Hi,

A relatively boring week. There must be something going on. We are right now in the third week of Ramadan, the insurgents would normally be building toward week 4 and Eid al Fidr, the night of a thousand prayers, when the fanatics believe their final prayers will be worth 1,000 times as much, making them 1,000 times as effective. But nothing is going on. Not that I am complaining, but the only things going on are paperwork.

So, I figured I would forward part of an email I sent to Dave, who asked a question that most people who are not in detainee affairs might be wondering about:

As far as the difference between captures on the battlefield and violent crimes arrests, the differences are numerous. I will detail only the difference in philosophy and point out a few differences this make on the ground. The differences in philosophy are night and day.

A violent crime is generally agreed by the arresting party, the guilty party and bystanders to be a bad thing. Maybe the murdered person deserved it, but even most murderers would agree that they have done something wrong. Witnesses are common and usually around until trial. Whereas, a suicide bomber considers themselves to be doing a good thing, even when they kill civilians. Ditto for the guy making the vest or car bomb, the guys designing new car bombs, the guys recruiting and transporting the suicide bombers and the guys acquiring and storing the explosives. They all believe they are good guys and part of a righteous cause. Bystanders who may witness the explosion or see the creation of the bomb are not sympathetic to the victims or generally willing to testify in a court. Another difference is that the violence involved in the act is generally considered, if not a good thing, part of the normal course of doing business. Bank robbers do not usually set out to kill the tellers, etc. A suicide bomber does intend to kill, as does every person in the chain.

A second difference is in resources. A criminal has only his own resources and some technology he has lifted from the surrounding society. Soldiers have vastly greater resources from rockets and bombs to Artillery and heavy machine guns. This difference in many ways is huge as specialization allows for leveraged effectiveness. A soldier may be an idiot, but he can use an assault weapon and will have plenty of ammo. A criminal needs to subsist on what they can con, steal or purchase based on their own skill set. A criminal needs to make money, a soldier is in the process of spending it.

Lastly, being in the military is considered transitional employment. A police officer will be around far longer. So the people investigating and documenting scenes have vastly different skill levels.

What this translated to on the ground is that a violent crime arrest is investigated by a police officer that has generally been doing this for years and expects to do it for many years more. The police officer can count on unrestricted access to a crime scene and the aid of bystanders in a trial or collecting evidence. A police department will be allowed several hundred hours to devote to a murder, documenting the crime scene, capturing the perpetrator and assisting with prosecution. The police will have evidence rooms and custodians and crime scene experts. A soldier in contrast will be there when the crime occurs, but will generally have to clear the area within an hour. The soldier will have 1-2 years time in and will expect to do the job for an average of 3 more. The bystanders will be suspicious if not openly hostile. The soldier will get 3-4 hours do devote to the crime scene and processing the prisoner. The soldier will not have fingerprint kits, DNA testing or (most of the time) even a camera to record the scene. The soldier will not be allowed to interview the prisoner nor appear at the trial. Soldiers are trained to stay alive, not document crime scenes.

So, a typical battlefield capture is when our troops either surround a house or wander into an ambush. Everybody fires at everybody and sometimes at the scenery. Close air support is called in, causing explosions and firing several hundred rounds of their own. Then things quiet down, sometimes people walk out of the bush with their hands high, sometimes they throw down their weapons and hide. The Americans then sweep through the area. The survivors are then documented for evidence and information. Sometimes they will get tested for gunpowder residue. Regardless, everyone has to clear the area within an hour to prevent counterattack. Some people will be taken prisoner, the rest will be let go, either to never be seen again or to be killed in the next battle. Weapons are immediately destroyed, usually by burning. The prisoners are then dropped off at the base detention center where the soldiers stay for an hour or two writing up capture documents. Compare that to CSI. Think of the possibility of evidentiary tampering and the difficulty associating one guy to one bullet that killed a soldier. Let alone the difficulty of associating some bomb components to a particular suicide bombing that happened weeks or months in the past.

Then think about taking the prisoner to trial. Without fingerprints how do you prove that this particular AK (that was burned at the scene) is the one that fired the bullet? Without fingerprints how do you prove that the bomb components were assembled by this prisoner for that bombing? Without witness statements how do you show that this prisoner kept a suicide bomber at his house and then handed him the keys to the bomb laden car? We can and do use what evidence there is, but the amount is vastly different between a criminal arrest and a battlefield capture. Makes for interesting law.

This weeks picture is of some kids playing in a stream that crosses the base. The last child I artfully angled the picture so that the picture does not show he is naked as a Jaybird. You can see the fence that is the edge of the base in the foreground and the corn the kids