JURY CONVICTS US SOLDIER OF MURDER, CONSPIRACY IN THRILL-KILLINGS OF AFGHAN CIVILIANS

[The investigation into the 5th Stryker Brigade unit exposed widespread misconduct — a platoon that was “out of control,” in the words of a prosecutor, Maj. Robert Stelle. The wrongdoing included hash-smoking, the collection of illicit weapons, the mutilation and photography of Afghan remains, and the gang-beating of a soldier who reported the drug use.]

By Associated Press

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. — A U.S. Army soldier accused of exhorting his bored underlings to slaughter three civilians for sport was convicted of murder, conspiracy and other charges Thursday in one of the most gruesome cases to emerge from the Afghan war.

Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, of Billings, Mont., was the highest ranking of five soldiers charged in the deaths of the unarmed men during patrols in Kandahar province early last year. At his seven-day court martial at Joint Base Lewis-McChord south of Seattle, the 26-year-old acknowledged cutting fingers off corpses and yanking out a victim’s tooth to keep as war trophies, “like keeping the antlers off a deer you’d shoot.”

But he insisted he wasn’t involved in the first or third killings, and in the second he merely returned fire.

Prosecutors said Gibbs and his co-defendants knew the victims posed no danger, but dropped weapons by their dead bodies to make them appear to have been combatants.

Three of the co-defendants pleaded guilty, and two of them testified against him, portraying him as an imposing, bloodthirsty leader who in one instance played with a victim’s corpse and moved the mouth like a puppet. Gibbs’ lawyer insisted they conspired to blame him for what they had done and told the five jurors the case represented “the ultimate betrayal of an infantryman.”

The jury deliberated for about four hours before convicting him. The sentencing hearing began immediately after the verdict was announced, with a prosecutor, Maj. Andre LeBlanc, asking for the maximum, life without parole. He told jurors that Gibbs was supposed to protect the Afghan people, but instead caused many to lose trust in Americans, hurting the mission. LeBlanc noted that Gibbs repeatedly called the Afghans “savages.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, there is the savage — Staff Sgt. Gibbs is the savage,” he said.

Gibbs’ lawyer, Phil Stackhouse, asked for leniency — life with parole, instead of without it — and noted that Gibbs could be eligible for parole after 10 years if they allowed it.

“He’d like you to know he has had failures in his life and he’s had a lot of time to think about them,” Stackhouse said. “He wants you to know he’s not the same person he was in Afghanistan. He doesn’t want his wife to have to raise their son on her own.”

The investigation into the 5th Stryker Brigade unit exposed widespread misconduct — a platoon that was “out of control,” in the words of a prosecutor, Maj. Robert Stelle. The wrongdoing included hash-smoking, the collection of illicit weapons, the mutilation and photography of Afghan remains, and the gang-beating of a soldier who reported the drug use.

In all, 12 soldiers were charged; all but 2 have now been convicted.

The probe also raised questions about the brigade’s permissive leadership culture and the Army’s mechanisms for reporting misconduct.

After the first killing, one soldier, then-Spc. Adam Winfield, alerted his parents and told them more killings were planned, but his father’s call to a sergeant at Lewis-McChord relaying the warning went unheeded. Winfield later pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the last killing, saying he took part because he believed Gibbs would kill him if he didn’t.

The case against Gibbs relied heavily on testimony from former Spc. Jeremy Morlock, of Wasilla, Alaska, who is serving 24 years after admitting his involvement in all three killings.

According to Morlock, Gibbs gave him an “off-the-books” grenade that Morlock and Private 1st Class Andrew Holmes, of Boise, Idaho, used in the first killing — a teenager in a field — in January 2010.

The next month, Morlock said, Gibbs killed the second victim with Spc. Michael Wagnon, of Las Vegas, and tossed an AK-47 at the man’s feet to make him appear to have been an enemy fighter. Morlock and Winfield said that during the third killing, in May, Gibbs threw a grenade at the victim as he ordered them to shoot.

Morlock and others told investigators that soon after Gibbs joined the unit in 2010, he began talking about how easy it would be to kill civilians, and discussed scenarios where they might carry out such murders.

Asked why soldiers might have agreed to go along with it, Morlock testified that the brigade had trained for deployment to Iraq before having their orders shifted at the last minute to Afghanistan.

The infantrymen wanted action and firefights, he testified, but instead they found themselves carrying out a more humanitarian counter-insurgency strategy that involved meetings and handshaking.

Another soldier, Staff Sgt. Robert Stevens, who at the time was a close friend of Gibbs, told investigators that in March 2010, he and others followed orders from Gibbs to fire on two unarmed farmers in a field; no one was injured. Gibbs claimed one was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, but that was obviously false, Stevens said.

Stevens also testified that Gibbs bragged to him about the second killing, admitting he planted an AK-47 on the victim’s body because he suspected the man on involvement with the Taliban, according to a report on the testimony in The News Tribune newspaper of Tacoma.

But during the trial, Gibbs insisted he came under fire. “I was engaged by an enemy combatant,” he said. “Luckily his weapon appeared to malfunction and I didn’t die.”

Gibbs testified that he wasn’t proud about having removed fingers from the bodies of the victims, but said he tried to disassociate the corpses from the humans they had been as a means of coming to terms with the things soldiers are asked to do in battle.

