S1E4: Death Penalties

Do I think Bails is a war criminal in the sense of sort of that image that we think about when we hear war criminal. I just think Bales is a murderer. I think he's a mass murderer. During wartime.

In twenty twelve and twenty thirteen, Lieutenant Colonel J. Morse prosecuted Robert Bales on behalf of the United States military.

I had peers who asked me why I didn't charge it as a war crime, and my simple answer was, I don't need to. I have all the tools I need at my disposal to prosecute this guy. I really thought about what I wanted this to look like when it was done, and so I have all my notes, Like I kept a journal for a while, and so I wrote down, I want a conviction one percent playing by the rules. Number two was that I wanted the victims to be a spy or at least understand our process.

Beings previously on the war within or.

Flew me out of Panjue and then I ended up here in Levenworth, Kansas. I really just want to see my kids again. You know.

We wanted to get John Nupergound involved because he's really good with the media.

Carrie was scared, her family was scared. The Secretary of the Fence, Leon Panetta, actually called for death penalty sent.

Causey's restorant was getting more and more kicks.

And the relationship was to tior me too.

This is an Afghan matter, and we just like took.

The new to Africa country. Nothing is as it seems.

It's all very nice.

I was interviewing a little girl and she said to me, I saw many soldiers with lights and they came and they killed myself.

I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war within the Robert Bayle story. It's late March of twenty twelve, two weeks after the kandaharm massacre. J Morris is looking to convict Robert Baal's as cleanly as possible. He has no intention of turning the case into the Army's version of the OJ Simpson trial.

The last thing I wanted was no insurmountable mistakes. We're going to make mistakes, but no mistake is going to be insurmountable. I don't want any issue. I don't want any violation of law, any violation of procedure, anything that's going to allow a higher court to say we did something wrong.

It's an honorable goal, but easier said than done, especially when your own government is complicating matters. As Morse was building his argument, the United States paid substantial sums of money to the families of the Afghan victims as an apology for the killings. In some scenarios, this could be seen as witness tampering.

One of the things I was concerned about was they were given salatia payments, not by US as a prosper, like you keep that as far away from me as possible. I don't want to hear about it. There can't be anything that looks like I'm somehow manipulating or trying to curry favor with them.

The families were paid the equivalent of fifty thousand dollars per death and ten thousand per wounded. U Le Baron, an Afghan man who lost his brother, explains the process.

In the beginning, nobody gave us any information. After a few days, we were told that two point three million Afghanis will be paid for each market. The Americans said that this is from Obama and we did not have any other information where the money came from.

Was this money paid to you in cash.

Yes, they gave us this money in cash in the province.

Giving a family compensation or whatever for the loss of life. Well, that's not really resolving the actual issue of why it happened to begin with.

Journalist Yalda Hakim spoke personally with the victims during her journey to the villages of Alakozai and Najabien. From her point of view, the decision to give money had the potential to backfire.

It's kind of a band aid fix to something that then can also become deeply embedded and resentment is built, and that then means that the Taliban are able to use it as part of their propaganda, like the Americans have come, they've taken over your.

Land, and they've occupied this place.

And then on top of that they just have the free reign to go and kill people.

Case in point, Haiji Mohammed Naim almost died in the Knahem massacre him. The Solasia payments did not have the desired effect.

I told the Americans at the airport that we don't want your money. We just want this person who wronged us to be executed. They only know money, They do not know God.

Haji Mohammad Wazir lost six children that night. He added the following, it.

Is not acceptable for us. It was not acceptable then and it will not be acceptable in the future. Even if the Americans gave us all their money, it would not be acceptable.

Cash payments were never going to offset the tragic loss of family members, not to mention, they could have threatened the sanctity of the Bails trial. So why did the United States feel the need to pay the Afghan victims? Robert Bales has a simple theory, as he tells his appellate lawyer, John Mayer, America wanted to appease Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The money for the families was funneled through his regime.

