[Also see Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall’s blog "It Can't Happen Here - US Troops Plot to Overthow Govt” ]
According to an article in the Guardian, four of Georgia’s Fort Stewart’s active soldiers killed a former comrade and his girlfriend last December 4th to “protect an anarchist militia group.”
The militia group calls itself F.E.A.R., short for “Forever Enduring Always Ready.” Three of the four soldiers charged with these killings and facing 13 counts including malice murder, felony murder and illegal gang activity are private Isaac Aguigui, sergeant Anthony Peden and private Christopher Salmon. The fourth defendant is army private first class Michael Burnett, 25, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter, illegal gang activity and other charges in exchange for offering testimony against the other three defendants. The four men and one of their victims all had served together at Fort Stewart.
The Guardian:
In a videotaped interview with military investigators, [Prosector Isabel] Pauley said, Aguigui called himself "the nicest cold-blooded murderer you will ever meet". He used the army to recruit militia members, who wore distinctive tattoos that resemble an anarchy symbol, she said. Prosecutors say they have no idea how many members belong to the group.
"All members of the group were on active duty or were former members of the military," Pauley said. "He targeted soldiers who were in trouble or disillusioned."
According to the Georgia prosecutors, the militia group had ambitious plans.
It plotted to take over Fort Stewart by seizing its ammunition control point and talked of bombing the Forsyth Park fountain in nearby Savannah, she said. In Washington state, she added, the group plotted to bomb a dam and poison the state's apple crop. Ultimately, prosecutors said, the militia's goal was to overthrow the government and assassinate the president.
The slain Michael Roark was 19 and had served with the four defendants in the fourth brigade combat team of the army's third infantry division. The group had concluded that Roark had betrayed it. He had only been out of the military two days when he and his 17 year old girlfriend, Tiffany York, were “silenced.”
According to the Guardian:
Burnett testified that on the night of December 4, he and the three other soldiers lured Roark and York to some woods a short distance from the army post under the guise that they were going target shooting. He said Peden shot Roark's girlfriend in the head while she was trying to get out of her car. Salmon, he said, made Roark get on his knees and shot him twice in the head. Burnett said Aguigui ordered the killings. "A loose end is the way Isaac put it," Burnett said.
Also charged in the killings is Salmon's wife, Heather Salmon.
The militia was funded by its leader Aguigui using a $500,000 insurance and benefit payment from the death of his pregnant wife. He used $87,000 to purchase semiautomatic assault rifles, other kinds of guns and bomb components. These have been recovered from the homes and a storage locker of the accused soldiers. Aguigui also used the insurance payment to buy land for the militia group in Washington state.
This certainly is a troubling manifestation of dangerous underground gang-think cronyism and violence within our military.
[cross-posted at correntewire and sacramento for democracy]
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Great piece Libby, " gang-think cronyism " not only in our military. R
They train people to kill and in many cases that is what they do; it's not that easy to train them to kill only when told especially when the government is always starting wars based on lies. As I said on Stuarts blog it is the majority of us that are left without the protection from the people that they train to kill while they stay behind their gates. And, of course, most of the soldiers aren't this fanatical and they often get abandoned; which is why they always have to have fund raisers for things like wounded warriors, homeless vets or those suffering from PTSD or something like that.
hey Trudie, great to see you. yes, "gang-think" loyalty and amorality seems to have taken over for all citizens rather than awakened morality and critical thinking. And the authoritarian system of the military, and the tragic amoral corporate-agendas both Dem and Repub admins engineer willing to sacrifice the lives of our troops so easily and put them under such intense psychological and physical stress for such duration is so profoundly not only tragic but potentially problematic on what further unintended consequences for violence occur whether they are on foreign soil or stateside. best, libby
zachd! thanks for commenting. yes, what mafia-methods role-modeling the US government is doing with its lie-based conflicts abroad. Troops become disillusioned, often psychologically profoundly troubled. Physical issues, psychological ones, whether addictions or being suicidally prone from the PTSD or as these men homicidally dangerous.
Life was so cheap in foreign countries including theirs and might made faux-right and the dangers induced trigger-happiness in many cases, and then there was little accountability (look at how angry the Afghani people are at the barely slaps on wrist for outrages on the part of some of our soldiers over there and lame promises to take them seriously and then time passes and nada).
Disenfranchised and angry people with rage and guns and encouraged in the art of institutional genocide too often. And politicians and citizens think lazy jingoism on national holidays is all the serious national attention required for our troops and no conscience in so many re the horror and tragedy of what we are wreaking on the globe and on our own troops and on ourselves as vulnerable citizens against blowback from other countries and our own troops as our addict-leadership whether Dem or Republican sows its poisonous seeds for ultimate home to roost national ugly karma. best libby
Life was so cheap in foreign countries including theirs and might made faux-right and the dangers induced trigger-happiness in many cases, and then there was little accountability (look at how angry the Afghani people are at the barely slaps on wrist for outrages on the part of some of our soldiers over there and lame promises to take them seriously and then time passes and nada).
Disenfranchised and angry people with rage and guns and encouraged in the art of institutional genocide too often. And politicians and citizens think lazy jingoism on national holidays is all the serious national attention required for our troops and no conscience in so many re the horror and tragedy of what we are wreaking on the globe and on our own troops and on ourselves as vulnerable citizens against blowback from other countries and our own troops as our addict-leadership whether Dem or Republican sows its poisonous seeds for ultimate home to roost national ugly karma. best libby
Thanks for providing more background on this story. I think there is another angle here. Through their repeal of most of the Bill of Rights, the Obama administration has virtually ended the right of the US population to legally dissent. From a brief perusal of of stuff people are posting on the Internet, Americans of all politically stripes are responding to the extreme repression by arming themselves in unprecedented numbers.
The lesson of history is that when you outlaw legal dissent, you gets violence. This army-linked anarchist militia is just the tip of the iceberg.
The lesson of history is that when you outlaw legal dissent, you gets violence. This army-linked anarchist militia is just the tip of the iceberg.
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