Court Martial

A soldier is facing court-martial next week on charges that he caused the deaths of two other soldiers when the five-ton military truck he was driving overturned April 4. The accident occurred when Spec. Gerald J. Galarza, 22, of Union City, Hudson County, was driving northeast near Range 32, a shooting range for small arms, with Spec. Tanya D. Melvin and Spec. John R. Rob, all of the 716th Quartermaster Company. The soldiers were doing routine weekend reserve training, post officials said.

A senior state police officer whose court-martial was scheduled to start on Monday retired from the force yesterday. Maj. Sidney Deyo, 54, the former head of the state police academy, was suspended with pay from his job as department disaster-operations officer in July. He was scheduled to be court-martialed Monday on unspecified charges. His retirement becomes official at midnight tonight. Deyo, a 33-year veteran, said yesterday in an interview that his retirement was not connected with the pending court-martial.

In 1942, Pvt. Edward Leonski was convicted in the murders of three Australian women and became the first GI to be executed by the Army in World War II for crimes against a civilian. Leonski was a schizophrenic who believed that he was a werewolf, but it is the contention of Philippe Mora's Death of a Soldier that he was really a sacrificial lamb. Australia has already given us the finest court-martial film of recent memory in Bruce Beresford's Breaker Morant (1979). Although Death of a Soldier touches upon the same theme of military and political expediency and craven compromises, it doesn't rank with Beresford's powerful drama.

Ronald Jean-Baptiste joined the Air Force Reserve and tried to give blood when he was at boot camp in Texas in 1988. He says the Air Force didn't want his blood because he is Haitian. Today, Jean-Baptiste, a Brooklyn resident, is scheduled for a preliminary hearing at McGuire Air Force Base in Burlington County, reportedly the first member of the Air Force Reserve to face a possible court-martial for refusing to participate in Operation Desert Shield. Jean-Baptiste, 22, a member of the 34th Medical Service Squadron attached to McGuire, refused to join his unit when it was activated six weeks ago. He said he made the decision for moral reasons and because he thinks the Air Force discriminates against Haitians.

Outside, the cold prairie wind is driving the rain against the windows of the rented ranch house, and as the kids get ready for bed, Air Force Capt. Jim Wang is sitting on the living room couch contemplating his possible infamy. He knows the court-martial charges say only, "dereliction of duty. " But he knows, too, what people will think: He's the one responsible for the catastrophe. The others have all been cleared, and he's the guy whose hands may be stained with the innocent blood of 26 victims.

A military appeals court has thrown out the murder conviction of Army Pfc. Mark McMonagle, of East Falls, who has spent three years in prison for shooting an unarmed woman during the waning days of Operation Just Cause, the U.S invasion of Panama. McMonagle, 23, a former Boy Scout and Roxborough High School soccer star, became the first U.S. soldier since the Vietnam War to be tried and convicted of murder during a combat operation. His attorney, Peter F. Vaira of Center City, learned yesterday that the U.S. Court of Military Appeals ruled on Monday that the judge who presided over the April 1990 trial had failed to properly instruct the court-martial board that found McMonagle guilty.

TUZLA MOVING MOSLEMS OUT FOR GOOD After routing thousands of civilians from their homes and burning their villages, Serbs yesterday reportedly offered to escort the beleaguered Moslems from the region and told them they could never return. The statement, reported by the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug, apparently confirms the Serbs' goal in the offensive: driving all Moslems from eastern Bosnian regions bordering Serbia in a quest for a so-called Greater Serbia. Serbs have been accused of widespread "ethnic cleansing" in the Bosnian war. LONDON MAJOR: MERIT RULES THE MEDALS Prime Minister John Major has taken a whack at the "gongs," announcing yesterday that merit will dictate who gets the 2,000-odd knighthoods, peerages and shiny gold medals awarded each year.

An Army sergeant will face a general court-martial for his role in supervising a live-ammunition training exercise in which an airman was killed at Fort Dix, base spokeswoman Dianne C. Felder said yesterday. Sgt. Steven Ray Smith, 27, of Houston, was charged Oct. 10 with involuntary manslaughter in the death of Airman Sean Elms, 19, who was shot in the back of the head with an M-16 rifle by another airman taking part in the Aug. 12 exercise. The commander of Fort Dix, Maj. Gen. John Peter Herrling, decided Tuesday on a general court-martial, a trial for more serious offenses, rather than a summary court-martial or administrative charges.

It's been said that the closest a man can come to Godlike omnipotence on this earth is to be the captain of a warship. But what happens when the captain seems about to go off the deep end? The Caine Mutiny (1954) is one of the more celebrated considerations of the possibilities - chiefly for the court-martial scene in which Humphrey Bogart's Capt. Philip Francis Queeg squeezes steel ball bearings in his hand and comes apart on the witness stand. The court-martial examines the events leading up to the decision of the officers of the USS Caine to relieve the troubled Queeg of command after his erratic behavior leads to near-disaster at sea. Bogie decided he wanted to play Queeg when he read Herman Wouk's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which subsequently became the successful Broadway play that served as the basis for the film.