Cars I is a scumbag, all right. I mean, let's just be honest about it. Because the Seattle Times article, I don't know if you remember this, where the United States government was taking bags of money and giving them to cars I bags. So we're giving him all this cash to buy his influence, and we weren't. You know here, here's the thing. We do this all over the world, except that cars I had the ability to say, Hey, thanks America, I'm gonna take your money and I'm not

We can't say for sure that cars I used American funds to enrich himself, but it's certainly possible. AP journalist Kathy Gannon notes that a lot of American tax payer dollars were sent to Afghanistan with little payoffs. Where did you.

Spend your money?

Just the US spent one hundred and forty five billion dollars in development, not defense, defense, much more. The poverty level when you left at one hundred and forty five billion dollars, And what is the state of the country of Afghanistan.

To say that twenty twelve Afghanistan was under resourced is unfortunately to state the obvious for all of the investment that the country got from the US. Robert Bales recalls that the local Afghan police force was not a well oiled machine.

Well, these Afghan National Civil Arming policemen were not from this area where, they were not from Bellmar, they were from the north. They didn't know the area, they didn't know the people. They were just there as a police force and they didn't want to leave their little police station because they realized it was such a bad area.

In the wake of the Kanahan massacre, the Afghan police were responsible for gathering evidence from the crime scene. Bals trial lawyer John Henry Brown doesn't believe that it was comprehensive in nature.

But military to their defense was hampered by the inadequacy of the Afghan police. The photographs of these guys in their leather jackets walking around the crime scene with no booties on or anything, you know, not taking any blood samples, not clicked in the empty casings, you start out with that. That's the problem. So it wasn't a normal investigation that we would see on CSI.

Or something a defense attorney calling evidence into question, that's not shocking. But media reports and even carsi's own men confirmed that the investigation could not have been conclusive. No matter the circumstances, Prosecutor J. Moore still had a job to do.

A case like Bails was a criminal investigation from the very beginning.

Where did the information from the criminal investigation come from? Was that just the c IDEA agents on the ground.

Yes, exactly right, see IDEA agents on the ground, US our team conducting interviews with with witnesses. Between those two things.

Yes, CID stands for Criminal Investigation Division. They're essentially the Army's version of Internal Affairs. A full two weeks after the killings, CID traveled to Alakozai and nonage of bien On Morris's behalf. Special Forces Captain Danny Fields remembers that they too quickly learned about the instability of the region.

CID was being pushed very hard by the Afghan government that they needed to collect evidence, and of course we said, hey, look we'll fully support you. I'm going to advise that if you go to that location, it is very kinetic, it's very dangerous, and it's likely that you will get

When the process was happening, the things that frustrated me was how long it took us to get to the crime scene. I was frustrated in that because I was concerned that we were going to lose all the evidence. If there was any DNA out there that we could tie to, Bales would be gone. And ultimately it wasn't a lot of it was gone, but we were able to recover enough that we could tie DNA at the scene to DNA on blood on Mail's pants, blood inside

Morse felt like he ultimately got what he needed, but not everybody shared his confidence. Private James Alexander, who was on the base with Captain Fields, wasn't convinced that the case.

Was so open and shut.

This is too dangerous of a place for lawyers to be, investigators to be. They weren't able to go to the crime scene and get fingerprints. And they did some DNA testing, sure, but that was like, yeah, you're going to find Bales's DNA there, obviously, but they didn't talk about all of the other people's DNA. They weren't able to interview all of the people nearby that said, yes, we saw two people here. There is a report one of the people that lived nearby said that she heard two men drunkenly

We ended the last episode with a potential revelation, the possibility that Robert Bales did not act alone on that fateful night. During her reporting in Ala Kozai in Najapien, Yalda Hakim spoke to Afghan survivors who claimed to have seen multiple American soldiers on the night of March eleven.

I was interviewing a little girl and she said to me, I saw many soldiers with lights coming out of their helmets. I saw many, many soldiers and they came and they killed my father.

And then another child was saying, the multiple people, they're helicopters.

And the multiple people.

Her Keen's reporting was turned into a piece for Australian news outlet SBS, which premiered on March twenty nine, twenty twelve. Titled Anatomy of a Massacre. It introduced a new sign of the story to Western audiences, with the first instance of a journalist raising doubts around what really happened that night in Canadar.

