Editor’s Note: Currently we are covering three cases over at Euphoric Reality: The Pendleton 8, Haditha, and the Iron Triangle Case. The nice boys over here at ASP asked me to come visit and put up some updates for y’all. I’ll be writing about each case as time permits and keeping you updated on the insider info ER has access to. Stay tuned to The Front Line with Kit Jarrell for exclusive interviews and content regarding these cases.

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Background

Seven Marines and a Navy Corpsman were charged with kidnapping, murder, and a host of other things last year in relation to the killing of an Iraqi, and they have been confined in 9′ X 9′ cells for almost a year while the government pretended to care about justice while simultaneously denying the civil and legal rights of all eight men. The government’s case is based solely on statements that the men made in Iraq after being interrogated by NCIS agents for up to seven straight hours with no breaks. There is no physical evidence, no body, and a very foul stench surrounding the whole affair, including the government tactics of cutting off the men’s pay and denying them ongoing medical treatment for injuries sustained in Iraq.

After months of confinement, the men finally started pleading guilty to lesser charges. Each of them received lighter sentences than the life in prison they were facing. Corpsman Melson Bacos was first to fall. Bacos will be released from prison before his squad leader, Sergeant Lawrence Hutchins III, sees his own court-martial. All Bacos had to do was regurgitate the story fed to him by NCIS agents, who don’t videotape or even record their interrogations.*

The fifth and last to plead guilty was Corporal Trent Thomas, a 25-year-old with a pregnant wife and little girl. Thomas was the first to plead guilty to all the charges as they were listed, and he appeared in court this week for his sentencing hearing.

The government apparently wasn’t expecting the surprise that CPL Thomas brought to court today.

Thomas recanted his guilty plea, asking to enter a plea of not guilty.

The reason, [his attorney] said, was that Thomas felt his actions that early morning in Iraq were justified.

“He believes he acted under the color of lawful authority,� Kelly told the judge.

A stunned prosecutor could only shrug when asked for a response by the judge.

I spoke with Erica Thomas, Trent’s wife, this evening by phone, and I must say, she sounds better right now than I’ve ever heard her.

“He feels very good about this,” she told me. “I definitely support him. We’re going to fight this…whatever happens is God’s will for him.”

The obvious question in many minds is “Why would someone who has a plea deal suddenly change their minds and choose to stand and fight–especially when the cards are so stacked against him?”

Perhaps Thomas decided he liked the food in the brig. Maybe he misses his squad leader, who’s still confined. Maybe he has grown used to spending 23 hours a day in a bathroom-sized cell with a cement slab in return for serving his country.

Then again, maybe the idea of living with the knowledge that he gave in to a corrupt system finally got to him. Maybe he got sick of being the scapegoat for an out-of-control military investigative service who can’t go a day without being embarrassed and exposed lately–an “investigative” service who has admitted under oath to altering statements in at least one related case to make them more incriminating.

Maybe he’s just innocent.

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* NCIS agents take notes during their interrogations and type reports later based on those notes and their own memory. The idea that the fate of our Marines rests on the memory of corrupt and incompetent NCIS agents is asinine.