Sgt. Corrales and me.

[inconvertible]

I dated his sister-in-law(wife's sister), even went to his wedding. he was an arrogant asshole. couldn't happen to a nicer guy. :lol

[clambake]

?

[clambake]

Oh. Got it. Sgt. Corrales of San Antonio=dead iraqis.

[George Gervin's Afro]

I dated his sister-in-law(wife's sister), even went to his wedding. he was an arrogant asshole. couldn't happen to a nicer guy. :lol


why do you hate the troops? why do you want hussein obama to take over the world?

[Nbadan]

Kinda hard to find some details on this alleged shooting because of a media black-out, but here is what I've found so far....


Hambrick said Corrales told one of the detainees to run but the man didn't understand English so Corrales ordered the interpreter to say "run" in Arabic.

The man began backing up when Corrales raised his own weapon. Hambrick said that's when it sank in that something bad might happen.

Waddington argued that Corrales shot the man in the back yard of the house. He said Shore heard the shots and went outside and saw the man lying injured in a drainage ditch next to a small shed made out of mud.

Shore said he was afraid to disobey orders from Corrales to "finish him" so he fired off a few rounds, deliberately missing the profusely bleeding detainee. "I knew it was wrong," Shore said in an interview, of Corrales' order.

No witnesses said they saw the actual shooting. In the interview before the hearing, Shore described it as a "worst-case scenario of being at the wrong place at the wrong time."

Several soldiers said an AK-47 that belonged to the platoon's Iraqi interpreter was planted on the wounded man's body. They said they did not see who placed the "drop weapon."

Investigating officer Gonzalez repeatedly questioned the soldiers on whether Corrales intimidated or threatened them.

"In a sense of a subordinate working for the guy and not wanting to get fired, not lose my job because I was so close to everyone in my platoon," said Sgt. Robert Radle, choking up about how cohesive the platoon was.

Ten soldiers -- almost half the platoon -- died in a Black Hawk helicopter crash in August. Several were supposed to have been witnesses at the Article 32 proceedings.

Radle said he would not go to combat again with Corrales.

"I think some people can control their stress and maintain their discipline," Radle said. "He was the type of guy whose emotions would take over. He wouldn't think about the situation before he reacted. He would just go off."

Another soldier, Sgt. David Morgan-Benford, testified that Corrales had given shoot-to-kill orders on previous missions. The unit had been in Iraq since August 2006. The soldiers returned earlier this month.

Shore said he felt his fellow soldiers were still afraid to talk about Corrales, who faces his own Article 32 hearing on Monday.

"They were put on the spot," Shore said, visibly emotional after taking the stand. His testimony was not under oath and therefore cannot be used to incriminate him, Waddington said.

Waddington's first two witnesses -- Corrales and the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Michael Browder -- both invoked their right to remain silent on grounds that their statements might incriminate them and did not testify.

The Army relieved Browder of command but he has not been charged. Waddington said that being relieved of command while in the combat zone is serious and that he was still trying to find out more about Browder's role in what happened that night.

Waddington said he believed Browder and Corrales both wanted revenge for the deaths of several soldiers several days before the Kirkuk incident.

Corrales' attorney, Frank Spinner, spent the entire day listening to testimony but would not comment on the negative portrayal of his client or the strategy for his defense.

Link (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2007/10/18/shore_1019.html)

The man shot had just tested positive for explosives residue

[clambake]

The man shot had just tested positive for explosives residue
i'm guessing the air is filled with explosive residue.

[Yonivore]

If true, inconvertible had better hope Corrales' sister-in-law was a whore and that Sgt. Corrales won't be able to remember which of her thousands of lay downs accompanied her to his wedding.

Otherwise, and, again, if the account is true, he seems like the kind of guy that would hunt inconvertible down and tell him to run...

[Nbadan]

Not looking good for Corrales of San Antonio:


Sig Christenson
Express-News Military Writer
An Army hearing officer says there is “overwhelming evidence” that Sgt. 1st Class Trey Corrales killed an Iraqi prisoner after a raid last summer, and that Corrales tried to cover up the crime.


In a report to his commanders in Hawaii filed Tuesday, Lt. Col. Raul Gonzalez also said Corrales, a San Antonio native, led his elite 25th Infantry Division scout platoon in “abusive and unlawful” ways and wanted to get back at insurgents for the killing of U.S. soldiers.

Laying the blame for the killing solely on Corrales, Gonzalez said there were no “reasonable grounds” for Spc. Christopher P. Shore, who was also charged with premeditated murder in the case, to go on trial. Gonzalez pointed to Corrales as the true culprit, saying he entered a suspected insurgent's home with murder on his mind.

“Once inside the house, Sgt. 1st Class Corrales' actions and demeanor were of vengeance and reprisal,” Gonzalez wrote after fielding evidence in an Article 32 hearing for Shore.

“He left no question through his actions that he intended to kill a ‘bad guy' whether he was a combatant or not. After stating he was going to kill the next detainee that came up positive for explosive residue, he then took a detainee outside, behind the house, and shot him five to seven times.”

Gonzalez's report complicates the Army's efforts to try Shore, 25, of Winder, Ga., in the shooting. Both he and Corrales, a one-time Luther Burbank High School football player, are accused of shooting the prisoner after a raid on the night of June 22-23 — a crime that carries life in prison or death by lethal injection. The detainee died of his wounds two days later.

The hearing, which is similar to a civilian grand jury, offered military prosecutors the chance to show that Shore was an active and willing conspirator. But Gonzalez made it clear he believed evidence provided by Georgia defense attorney Michael Waddington, which depicted Shore as an unwitting victim and Corrales as sadistic, manipulative and bloodthirsty.