That massacre of seventeen civilians by a rogue US soldier is still shrouded in mystery and disinformation. We lift that veil tonight a little, at least with some incredible accusations from the villages themselves, accusations that more than one American soldier was involved in the killings. Yelder he Kim and Camerman Ryan Sheridan have just returned earned from the village where the killings occurred and reveal a deeply disturbing story of what happened that evening.

The story exploded across the globe. Every news network around the world talked about this reporter who crossed the mindfield to get access to the massacre scene and spoke to the witnesses for the first time.

And I remember CNN running the story every hour at.

The top of the hour.

When you were speaking with these villagers and you spent some time with them, did you think they told you everything?

Were their stories accurate, were they holding anything back or were they completely upfront?

Well?

I did sense that they were upfront and that their stories were heartfelt. Of course, there were some disparities between the stories I spoke to, mainly children, and its always, you know, machinery.

Kicks in the news cycle, kicks in news turns into news from it, so you know, they were dissecting it, pulling it apart, having conversations about what this meant. And then we got a kind of letter from the media watchdog in.

Saying the complaint has been filed against the film.

People took issue with what they described as believe it or not disinformation, that it was false and fabricated, and the multiple soldier theory was pushed and that was a lie, and I think they called it the anatomy of fake news or something.

In March and April of twenty twelve, the media was debating whether this staff sergeant had acted alone, but the US military's list of suspects never expanded beyond Robert Bales. Lieutenant Colonel Morse explains.

This idea that there was more than one soldier involved other than Bales. I will tell you that no one who was an eyewitness says anything other than one person.

No, not one.

There may have been other people in the community who said that there was a platoon out here. I remember one person apparently said, not to us, but elector reporters, that there were helicopters in the area, like the helicopter was based doing an aerosault, like dropping off a platon of people to commit these murders. No one who was actually there, not the kids. None of them there said anything other than one person.

Morson Haakim have heard different accounts of the same event, but neither of them were in Panshwe that night. Only the Afghan civilians Males himself can truly speak to what actually happened in the Kanaharmascer. But during the investigation, CID was not asking this question, and Captain Field's estimation they didn't need to, Well, do you think CID did a good job in kind of uncovering what happened.

It's pretty clear what happened.

I'm not an expert at at gathering investigative data and criminally prosecuting people, but it seems like they did at least a good enough job because mails he's behind bars where he should be.

My job is the prosecutor is not to win. That's not my job. My job is the prosecutor is to represent the government in the pursuit of justice.

Robert Bales was tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice or UCMJ. Military court is not the same as regular civilian court, although there is some overlap. As Jade Morris.

Explains, except for the uniforms, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a military court martial and a civilian criminal court. It looks exactly the same, We follow the same rules of procedure, lots of similarities.

The main difference between a civilian trial in a court martial somewhat obvious. At a court martial, pretty much everybody is in the military.

You walk into this courtroom, you're going to see the prosecutor, sometimes called the trial council. You're going to see the defense attorney sitting with the defendant. You're going to see a judge who sits up a little bit higher than everyone else. That judge is in the military. He or she tends to be senior officers. And then lastly, your jury we call it a panel in the military. Your

On some level. Military law should work differently than civilian law given the extreme circumstances that soldiers face and combat. The bails in his current attorney, John Mahyr believe that there's a problem with a judge any jury essentially playing for the same team.

You know, the thing is U Smjay is where else in the world would you three to five guys on a jury. You know, three guys can put a guy in prison for one hundred years.

You know what I mean?

Nowhere, and those same three guys are hand selected by the guy that refers to charges. You know, not only do you have to agree with me, if you all agree with me, I'm going to be able to control your career for the rest of your career.

Innocent until proven guilty, it's one of the tenets of the American justice system. But Bails and Maher believe that this mantra doesn't really apply to military cases. In their eyes, the game is rigged, a point supported by the u CMJ's high conviction rate.

It's ninety eight percent or ninety seven percent conviction rate in the u cmjy right, that's true. Like the closest to that is Nazi Germany. I think if you were a Jew in Nazi Germany, you had a better chance of not being killed by the Nazis, then you do it. Not being convicted in the u CMJA ninety eight percent or ninety seven percent. You can't tell me that the analytics of that are right.

