SEAL Team 6 accused of committing war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq

[jimmy olsen]

Elite commandos fighting Afghan insurgents going native and committing atrocities? The least surprising thing ever.


http://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/seal-team-6-accused-of-committing-war-crimes-in-afghanistan-and-iraq/news-story/5685baf46c1907034170b0a7c8d79ff7

AN EXPLOSIVE investigation claims Navy SEAL Team 6 had a dark side and some officers committed war crimes including beheadings and mutilations while serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

SEAL Team 6 was the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group and was part of a team that took down Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The team of officers were painted as heroes, but according to The Intercept — who conducted a two-year investigation, interviewing 18 current and former SEALS — officers on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan began seeking serious revenge on their enemies, leading them to commit some dark acts.


WHERE IS ALL BEGAN

The death of SEAL officer Neil Roberts led to the mentality that the enemy had to suffer.

According to The Intercept, he was the first member of SEAL Team 6 to be killed in the Afghan war after 9/11.

SEAL Team 6's Red Team were travelling over Takur Ghar, a high mountain in the Arma Mountains in southeastern Afghanistan in March 2002.

Al-Qaeda fighters were on the mountain top and as the SEALS got ready to fight, Roberts fell about three metres from a helicopter. He was stranded and the helicopter was shot at by al-Qaeda fighters.

According to The Intercept, the helicopter couldn't return for Roberts until two hours later, by that time he was dead and had been shot in the head at close range by the enemy shortly after he fell out the helicopter.


SEALS later looked at a predator drone and saw video of an enemy fighter trying to decapitate Roberts' head after he died.

Lieutenant Commander Vic Hyder was in charge of SEALS Team 6 at the time and he took it hard, and it meant war.

This incident later became known as the battle of Robert's Ridge and a former SEAL Team 6 member, who had been deployed in Afghanistan, told The Intercept to understand the violence of the SEALS later down the track, you had to start with this story.

"When you see your friend killed, recover his body, and find that the enemy mutilated him? It's a schoolyard mentality. 'You guys want to play with those rules?' 'OK.'," the SEAL said.

"You ask me to go living with the pigs, but I can't go live with the pigs and then not get dirty."

The Intercept said most SEALS didn't go on to commit war crimes but the war crimes that were committed, were like "stubborn viruses" and senior leaders did little to stop it.


WEDDING DAY BOMBING

According to The Intercept, the revenge all started in March 2002, after Roberts was killed.

On March 6, The team was desperately trying to find terror mastermind Osama bin Laden and they saw on drone footage a convoy of cars on the move in the Shah-i-Kot Valley in Afghanistan's Paktia province.

The SEALS didn't see any weapons but they decided to interrupt the convoy due to their suspicions about a man's white garb.

Chinook helicopters were flying over the convoy and Operation Bull was put into action.

Helicopters approached the convoy but it didn't go as the SEALS planned.

T.wo bombs were dropped on the convoy and a free fire zone was declared.

Several women and children were killed, as Chinook helicopter gunners could kill anyone believed to be a threat. It didn't matter if they weren't armed.

Two helicopters landed and Hyder appeared from an aircraft.

According to The Intercept, men, women and a small girl were motionless and in the foetal position.

Nobody who was killed was in uniform and it turned out the convoy was just on its way to a wedding.

Another shocking act happened when a survivor ran from the carnage, spotted by an enlisted officer named Monty Heath.

Heath shot his gun and killed the man and Hyder began taking photos of those who were killed.

They began burying the dead under rocks and The Intercept reports Hyder approached the man shot by Heath.

"He was partially alive, faced down, his back to me, and he rolled over. I shot him, I finished him. He was dying, but he rolled over and I didn't know whether he was armed or not. That was the end of that," Hyder told The Intercept.

However, a retired SEAL said Hyder then mutilated the dead man, who actually was unarmed.

Hyder allegedly stomped on his skull as Heath watched on.

The retired SEAL said "several of the guys turned and walked away".


