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Comment by myrandomcomment | Hacker News Reader

If true, the 2 SEALs will be executed. I believe the military still hangs people for this. Good.

The question to ask is what made a caper as ballsy as this seem like a good idea to these chaps. It suggests a culture of impunity which is likely to mostly affect other people who are not so dear to the US military and government as a serving US Green Beret in good standing. And indeed: https://theintercept.com/2017/01/10/the-crimes-of-seal-team-...

> “You can’t win an investigation on us,” one former SEAL Team 6 leader told me. “You don’t whistleblow on the teams … and when you win on the battlefield, you don’t lose investigations.”

Seals are the golden children of the US military. Lots of nightmare stories out there of Seals "getting away with murder".

There is a big, big difference between the kind of investigation that goes into the extrajudicial killing / corpse mutilation of enemy combatants (as alleged in the Intercept article you quote) vs. the kind of investigation that goes into the murder of another member of the uniformed services. ESPECIALLY given that the victim was a Green Beret and the alleged murderers are Team guys.

ARSOC is going to be out for blood here. This is going to be the mother of all command investigations.

> There is a big, big difference between the kind of investigation that goes into the extrajudicial killing / corpse mutilation of enemy combatants (as alleged in the Intercept article you quote) vs. the kind of investigation that goes into the murder of another member of the uniformed services.

Indeed, but this supports my point, no? If things have got to the point where brazenly fragging a Green Beret in base starts to look remotely like something you might reasonably do and might have decent odds of getting away with, then it seems probable the chain is already off completely when it comes to dealing with 'lesser lifeforms'.

I think you're making an aggressive assumption with regard to this being a premeditated murder. It happened in the early morning in the place where they were all billeted, and the evidence as reported suggests simple asphyxiation, i.e., they choked SSgt Melgar to death. Their alibi, apparently "hurr durr we were all doing combatives at 5am and I guess he was drunk?", seems like a quickly assembled and half-baked story.

Team guys are meatheads but they're not stupid. If they had thought through their alleged crime ahead of time, they likely would have done it in a less self-incriminating way.

I do think your point about a culture of impunity in the Teams might be valid to the extent that it might explain why the two accused (allegedly) thought it doable to embezzle HUMINT funds. Assuming the proceedings are open (likely that AFSOC wants this and will make it so), I'm sure we'll all find out all the shitty details in the coming months.

>>I believe the military still hangs people for this

I don't know why I didn't believe you at first, but I was wrong[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_the_Unit...

"Currently, lethal injection is the only method."

I didn't properly clarify in my parent comment that I was in an initial state of disbelief of the US military using any form of capital punishment. You're right though - if convicted, looks like the sentence would be carried out by lethal injection, and not a hanging.

From the story it wasn't premeditated, probably got into a fight over the stolen cash and they tried to "knock some sense into him" the way they knew. It doesn't bring him back, no, but given that they panicked makes it seems like they didn't plan on killing him. They would have planned it better:somewhere on the streets and maybe kill the "killer"...some informant coming to a meeting.

> A second former Africa Command official said Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc, then commander of Special Operations Command-Africa, was skeptical of the initial reports from the outset. He alerted Army Criminal Investigation Command and told commanders in Mali to preserve evidence

I don’t know if they will be hanged, but I agree that the military tends to have swift justice. Fortunately there are still men and women with integrity working in and for our government.

I'm not sure what you are trying to convey with the quote, but the context there is that the general was skeptical about the report the SEALs filed about the death of the Green Beret.

the military tends to have swift justice.

Not for capital cases, which themselves are quite rare. The military hasn't executed anyone for over 50 years. There are people on death row, the one closest to execution was convicted in 1988.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_the_Unit...

> Fortunately there are still men and women with integrity working in and for our government.

There are millions of people working in and for the government. Its only natural that a few with integrity would slip through the cracks.

Perpetuating violence against humans is good?

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