Gen. Mattis to testify in Chessani's Haditha case

NCT:

Military prosecutors will call on Marine Gen. James Mattis to testify Monday about whether a lower-ranking officer improperly influenced his decision to file criminal charges against a Marine tied to the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, a civilian defense attorney said Friday.

Mattis is in charge of U.S. Joint Forces Command, and also is the supreme allied commander in charge of military modernization for NATO.

It is rare for a four-star general to testify in a court-martial or pretrial proceedings.

Lt. Col. Sean Gibson, a Marine Corps spokesman for the Haditha trials, would not confirm whether Mattis would testify. He said the Marine Corps does not provide witness lists for court matters in advance of the hearing, nor do they discuss the travel plans of generals. Mattis is based in Norfolk, Va.

Defense attorney Brian Rooney, who represents Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, said Friday that government prosecutors are calling Mattis to rebut a military judge's finding that there was undue influence in Mattis' decision to bring charges against Chessani.

Chessani faces charges of dereliction of duty for failing to conduct a full-scale investigation into the Nov. 19, 2005, civilian deaths, which followed a roadside bombing that killed a Marine.

Chessani's attorneys have argued that Mattis' legal adviser, a colonel, improperly influenced the case. Mattis was a three-star general when he decided to bring the charges.

With the judge's pretrial finding, the burden falls on prosecutors to prove that no undue influence occurred.

...
This case like many of the other Haditha cases is in trouble. I would also be interested in what conversations Gen. Mattis had with people above him such as the former Commandant as well as any conversations he may have had with congressman Murtha or whether he was aware of Murtha's comments on the Haditha events.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more