WAR PORN

A sadist culture began forming in the SEALS Team 6, according to The Intercept, and every raid or shooting was almost like they were avenging an officer's death.

Bloody days were good ones and a few months after the wedding day bombing, some SEALS began watching "bleed-out" videos.

"It was war porn," a former SEAL who saw some videos told The Intercept.

"No one would do anything about them."

There was one main operator who instigated the war porn events and he was later kicked out of SEAL Team 6 after a violent episode involving another SEAL.

According the The Intercept, it was normal for SEALS to take skin, fingers or parts of the scalp of enemies they killed for DNA testing.

But a former SEAL Team 6 leader told The Intercept some officers would use this as an excuse to mutilate the enemy.

This began after a new SEAL Team 6 leader started around 2006.

Hugh Wyman Howard III took command of the Red Squadron in Team 6 and gave officers hatchets, which was considered a badge of honour.

"There's no military purpose for it," A former Red Squadron operator told The Intercept journalist Matthew Cole.

However the hatchets were later used by some officers to hack at the enemy after they'd been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Howard refused to comment to The Intercept, but the publication claimed the leader would tell officers to "bloody the hatchet" before they went out on missions.

It is believed the comment was meant to be inspirational, but when officers returned, it is claimed Howard also asked if they got "blood on your hatchet".

Under Howard's guidance, the number of missions SEAL Team 6 underwent rose from a handful to five times a week.

A retired SEAL said Howard also let officers become more aggressive and would give green lights for raids even if there was "weak" intelligence.

People started to see Howard's leadership as adding "fuel to the fire".

The Intercept reported after one raid in Iraq, Howard showed up back at the base with his hatchet and uniform covered in blood. He said it was a demonstration of how a battlefield commander should lead.


'I WANT A HEAD ON A PLATTER'

A respected SEAL Team 6 operator, Britt Slabinski, was labelled a hero after he led a rescue team to Roberts' body when he died after falling out of the helicopter.

But it is claimed he too later got caught up in war crimes.

The Intercept reports he wanted revenge, after seeing his teammate mutilated.

Slabinski was working in the Blue Squadron, where the culture was influenced by 1971 novel Devil's Guard, by George Robert Elford.

It is about a SS officer who becomes part of the French Foreign Legion in World War II and glorifies Nazi practices, including mass killings.

"These f****ing morons read the book The Devil's Guard and believed it," a former SEAL Team 6 leader told The Intercept.

The publication claims Slabinski once said to his operators he wanted "a head on a platter" and though meant metaphorically, some did not take it that way and believed it was an order.

One night after a raid, Blue Squadron Commander Peter Vasely was doing a walk-through with Slabinski.

Vasely claimed he looked through a window and saw an operator hacking and sawing at the neck of a dead militant and he believed it was a decapitation.

The Intercept reports Slabinski approached the operator and saw some of a man's neck severed.

But this was not reported and he told Vasely it wasn't a war crime or a mutilation and the operator was trying to get ammunition from a small vest on the man's chest.

There was an investigation into the war crime claims but it was closed.

A former SEAL Team 6 leader who investigated the alleged beheading told The Intercept officers would say the enemy were savages.

"They don't play by the rules, so why should we?" The former SEAL Team 6 leader was told.


CANOEING

Canoeing was becoming common practice between 2005 and 2008, showing just how much officers began seeking revenge.

According to The Intercept, canoeing is when a round is fired into the forehead of a dead enemy, splitting open the skull and exposing brain matter.

"There is and was no military reason whatsoever to split someone's skull open with a single round," a former SEAL Team 6 leader said.

"It's sport."

According to the former SEAL, canoeing became popular in 2007.

"I'd look through the (post operation) photos and see multiple canoes on one objective, several times a deployment," the SEAL said.

Former SEALS also told The Intercept that wasn't the only kind of mutilation that happened and sometimes operators would "take trophies".

The SEALS started operating under new rules when William McRaven took over SEAL Team 6 to stop accusations of unjustified killings.