Gonzalez said the murder charge should be dismissed and that Shore instead be charged with aggravated assault. He also said an outside investigation should be launched into the conduct of Shore's battalion commander, Lt. Col. Michael Browder, “for his indirect involvement” in the platoon's actions on that night.

Those recommendations were sent to Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of the Honolulu-based division. Mixon can follow or ignore Gonzalez's recommendation. He is expected to decide next week if Shore and Corrales should be put on trial.

“His recommendation against the murder charge is strong,” said Waddington, who practices in Evans, Ga. “Assuming they follow it, this is a big win.”

Corrales, 35, of Honolulu, did not return phone calls Wednesday, and has not talked about the case. His civilian attorney, Frank Spinner, could not be reached and has declined to comment in detail on the case. However, he told the San Antonio Express-News in a recent interview that he expects a trial to be ordered and that his client would plead not guilty.

“Because there's a lot more work to do that requires expert involvement, many of the questions will not and cannot be answered until trial,” said Spinner, a St. Mary's University School of Law graduate. “Let me just say the factual scenario is much more complex than what it appeared to be in Shore's Article 32 hearing.”

Gonzalez was clearly swayed by Waddington's argument that Corrales was a brutal, deceptive and occasionally violent soldier, and that there was little evidence to show that Shore actually helped him kill the Iraqi. He also said Shore's decision to report the incident after the mission was “very uncharacteristic of a person who was trying to hide or be evasive.”

The scout platoon led by Corrales was dispatched via helicopter to the town of Al Shaheed southwest of Kirkuk after insurgents fired on an Army helicopter. Testimony from platoon members revealed that Corrales had ordered the men to kill all the “military-age” males they encountered — something he had told them in the past. Those soldiers also said he had vowed to kill any prisoner testing positive for gunpowder residue.

Gonzalez, the investigating officer, said the evidence showed that Corrales “did, with the intent to kill, shoot at and hit the detainee multiple times with an M-4 rifle.” He also said an “unhealthy environment” existed in the platoon “due to the abusive and unlawful leadership techniques inflicted” by Corrales and “exacerbated by poor” supervision.

But there also was evidence that Corrales tried to give the prisoner an AK-47 and that he ordered the Iraqi to run in both Arabic and English, raised his rifle and fired it five to seven times, Gonzalez said in the report.

“Several soldiers, in both testimony and sworn statements, described Sgt. 1st Class Corrales' notable aggressive and hostile behavior throughout the entire mission, but more specifically in the moments leading up to the shooting,” Gonzalez wrote. Statements and testimony in the hearing, Gonzalez said, showed that Corrales was the only person in the courtyard with the detainee when those initial rounds were fired. The detainee then lay wounded on the ground in a ditch near a shed, he wrote, calling the sequence of events “virtually irrefutable based on all of the testimony and sworn statements.”

Shore is accused of firing two rounds into the prisoner moments later after briefly thinking of what to do once Corrales ordered him to shoot the man — a crucial element in the Army's decision to charge him with premeditated murder. But Shore has insisted he was thinking of how to avoid shooting him, and that he actually fired away from the prisoner.

Gonzalez accepted Waddington's theory that it would have been difficult for his client to fire the last two bullets into the detainee's head. Using a mannequin's head and having members of his team lay on the courtroom floor as the hearing closed, Waddington showed the angles of the bullets' trajectory.

In his report, Gonzalez stated that evidence from the victim's wounds supports testimony that the prisoner was backing away from Corrales when multiple shots were fired.

Gonzalez based his decision “that only the shots fired by Sgt. 1st Class Corrales and not Spc. Shore could have caused these wounds” on several factors — including his analysis of close-up pictures of the victim's facial wounds and the mannequin that showed “the most likely line of travel” the two bullets would have taken, He also cited a pathology report's description of the entry and exit wounds.

Other factors in his decision included sworn statements and testimony showing “numerous illogical and unlawful behaviors” by some platoon members that stemmed from Corrales' leadership. The platoon members served in “a threatening and abusive work environment” and were led by Corrales with little oversight, Gonzalez wrote. It wasn't unusual, he added, for Corrales to waive a knife at his soldiers, threaten them verbally or make them fear for their jobs.

“Just as damning as the actions Sgt. 1st Class Corrales took prior to the shooting are the actions he took after the shooting to cover up what had just transpired. Sgt. 1st Class Corrales ordered the use of the interpreter's AK-47 as a ‘drop weapon' to give the appearance that the shot detainee was a non-combatant but instead an armed combatant,” Gonzalez said in his report, noting that such a rifle was carried on every mission in case “an illegal or questionable shooting” took place.

“Sgt. 1st Class Corrales gave a false report of the events that transpired out loud to all those in and around the aftermath, stating he shot the man because he was trying to flee.”

MYSA.com (http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA1100707.corrales.EN.1e9a2b641.html)

[Nbadan]

Good news for Corrales...kinda...'I was just following orders' becomes an legitimate excuse for _________________ in Iraq....

Sat Nov 10, 2007 10:05am EST


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A U.S. solider has been acquitted of three murder charges after investigations into the unlawful killings of three Iraqis earlier this year, the
U.S. military said on Saturday.

A U.S. court martial, however, found Staff Sergeant Michael Hensley, a sniper from the 1st Battalion, 501st Airborne, guilty of wrongfully placing an AK-47 rifle beside the body of an Iraqi man.

Hensley was one of three U.S. soldiers charged with the killings of three Iraqis in separate incidents during U.S. operations between April 14 and May 11 near the town
of Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad.

The charges stemmed from complaints made by other U.S. soldiers to authorities.

Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL1065285020071110?pageNumber=2)