LtCol Steve Morgan USMC (retired) who in Episode 27 of the Go Commando Show described his thirty year military career now describes his assignment as a panel member (also known as a jury member) during the 2008 military trial of the first Marine Special Operations Task Force that deployed to Afghanistan. The trial was unique for many reasons, 1) the Marine Corps had not utilized a Court of Inquiry since 1956, 2) the Court of Inquiry (COI) is akin to a civilian Grand Jury, 3) there was no prima facie evidence (e.g. bodies, blood, photos of bodies) to allow a Court Martial, 4) the verdict was announced four months after the trial ended. The Marine Special Operations Task Force Violent was accused of killing 19 and wounding 50 additional Afghan civilians which many of those claimed were allegedly "women and children." The Afghans protested in the streets following the incident and pleaded to the Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai to take action. Karzai swiftly and strongly opposed the action and vehemently urged the American senior Army general to take action which resulted in the expulsion of the entire Marine Special Operations Task Force which was ordered by the Army leadership only one day after the American preliminary investigator began his interviews with the US Marines in Afghanistan. Episode 28 describes in detail from the eye-witness account of LtCol Morgan as a jury member what he saw and heard from 45 witnesses, over 3.5 weeks of testimony and over 10,000 pages of NCIS pre-trial investigative notes. LtCol Steve Morgan is one of the few people who saw and heard everything inside the COI and also is one of the few who has mentioned what happened during the trial. Episode 28 will provide some revelations which have not previously been described in the main stream media's reporting.
(#LtColMorgan, #MARSOC, #COI, #Exonerate, #TaskForceViolent, #JusticeForAll)