He instructed operators to conduct call-outs before raids, so women and children could escape before certain areas were stormed. Some operators complained that took away the element of surprise.

Operators had to take photographs of the dead enemy and before McRaven took over, they were only required to photograph the front.

McRaven however changed the rules and made officers photograph many parts of the body.

He thought this would take up more time, giving officers less time for canoeing, and any unnecessary injuries would be seen with more photos.

The Intercept said photos of canoed enemies stopped appearing.

Bin Laden was finally killed in 2011 and a SEAL Team 6 member bragged about canoeing him.

The Intercept claims SEAL Team 6 members Robert O'Neill and Matt Bissonnette wanted to benefit financially from the raid that ended with the death of bin Laden and allegedly made up details to make their roles seem more important.

The pair planned how the raid would become a book and a movie but later fought about who had rights to the story.

The Intercept said it was later revealed the two officers wanted to be the first to shoot bin Laden. They were both meant to be manning the second floor of the compound where bin Laden was hidden, but they went to the third floor where they found the al-Qaeda leader.

Bissonnette later got a book deal and O'Neill went back to Virginia and claimed he was the one that shot the leader.

The US SEALS told The Intercept "all members of the Naval Special Warfare are required to comply with the Laws of Armed Conflict in the conduct of military operations" and would not comment further on allegations.

[11B4V]

FAKE NEWS

[Berkut]

I read the article.

Honestly...it mostly struck me as something a civilian would write, not at all understanding war.

I have zero, ZERO doubt that things occurred during military operations of the various SEAL teams that were technical or even material violations of the laws of war, in that those laws are in many ways written in a manner that result in violations that are more or less either routine, or at least not that material.

Shooting someone who is already dead? OK. That is a pretty shitty thing to do, and clearly falls under prohibited behavior. Is it something to write a sensational headline like "SEAL TEAM 6 COMMITS WARCRIMES!!!"? I don't think so, since the headline implies something that goes well beyond soldiers engaging in mutiliation of already dead people. Mutilating dead people is certainly a matter of military discipline that needs to be handled, but can and should be handled by the chain of command of the unit as part of their desire to see the unit operating at peak effectiveness.

This strikes me as straight up sensationalism. It basically amounts to noting that war sucks, and people in constant combat do shit they should not, and likely normally would not, and yet is almost certainly inevitable. It is an excuse to run the headline, but there isn't much "there" there.

[Ed Anger]

I've got an erection

[LaCroix]

I read the article.

Honestly...it mostly struck me as something a civilian would write, not at all understanding war.

I have zero, ZERO doubt that things occurred during military operations of the various SEAL teams that were technical or even material violations of the laws of war, in that those laws are in many ways written in a manner that result in violations that are more or less either routine, or at least not that material.

Shooting someone who is already dead? OK. That is a pretty shitty thing to do, and clearly falls under prohibited behavior. Is it something to write a sensational headline like "SEAL TEAM 6 COMMITS WARCRIMES!!!"? I don't think so, since the headline implies something that goes well beyond soldiers engaging in mutiliation of already dead people. Mutilating dead people is certainly a matter of military discipline that needs to be handled, but can and should be handled by the chain of command of the unit as part of their desire to see the unit operating at peak effectiveness.

This strikes me as straight up sensationalism. It basically amounts to noting that war sucks, and people in constant combat do shit they should not, and likely normally would not, and yet is almost certainly inevitable. It is an excuse to run the headline, but there isn't much "there" there.

allegations soldiers did things like stomp on the skulls of dead people shouldn't be treated lightly. sometimes, sensationalism is needed to muster enough reaction for change

[CountDeMoney]

FAKE NEWS

SEAL Team 6's Red Team were travelling over Takur Ghar, a high mountain in the Arma Mountains in southeastern Afghanistan in March 2002.

Al-Qaeda fighters were on the mountain top and as the SEALS got ready to fight, Roberts fell about three metres from a helicopter. He was stranded and the helicopter was shot at by al-Qaeda fighters.

