.Soldiers' feud in Iraq comes to a fatal end
Captain Phillip Esposito and Staff Sergeant Alberto Martinez went to war together, two very different soldiers from the same New York National Guard unit. After five months in Iraq, a bombing sent both men back home, one in a coffin, the other in handcuffs, a suspect in his murder.
Esposito, as straightforward as his M4 carbine, was an Eagle Scout and West Point graduate who built a civilian career as a computer specialist for a Wall Street investment bank. His service as a National Guard company commander, family members said, was a matter of honor and old-fashioned patriotism.
Martinez came from a tougher background, documents and interviews show, but found camaraderie and discipline in military service.
Transplanted from Puerto Rico as a teenager, he drifted through a series of part-time jobs after high school, taking community college classes in electronics. But he had a habit of playing by his own rules, some of his managers said, and lacked maturity. Rejected by the Army Reserve and the Navy Reserve, he was fired from a job in 1999.
The National Guard eventually admitted him on a waiver after three failed attempts to pass the military's standardized aptitude test. Working at an arsenal in upstate New York, Martinez strained to handle duties that called for more than basic clerical or mechanical work.
In January 2005, with the Iraq insurgency in violent bloom, the dutiful company commander and the struggling sergeant were deployed with the 42nd Infantry Division to northern Iraq. At a base in Tikrit, under battlefield conditions in a hostile Sunni
-------Mutual distrust
Arab region, a mutual distrust between Martinez and Esposito devolved into acrimony and, according to army prosecutors, murder.
""I want him to die,"" one soldier later testified he heard Martinez say soon after their arrival in Iraq.
On June 7 of that year, army prosecutors said, Martinez detonated a Claymore mine he had placed in the window of Esposito's quarters, killing the captain and severely wounding a first lieutenant, Lou Allen, who died later in surgery. They said three hand grenades were also used in the attack.
In the coming months, Martinez is expected to face court-martial in the deaths. He has consistently maintained his innocence. If convicted, he would be eligible for the death penalty.
Attacks on soldiers by another soldier, usually of a lower rank, were an alarming problem during the Vietnam War but have been extremely rare in Iraq.
The 2005 attack is only the second such case the army has prosecuted since the beginning of the Iraq war. By comparison, in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970, the army logged more than 300 attacks that killed 75 commissioned and noncommissioned officers, said Paul Springer, a history professor at West Point.
--------All-volunteer
Experts attributed the decrease to the professionalism and higher morale that came with the all-volunteer military instituted in 1973. With the attacks, ""you're likely to find someone who never really fit into the military system, who probably felt like an outsider,"" said Dr. David Walker, a psychiatrist who served in the U.S. Air Force.
Prosecutors have argued that in this case, the evidence points squarely at Martinez.
They said that he was the only soldier with access to grenades and Claymore mines who had repeatedly threatened the captain; that after the attack, investigators discovered a grenade crate in the sergeant's supply room bearing the same serial number as the one stamped on grenade parts found near the scene; that shortly before the attack, 10 grenades from Martinez's supply area disappeared; and that immediately after the attack, he was seen wearing a Kevlar vest and standing in the road a few meters from where the mine's firing apparatus was found.
Army defense lawyers have argued that the evidence is circumstantial and does not come close to showing that their client, who remains in military custody in North Carolina, committed any crime. Many soldiers had access to grenades, they said, and serial numbers on grenade crates did not always match those on the grenades inside.
Martinez's lawyers declined to comment for this article. Martinez had needed special permission just to enter the military, after scoring in the 15th, 17th and 21st percentile in his attempts to pass its standardized aptitude battery between 1987 and 1990, according to records obtained by The New York Times. To pass, applicants must score above the 30th percentile. On Dec. 20, 1990, a National Guard colonel granted him what is known as a Mental Category IV waiver, for recruits with low test scores who the service believes can be trained to be good soldiers.
By 2004, the war had begun its turn for the worse, and Guard units across the United States were mobilized for active duty. That May, Esposito was called up and became the leader of the 42nd Division's Headquarters and Headquarters Company, a division-level supply and logistics company.
