coming by!
I have linked to you for my Saturday post - and am putting you in my blogroll.
Great blog!