According to The Intercept, the helicopter couldn't return for Roberts until two hours later, by that time he was dead and had been shot in the head at close range by the enemy shortly after he fell out the helicopter.

SEALS later looked at a predator drone and saw video of an enemy fighter trying to decapitate Roberts' head after he died.

If people remember the very early stages of the war, this was one of the very first US casualties, and he the guy that fell out of the back of the Chinook when they were EVAC'ing other warfighters on that mountain.  They knew he was taken away and they knew he was subsequently executed.  The only thing that wasn't reported at the time is that it was the SEALs.

[Berkut]

I read the article.

Honestly...it mostly struck me as something a civilian would write, not at all understanding war.

I have zero, ZERO doubt that things occurred during military operations of the various SEAL teams that were technical or even material violations of the laws of war, in that those laws are in many ways written in a manner that result in violations that are more or less either routine, or at least not that material.

Shooting someone who is already dead? OK. That is a pretty shitty thing to do, and clearly falls under prohibited behavior. Is it something to write a sensational headline like "SEAL TEAM 6 COMMITS WARCRIMES!!!"? I don't think so, since the headline implies something that goes well beyond soldiers engaging in mutiliation of already dead people. Mutilating dead people is certainly a matter of military discipline that needs to be handled, but can and should be handled by the chain of command of the unit as part of their desire to see the unit operating at peak effectiveness.

This strikes me as straight up sensationalism. It basically amounts to noting that war sucks, and people in constant combat do shit they should not, and likely normally would not, and yet is almost certainly inevitable. It is an excuse to run the headline, but there isn't much "there" there.

allegations soldiers did things like stomp on the skulls of dead people shouldn't be treated lightly. sometimes, sensationalism is needed to muster enough reaction for change

There isn't any chance needed though - there is no reason to believe from this article that the processes in place to deal with these kinds of situations are not in fact dealing with these kinds of situations.

The fact that the situations happen in wartime is 100% predictable. You would be a naive fool to think they did not regardless of the publication of this piece of journalism.

And I am skeptical that the goal was to "effect change" as opposed to "generate clicks".

[dps]

I read the article.

Honestly...it mostly struck me as something a civilian would write, not at all understanding war.

I have zero, ZERO doubt that things occurred during military operations of the various SEAL teams that were technical or even material violations of the laws of war, in that those laws are in many ways written in a manner that result in violations that are more or less either routine, or at least not that material.

Shooting someone who is already dead? OK. That is a pretty shitty thing to do, and clearly falls under prohibited behavior. Is it something to write a sensational headline like "SEAL TEAM 6 COMMITS WARCRIMES!!!"? I don't think so, since the headline implies something that goes well beyond soldiers engaging in mutiliation of already dead people. Mutilating dead people is certainly a matter of military discipline that needs to be handled, but can and should be handled by the chain of command of the unit as part of their desire to see the unit operating at peak effectiveness.

This strikes me as straight up sensationalism. It basically amounts to noting that war sucks, and people in constant combat do shit they should not, and likely normally would not, and yet is almost certainly inevitable. It is an excuse to run the headline, but there isn't much "there" there.

allegations soldiers did things like stomp on the skulls of dead people shouldn't be treated lightly. sometimes, sensationalism is needed to muster enough reaction for change

This isn't about some policy that needs to change, though.  There are already policies, rules, regulations, and laws about it.  As Berkut said, in combat, at some point, things like this are going to happen.  At best it's an enforcement issue.  Having a laws or regulations on the books doesn't mean that people won't break them.  In fact, there's little or no point is passing laws or issuing regulations against things that people aren't going to do anyway.

[11B4V]

FAKE NEWS

SEAL Team 6's Red Team were travelling over Takur Ghar, a high mountain in the Arma Mountains in southeastern Afghanistan in March 2002.

Al-Qaeda fighters were on the mountain top and as the SEALS got ready to fight, Roberts fell about three metres from a helicopter. He was stranded and the helicopter was shot at by al-Qaeda fighters.