He was put in charge of a company that was, by his standards, frustratingly informal and unfocused as it prepared to deploy to Iraq, soldiers said later in military court testimony.
Not everyone in the unit appreciated the captain's style. As the unit counted the days to deployment, Esposito scheduled more and more meetings; Martinez, the unit's supply sergeant, seemed unable or unwilling to keep up with the myriad demands on him and grew increasingly bitter, soldiers said.
Once in Tikrit, Martinez, as supply sergeant, was doing the work normally handled by three or four people; the entire unit felt the pressure of operating in the heart of a Sunni insurgency. When the unit lost track of $30,000 worth of equipment, including night-vision goggles and radio encryption devices, the division command docked both Esposito and Martinez a month's pay. Each man blamed the other for the blunder, said Luis Badillo, a lieutenant and the company's executive officer at the time.
By late May, Esposito began openly belittling Martinez, soldiers said, and forbade him from even entering the supply room without an escort from a superior officer. Sometime that month, Martinez, worried about losing his job, made threats against Esposito in a conversation with another captain in the unit.
""He said that he hated Esposito,"" that captain, Carl Prober, testified in 2005. Martinez, in a profanity-laced tirade, threatened Esposito, Prober said.
On the evening of June 7, Esposito and Allen played the board game Risk with a staff sergeant and were catching up afterward in the captain's office. Around 10 p.m., a thunderous blast shook the building. Three smaller explosions followed. Everyone assumed they were under an insurgent mortar attack. Then came a cry for help.Combat triage quickly gave way to a murder investigation.
Military investigators found fragments of the Claymore at the scene. In and around a manmade lake nearby, they discovered the metal handles from three American grenades and the Claymore's detonation cord and firing device.
Moments after the explosions, Staff Sergeant David Wentzel, who had taken refuge in a small cement building nearby, saw Martinez standing in the road near the captain's quarters, covered in dust and visibly shaking, as if shell-shocked, according to Wentzel's testimony.
""After I had time to think about it, it was almost like he knew it was over,"" he said. ""He wasn't running around trying to seek cover. He was standing there.""
TeranTimes
You think Iran is "cheery picking" the news they print?
Esposito, as straightforward as his M4 carbine, was an Eagle Scout and West Point graduate who built a civilian career as a computer specialist for a Wall Street investment bank. His service as a National Guard company commander, family members said, was a matter of honor and old-fashioned patriotism.
Martinez came from a tougher background, documents and interviews show, but found camaraderie and discipline in military service.
Transplanted from Puerto Rico as a teenager, he drifted through a series of part-time jobs after high school, taking community college classes in electronics. But he had a habit of playing by his own rules, some of his managers said, and lacked maturity. Rejected by the Army Reserve and the Navy Reserve, he was fired from a job in 1999.
The National Guard eventually admitted him on a waiver after three failed attempts to pass the military's standardized aptitude test. Working at an arsenal in upstate New York, Martinez strained to handle duties that called for more than basic clerical or mechanical work.
In January 2005, with the Iraq insurgency in violent bloom, the dutiful company commander and the struggling sergeant were deployed with the 42nd Infantry Division to northern Iraq. At a base in Tikrit, under battlefield conditions in a hostile Sunni
-------Mutual distrust
Arab region, a mutual distrust between Martinez and Esposito devolved into acrimony and, according to army prosecutors, murder.
""I want him to die,"" one soldier later testified he heard Martinez say soon after their arrival in Iraq.
On June 7 of that year, army prosecutors said, Martinez detonated a Claymore mine he had placed in the window of Esposito's quarters, killing the captain and severely wounding a first lieutenant, Lou Allen, who died later in surgery. They said three hand grenades were also used in the attack.
In the coming months, Martinez is expected to face court-martial in the deaths. He has consistently maintained his innocence. If convicted, he would be eligible for the death penalty.
Attacks on soldiers by another soldier, usually of a lower rank, were an alarming problem during the Vietnam War but have been extremely rare in Iraq.
