1300 court martials. Too many laws.

That's what I got out of the hearings today. Rummy whining about too damn many laws in their way. And, he might have found the pictures sooner, but with nearly 1300 court martials going on, they got buried in the stack. 1300 court martials? I'm no military statistician, but that seems like a huge number. What the hell is going on over there? Are they catching our guys running like hell for the border? Pissing in the commandants' helmets?

But Rummy seemed particularly agitated, that if the damn law wasn't interfering, there wouldn't be any big deal about torturing and killing prisoners. Just let us do what they want, and shut up.

Maybe back a year ago when he said America needs to be prepared for some horrible things. Probably because he already had his interrogation policies in place!

It's like a Police Chief trying to say "I ignored the mass murder because there were 1300 (much less) crimes in the city in the same month". Excuse me, but certainly things should get "flagged" and anything dealing with torture should have been done so.

BTW - 1300 doesn't sound out of the ordinary to me - it would be 1 per 2000 or so people in the armed services.

Shrub, Rums, CHEENEE, and so on...

:shrug:

but I posted court martials here...it is the first way, I am pretty sure.

There are approx. 150,000 troops in Iraq. 1300 courts martial are not alot. Now take into consideration that many of these will be for minor offenses. For instance if someone is late to a formation they will be counceled and get corrective training. This could be a simple as requiring them to be to formation 30 minutes early. Now if they do this 2 or 3 more times they will probably get an article 15. They can refuse to sign the article 15 and plead their case to a court martial. just because you see 1300 courts martial don't confuse that with 1300 soldiers being charged with violent crimes.

It took me a while to remember the crime most likely to send a soldier to prision. A court martial must be done if jail is the possible punishment.

Have you guessed it. It is passing bad checks. You can be sent to a minimum level military prison for bad check writing. This is why you see so many companies outside of post that will lend money to a sailor or an airman. They know they will be paid back or the individual can be sent to jail.

i can assure you that folks in the military bounce checks all the time. maybe in theory this could land them in jail, but in practice, it doesn't.

certainly we never did this as the customer cannot make good on his payment from a jail cell. reposessing the car was the worst punishment we ever meted out.

If its a constant problem with bouncing checks they can and are sent to jail.

When I was at Fort Lewis, which has a minimum level jail, the good prisioners did some work around post and wore a specific color jump suit. You could talk to the prisioners at the greenhouse, and most would say the crime committed was passing bad checks.

If your sentence is over 5 years, then you go to Ft Leavenworth.