According to The Intercept, the helicopter couldn't return for Roberts until two hours later, by that time he was dead and had been shot in the head at close range by the enemy shortly after he fell out the helicopter.

SEALS later looked at a predator drone and saw video of an enemy fighter trying to decapitate Roberts' head after he died.

If people remember the very early stages of the war, this was one of the very first US casualties, and he the guy that fell out of the back of the Chinook when they were EVAC'ing other warfighters on that mountain.  They knew he was taken away and they knew he was subsequently executed.  The only thing that wasn't reported at the time is that it was the SEALs.

No shit, ya think. Easy there CNN.

[CountDeMoney]

No shit, ya think. Easy there CNN.

NBC had a graphic of him falling out of the Chinook.  With a dotted line and everything.

[Jacob]

I read the article.

Honestly...it mostly struck me as something a civilian would write, not at all understanding war.

I have zero, ZERO doubt that things occurred during military operations of the various SEAL teams that were technical or even material violations of the laws of war, in that those laws are in many ways written in a manner that result in violations that are more or less either routine, or at least not that material.

Shooting someone who is already dead? OK. That is a pretty shitty thing to do, and clearly falls under prohibited behavior. Is it something to write a sensational headline like "SEAL TEAM 6 COMMITS WARCRIMES!!!"? I don't think so, since the headline implies something that goes well beyond soldiers engaging in mutiliation of already dead people. Mutilating dead people is certainly a matter of military discipline that needs to be handled, but can and should be handled by the chain of command of the unit as part of their desire to see the unit operating at peak effectiveness.

This strikes me as straight up sensationalism. It basically amounts to noting that war sucks, and people in constant combat do shit they should not, and likely normally would not, and yet is almost certainly inevitable. It is an excuse to run the headline, but there isn't much "there" there.

For argument's sake, let's say the chain of command does not handle it - or handles it by encouraging it rather than try to stop it. Is it a cause for concern then?

[LaCroix]

This isn't about some policy that needs to change, though.  There are already policies, rules, regulations, and laws about it.  As Berkut said, in combat, at some point, things like this are going to happen.  At best it's an enforcement issue.  Having a laws or regulations on the books doesn't mean that people won't break them.  In fact, there's little or no point is passing laws or issuing regulations against things that people aren't going to do anyway.

there's a difference between policy on the books and enforcement of that policy. there's room for improvement here that should be encouraged

[11B4V]

No shit, ya think. Easy there CNN.

NBC had a graphic of him falling out of the Chinook.  With a dotted line and everything.

Sounds like Wolfe B. 

[Admiral Yi]

"The Intercept?"

"Enlisted officer?"

[Berkut]

I read the article.

Honestly...it mostly struck me as something a civilian would write, not at all understanding war.

I have zero, ZERO doubt that things occurred during military operations of the various SEAL teams that were technical or even material violations of the laws of war, in that those laws are in many ways written in a manner that result in violations that are more or less either routine, or at least not that material.

Shooting someone who is already dead? OK. That is a pretty shitty thing to do, and clearly falls under prohibited behavior. Is it something to write a sensational headline like "SEAL TEAM 6 COMMITS WARCRIMES!!!"? I don't think so, since the headline implies something that goes well beyond soldiers engaging in mutiliation of already dead people. Mutilating dead people is certainly a matter of military discipline that needs to be handled, but can and should be handled by the chain of command of the unit as part of their desire to see the unit operating at peak effectiveness.

This strikes me as straight up sensationalism. It basically amounts to noting that war sucks, and people in constant combat do shit they should not, and likely normally would not, and yet is almost certainly inevitable. It is an excuse to run the headline, but there isn't much "there" there.

For argument's sake, let's say the chain of command does not handle it - or handles it by encouraging it rather than try to stop it. Is it a cause for concern then?

Definitely, if it is systemic.

I will note however that the way to CoC handles it might not align well with civilian sensibilities.