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Charles L. Cotton wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 6:07 pm

Hoodasnacks wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 5:03 pm

Charles L. Cotton wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 3:36 pm

That's just one article, so look for more if you want to confirm the facts. Note that the article is quoting heavily from testimony given by West and his men during the Article 15 hearing. It's not just NYT propaganda.

West violated the UCMJ pure and simple. The amount of intelligence, or lack thereof, wouldn't change that fact. You try to give him an out by referencing "imminent danger" but there was no such evidence admitted during the hearing. An accidental or unintentional violation of constitutional rights by a COP is not close to what happened with West. He allowed/ordered his men to take action that violated the UCMJ then he did so himself. A better comparison would be a police officer beating a suspect, then demanding information and confession by sticking his head in a barrel and firing a pistol next to his ear.

Chas.

Ugh...I wrote out a detailed response to this and hit submit and the page didn't load and I lost it. I'm not writing it again. The gist was this:

I read about 10 articles from the time. Most were hit pieces trying to take down a candidate--including the NYT article. I've been around this since I was 5 years old (my dad was a state senator in Utah that was constantly attacked in the press because planned parenthood hated him). It's easy to recognize. There was a semi-fair article from the Florida Sun Sentinel that made a few things clear to me.

It is not me who is "trying to give an out by referencing imminent danger" the judge did...the judge who had all the facts. Multiple military experts opined that the judge went with a fine and no court martial because of the difficult circumstances.

It is easy to take sound bytes from a person (especially an honest one that is admitting wrongdoing) and make them look bad. I do this with deposition testimony all the time. That is what the NYT article is doing.

West's fine was ~2 months of salary. Your cop analogy is severely logically flawed. We ask cops and deployed military officers to do very different things. You would need to find an act that would get a cop suspended for 2 months and then ask if that is a deal breaker 20 years later.

A $5000 is the price tag that the judge put on the severity of West's wrongdoing. That fine is the same that some states charge for a DWI. It is also the same fine that a TX congressman got for skipping the security line on the house floor. I'm going to treat this incident accordingly. That does not make me a dishonorable person. I would caution you on such a polarized stance. It will only turn people off.

Charles L. Cotton wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 3:36 pm There's much that will come out about Allen West as the campaign heats up. There's a hell of a lot more voters need to know about West than just his blatant disregard of the law. The paragraphs below were taken from a 2004 New York Times article.

New York Times wrote: In August, Colonel West learned from an intelligence specialist of a supposed plot to assassinate him, which would endanger the soldiers who traveled with him, too. The plot reportedly involved Mr. Hamoodi, a police officer who occasionally worked for the Americans. Although Mr. Hamoodi is a Shiite Muslim, and most attacks against Americans were carried out by Sunnis loyal to Saddam Hussein, some police officers do cooperate with the insurgents and several have been accused of attacking foreigners.

Colonel West said he initially thought ''the information was a joke.'' But a week later several of his officers were ambushed when he was supposed to be traveling with them. A roadside bomb sheared off the back panel of a Humvee, and a firefight ensued. None of his men were seriously hurt, but Colonel West began taking the risk of an assassination seriously.

On Aug. 20, he asked his men to pick up Mr. Hamoodi and bring him to the base. ''There was a sense of urgency because I felt in the next couple of days, something was going to happen,'' Colonel West testified at his hearing.

In an interview in Baghdad, Mr. Hamoodi, a thin, bespectacled 31-year-old, said aides to Colonel West stopped by his police station and asked him to join them on patrol. Mr. Hamoodi climbed into the back of their open Humvee, he said, and the vehicle soon jerked off the road.

Soldiers testified later that Mr. Hamoodi appeared to go for his weapon and needed to be subdued. Mr. Hamoodi said that one soldier punched him several times, and that he was handcuffed, shackled and blindfolded.

At the base, he said, they threw him, still bound, off the Humvee, then led him into the jail and eventually into an interrogation room. They pressed him for the details of an assassination plan, about which he knew nothing, he said. During the interrogation, he said, the translator kicked him in the shin and told him he needed to confess before Colonel West showed up to kill him.

Mr. Hamoodi said he felt relieved to hear the colonel was expected. He considered Colonel West to be ''calm, quiet, clever and sociable.'' When the colonel first entered the interrogation room, Mr. Hamoodi said, he thought, ''Here is the man who will treat me fairly.''

Then, he said, Colonel West cocked his gun.

Colonel West said that he did not then put a round in the gun's chamber but that he did place the pistol in his lap. He asked Mr. Hamoodi why he wanted to kill him. Mr. Hamoodi said that he protested, ''I've worked with you, I like you,'' but that Colonel West silenced his protest. Colonel West pressed for the names and locations of those involved in the supposed plot, and he got no answers.

Soon, the soldiers began striking and shoving Mr. Hamoodi. They were not instructed to do so by Colonel West but they were not stopped, either, they said. ''I didn't know it was wrong to hit a detainee,'' a 20-year-old soldier from Daytona Beach said at the hearing. Colonel West testified that he would have stopped the beating ''had it become too excessive.''

Eventually, the colonel and his soldiers moved Mr. Hamoodi outside, and threatened him with death. Colonel West said he fired a warning shot in the air and began counting down from five. He asked his soldiers to put Mr. Hamoodi's head in a sand-filled barrel usually used for clearing weapons. At the end of his count, Colonel West fired a shot into the barrel, angling his gun away from the Iraqi's head, he testified.

According to the interpreter, Mr. Hamoodi finally ''admitted there would be attacks, and called out names.'' Mr. Hamoodi said that he was not sure what he told the Americans, but that it was meaningless information induced by fear and pain.

At least one man named by Mr. Hamoodi was taken into custody, according to testimony, and his home was searched. No plans for attacks on Americans or weapons were found. Colonel West testified that he did not know whether ''any corroboration'' of a plot was ever found, adding: ''At the time I had to base my decision on the intelligence I received. It's possible that I was wrong about Mr. Hamoodi.'
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/27/worl ... ainee.html
'

I know some people are going to praise West for his actions. To those folks I would ask, "what laws should a Governor West be allowed to ignore at his whim?" He violated at least two provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and allowed or ordered his men to do likewise. Is that okay in your mind? If so, then where is the limit? If you condone his actions in Iraqi, then never complain about any COP that violates a citizen's rights. That would be a double standard that no honorable man would accept.

But the Iraqi incident that ended his career is far from the only thing voters need to know about West. Other things, many other things, will be coming out during the campaign.

Chas.