The muscular 6-foot-4 staff sergeant also testified that he did it because other soldiers wanted the trophies, and he agreed in part because he didn’t want his subordinates to think he was a wimp.  Gibbs initially faced 16 charges, but one was dropped during the trial. Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

@ The Washington Post

LEAVING CAMP VICTORY IN IRAQ, THE VERY NAME A QUESTION MARK

[Convoys roll out daily, but not everything will fit. Hundreds of cars will be left behind. The military has weighed what items of historical or memorial value should be taken out together with the troops before Dec. 31, when the last United States soldiers are to leave. One item going with the Americans is the toilet that Saddam Hussein used while detained, bound for a military police museum in Missouri.]  

By Andrew E. Kramer

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq — For most of the war, nine gaudy palaces outside Baghdad — monuments to Saddam Hussein’s grandeur and questionable taste — served as the headquarters for the American military in Iraq.

Andrea Bruce for The New York Times

Lt. Colonel Jerry E. Brooks in the palace that was 

a part of Camp Victory. More Photos »

Officers are now vacating them, and, like moving out of a long-occupied house, busy with the colossal job of sorting what to take and what to leave.

Convoys roll out daily, but not everything will fit. Hundreds of cars will be left behind. The military has weighed what items of historical or memorial value should be taken out together with the troops before Dec. 31, when the last United States soldiers are to leave. One item going with the Americans is the toilet that Saddam Hussein used while detained, bound for a military police museum in Missouri.

One item staying is Gen. David H. Petraeus’s bed. For nearly a decade he and all other commanding generals in Iraq slept, strangely, in a bed with a pastel-hued, lacquered headboard depicting in frieze two doves clasping ribbons in their beaks, against a field of pink and blue poppies.

When American troops commandeered the palace complex that included this room for barracks and headquarters early in the war they retained the original French Provincial-style furnishings, including the bed.

“We’re not taking anything that the Iraqis had,” Lt. Col. Jerry E. Brooks, an Army historian, said on a tour of the base this week. “We are only taking stuff that we put in, we utilized, and when we didn’t need it anymore, we took it home.”

Encircled in 27 miles of concrete wall, Camp Victory is the largest of 505 bases once operated by the United States in Iraq. All but 11 are closed now. Camp Victory, a panoramic spread, will likely be among the last to turn out the lights. Hundreds of thousands of United States soldiers served here or passed through. During the increase in troops sent to Iraq starting in 2007, 42,000 soldiers and about that many contractors lived at Victory.

As the final chapter of America’s war in Iraq unfolds, the military will not reveal the exact closing date of Camp Victory because outside its walls insurgents remain active, and could target departing convoys. “Every time you put a truck through, it is a risk,” Colonel Brooks said. That is a reminder of the long-accepted reality here: that despite thousands of Americans lives lost and the billions in goodwill projects for Iraqis, America is also leaving behind something that is not-quite peace. The camp’s name almost becomes a question mark.

“It’s not about winning or losing but making significant progress,” said Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the top American spokesman in Iraq.

The interiors of the nine palaces will be left as they were found. Seabees, or naval repair men, fixed battle damage and wired the palaces for broadband Internet and 110-volt electricity, but otherwise left the faux marble, gold-colored leaf and kitschy furniture unaltered. That includes a chair that Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, gave to Saddam Hussein. It is an iconic Saddam-era piece with arm rests forming the heads of lions. So many soldiers posed in this throne for photographs that the upholstery is threadbare. It will be in Al Faw palace when the military hands over the keys.

Most of the thousands of soldiers garrisoned here lived in trailer courts called “Chewvilles,” a name derived from the containerized housing units, or CHUs. Tens of thousands of these will remain. The United States is leaving several hundred nonmilitary vehicles, once used to tool around the huge base, with the rationale that shipping them back would cost more than their value secondhand. The military is leaving $110 million worth of equipment.

At Camp Victory, the military named dozens of locations for dead soldiers, like the Zembiec Helipad in honor of Maj. Douglas A. Zembiec, killed in action in Baghdad in 2007. Memorials and plaques will be displayed at United States bases. The military also cleared out the chapels of all Christian religious posters and symbols.

“How does it feel to be the last division in Iraq?” ruminated Brig. Gen. Bradley A. Becker, the deputy commander, who is helping oversee the withdrawal. “Some say it’s not very sexy that you are the ones closing Iraq down. It’s a huge responsibility and an honor. I’m glad we’re the ones chosen to do it.” The last hot meal will be served here on Nov. 20, an early Thanksgiving dinner. After that, soldiers will eat field rations during their final weeks at the base. The Burger King, Taco Bell and Subway that brought some American comfort to Iraq are already gone.

Saddam Hussein and his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed, known as Chemical Ali, were imprisoned on an island in an artificial lake in the center of the base, separated by a causeway with a drawbridge. The site, called Building 114, was top secret. The United States military left unrepaired the exterior bomb damage as a disguise, and built a maximum security prison inside. “What you wanted to do was ensure that no attempts were made to break Chemical Ali or Saddam Hussein out of jail,” Colonel Brooks said. The building has no electricity today, and it is inky black inside. Roof tiles have fallen. Wires protrude from the wall.

The stainless-steel toilet that the Americans are taking, along with a steel door from Mr. Hussein’s cell, are already headed for the military police museum in Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.

As inmates, Mr. Hussein and his cousin took up gardening in the exercise yard. The planter boxes from this meager, late-life hobby remain derelict — the plywood cracked and broken, filled with baked mud and cigarette butts. The future of Mr. Hussein’s garden is unclear.

@ The NewYork Times