An Air Force pilot who faces a possible court-martial for refusing to take the anthrax vaccine waived his right to a military hearing that was scheduled for yesterday at Dover Air Force Base. Maj. Sonnie Bates, a 14-year veteran who is charged with refusing to obey a lawful order, has said he fears the vaccine is a threat to his health. In a letter he sent to the Air Force officer who would have presided, Bates said he was waiving his right to the Article 32 hearing because he believed the Air Force was using the proceeding merely to publicize the safety of the vaccine.

Storm paralyzes Washington state SEATTLE - A monster Pacific Northwest storm coated the Seattle area in a thick layer of ice Thursday and brought much of Washington state to a standstill, sending hundreds of cars spinning out of control, temporarily shutting down Sea-Tac Airport and knocking down so many trees that members of the Washington State Patrol brought chain saws to work. Oregon experienced torrential rain that swept away a car from a grocery store parking lot, killing a mother and her 1-year-old son. East of Seattle, a man was killed by a falling tree, authorities said.

Upon taking office, President Obama immediately suspended the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay to give his administration time to determine the best system for trying detainees. Authorized by Congress in 2006, the military commissions had been criticized domestically and internationally for not protecting the rights of detainees and for being too politicized. Obama's suspension expires next week, and the administration still has not announced its plan. In my opinion, there are two possible options: trial in the federal criminal courts, or a revised military-commission system using court-martial rules.

Shannen Rossmiller is a former Montana judge who hunts terrorists online. In her search, she found a National Guardsman who wanted to betray America by giving up tank secrets to al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq. She drew him out to learn his plan. She tells of a Web site that featured pictures of Osama bin Laden and a burning American flag. She explains how an American National Guardsman she'd met on that site wanted to give over U.S. tank secrets to al-Qaeda. And when her nearly full day on the witness stand is done, Shannen Rossmiller has demonstrated to a court-martial jury of nine commissioned officers at Fort Lewis, Wash.

Private investment too risky for Social Security I most emphatically urge the White House and Congress not to touch the Social Security trust fund any more. Leaving it alone would be prudent and in the best interest of the American wage earner. I am of the opinion that private investments of pension funds are very unsafe, especially in consideration of our tremendous national deficit and the prohibitive cost of the dubious war in Iraq. Many new retirees could be left without adequate retirement money.

Before she was killed, Luma was a bright-eyed Iraqi translator who during the day went on dangerous missions with the U.S. military and at night worried about her daughter growing up in Iraq. She wore tight jeans, wasn't afraid to drive fast and eschewed the Muslim head scarf so many in Iraq wear. Luma, 28, whose last name is being withheld to protect her family, worked with an intelligence unit of the First Cavalry Division and made friends with two soldiers in particular. One was Spec.

AT WHAT POINT can a soldier disobey a direct order? Should commanding officers send men on suicide missions? Can the chain of command end up strangling the military? Every war brings with it moral conundrums and questions that test a nation's resolve and sense of justice, and the Iraq War is no exception. First, there was the torture of prisoners by U.S. troops in Abu Ghraib. Now we have soldiers disobeying orders during combat because they fear for their safety.

Two Air Force Academy football players accused of using steroids will be court-martialed, the military said. Junior running back Matthew Ward, charged with wrongful use and possession of the anabolic steroid methandrostenolone, will be court-martialed Aug. 18, the academy said. A date has not been set for the court-martial for junior linebacker Overton Spence Jr. on charges of wrongful use, distribution and possession of methandrostenolone. Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. John Rosa Jr. referred both cases to courts-martial earlier this week.

Two Air Force Academy football players accused of using steroids will be court-martialed, the military said. Junior running back Matthew Ward, charged with wrongful use and possession of the anabolic steroid methandrostenolone, will be court-martialed Aug. 18, the academy said Thursday. A date has not been set for the court-martial for junior linebacker Overton Spence Jr. on charges of wrongful use, distribution and possession of methandrostenolone. Glynn Cyprien was fired yesterday, two months after becoming basketball coach at Louisiana-Lafayette, because he did not have a degree from Texas-San Antonio University that he listed on his resume.

Um Nauras, tending to her snack-and-cigarette stand at a checkpoint entrance to the U.S.-led coalition's headquarters, expressed no confidence that justice would be served in the first court-martial of a U.S. soldier in the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal. Her verdict was predetermined for all the soldiers involved. "I would hang them," said Nauras, 35. "This is a crime against Islam. " Many Iraqis were dismissive of yesterday's court-martial of Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits and regarded a one-year sentence of confinement - the maximum penalty he faced - as another American insult.

WATCHING Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testify left the impression that he was mostly upset that digital cameras had been invented and used to record the despicable events of Iraqi prisoner abuse. Whenever Mr. Rumsfeld was asked why these horrific events hadn't been publicized, he constantly referred to the due process of defendants in the ongoing court-martial investigations. I doubt if any of these investigations compare with the heinous outrages perpetrated upon these prisoners.