The 2005 attack is only the second such case the army has prosecuted since the beginning of the Iraq war. By comparison, in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970, the army logged more than 300 attacks that killed 75 commissioned and noncommissioned officers, said Paul Springer, a history professor at West Point.
--------All-volunteer
Experts attributed the decrease to the professionalism and higher morale that came with the all-volunteer military instituted in 1973. With the attacks, ""you're likely to find someone who never really fit into the military system, who probably felt like an outsider,"" said Dr. David Walker, a psychiatrist who served in the U.S. Air Force.
Prosecutors have argued that in this case, the evidence points squarely at Martinez.
They said that he was the only soldier with access to grenades and Claymore mines who had repeatedly threatened the captain; that after the attack, investigators discovered a grenade crate in the sergeant's supply room bearing the same serial number as the one stamped on grenade parts found near the scene; that shortly before the attack, 10 grenades from Martinez's supply area disappeared; and that immediately after the attack, he was seen wearing a Kevlar vest and standing in the road a few meters from where the mine's firing apparatus was found.
Army defense lawyers have argued that the evidence is circumstantial and does not come close to showing that their client, who remains in military custody in North Carolina, committed any crime. Many soldiers had access to grenades, they said, and serial numbers on grenade crates did not always match those on the grenades inside.
Martinez's lawyers declined to comment for this article. Martinez had needed special permission just to enter the military, after scoring in the 15th, 17th and 21st percentile in his attempts to pass its standardized aptitude battery between 1987 and 1990, according to records obtained by The New York Times. To pass, applicants must score above the 30th percentile. On Dec. 20, 1990, a National Guard colonel granted him what is known as a Mental Category IV waiver, for recruits with low test scores who the service believes can be trained to be good soldiers.
By 2004, the war had begun its turn for the worse, and Guard units across the United States were mobilized for active duty. That May, Esposito was called up and became the leader of the 42nd Division's Headquarters and Headquarters Company, a division-level supply and logistics company.
He was put in charge of a company that was, by his standards, frustratingly informal and unfocused as it prepared to deploy to Iraq, soldiers said later in military court testimony.
Not everyone in the unit appreciated the captain's style. As the unit counted the days to deployment, Esposito scheduled more and more meetings; Martinez, the unit's supply sergeant, seemed unable or unwilling to keep up with the myriad demands on him and grew increasingly bitter, soldiers said.
Once in Tikrit, Martinez, as supply sergeant, was doing the work normally handled by three or four people; the entire unit felt the pressure of operating in the heart of a Sunni insurgency. When the unit lost track of $30,000 worth of equipment, including night-vision goggles and radio encryption devices, the division command docked both Esposito and Martinez a month's pay. Each man blamed the other for the blunder, said Luis Badillo, a lieutenant and the company's executive officer at the time.
By late May, Esposito began openly belittling Martinez, soldiers said, and forbade him from even entering the supply room without an escort from a superior officer. Sometime that month, Martinez, worried about losing his job, made threats against Esposito in a conversation with another captain in the unit.
""He said that he hated Esposito,"" that captain, Carl Prober, testified in 2005. Martinez, in a profanity-laced tirade, threatened Esposito, Prober said.
On the evening of June 7, Esposito and Allen played the board game Risk with a staff sergeant and were catching up afterward in the captain's office. Around 10 p.m., a thunderous blast shook the building. Three smaller explosions followed. Everyone assumed they were under an insurgent mortar attack. Then came a cry for help.Combat triage quickly gave way to a murder investigation.
Military investigators found fragments of the Claymore at the scene. In and around a manmade lake nearby, they discovered the metal handles from three American grenades and the Claymore's detonation cord and firing device.
Moments after the explosions, Staff Sergeant David Wentzel, who had taken refuge in a small cement building nearby, saw Martinez standing in the road near the captain's quarters, covered in dust and visibly shaking, as if shell-shocked, according to Wentzel's testimony.
""After I had time to think about it, it was almost like he knew it was over,"" he said. ""He wasn't running around trying to seek cover. He was standing there.""
TeranTimes
You think Iran is "cheery picking" the news they print?
posted by madtom at 2:14 PM
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