John Mayer works with many clients who have been convicted by the useum J. He has strong opinions on this cross pollination between judge, jury and prosecution.

Separation of powers is big deal and candidly, I do believe the army has its own ideas. UCMJ was created for good order and discipline, that's it. It was not meant to be a litigation manual. Military law has evolved into a whole body of jurisprudence that was not conceived or visioned at its inception. I do believe and this is just John Mayer on this, but the UCMJ right now, they're going to protect the army. At the end of the day, it see the army who's the client, the individual?

All the time? Gay Mors doesn't have the same concerns about the potential for bias in the military justice system.

I frankly have confidence in the system. I believe they pick in fairness. I believe they follow the rules, especially the higher up you go. I think the panel system works.

However, as Robert Bales's court martial began, trial lawyer John Henry Brown had a bad feeling about the panel who would determin in his client's fate.

Now, Army, of course chose the jury. The jury was to decide whether Bobby got life withdrawal or life without role. That jury looked like Mount Rushmore. They looked like Stone. They didn't seem to have any empathy at all. But when you get the commanding officer choosing the jury, and the commanding officer believes that this guy should get the death penalty, what do you think is going to happen.

In a courtroom filled with members of the military. Brown was the odd man out. He never served. Generally, he didn't have the same worldview as the people who had.

But I didn't have a lot of experience in the military courts. I had represented a couple of deserters who went to Canada during the Vietnam War.

But when Carrie Bales asked him to represent her husband, Brown felt compelled to accept the job.

I was just angry. I was just playing angry about the way the government was disowning. I mean, here's the guy who's turned into a rogue monster by the media and the military superiors.

The Bailes family was not wealthy. They couldn't afford attorney fees that would run in the mid six figures. Brown ended up taking the case pro bono.

I've had a practice in my life, still doing it now where I don't believe clients in the lurs.

How many hours and total resources went into defending Robert Bayals like during his trial, it.

Was about two thousand hours, and that's probably an underestimate. At one point, I didn't think we could continue representing Bobby because I just didn't think I could afford it, but we pulled it off.

When Brown began to discuss the case of Robert Bayales, the best line of defense seemed to be abundantly clear.

When I met Bobby the first time, it was in Leavenworth. He had been wisted out of Afghanistan and then eventually ended up in leven Worth within a week or so, and I ended up going there and meeting with him, and he was still exhibiting the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. So it was like he couldn't believe that what he was being accused of. He had really believable lack of memory of what occurred, which is part of PGSD. When I read the statement of facts, which is horrible,

Here's the problem in the armed forces. Post traumatic stress isn't seen as a catch all to explain criminal behavior because most soldiers who have seen combat can reasonably claim to BETSD.

This whole idea about every member is a mass murderer in disguise just waiting to happen. That it's the fault of you know, the army always rubs me the wrong way because I think that there are lots of soldiers who deal with serious PTSD issues. They don't go.

Murder people staff. Sergeant Bales was examined by an independent sanity board for the trial. He recalls it. They essentially diagnosed him with PTSD and yet they marked him down stable and healthy.

They had these three professional psychologists when and I don't know what the actual terms were. You know, one was a pharmacology guy, one was a psychiatrist.

You know, they.

Convinced me that, you know, due to being blown up behind times, you know, due to my post traumatic stress disordered that I saw a threat that other people didn't see.

Now it's interesting because if you see the the video of him returning from one of the sites, he's wearing a cape. He put on a cape.

The prevailing theory is the cape was a curtain from Hajji Mohammad Lazir's house. Bales was using it to avoid detection as he made his way back to the PSP, and.

Then he's jumping over the walls and not going through the entry ways because that's where iedse are. So you know, they were arguing that he certainly had all his mental faculties, but it was just instinctive. I mean, some of his behavior when he came back, he asked somebody to smell the under his gun. I mean, he did all these really bizarre things.

That's also true. Bals told staff Sergeant Jason McLoughlin to smell the barrel of his gun to prove he had fired it.

You know, we had him examined some of the best psychiatrists in the whole United States literally, and they believed he had diminished capacity basically. But then the Army, of course, got a chance to evaluate him, even without our permission, and their conclusion was that he was basically a sociopath.

Nobody brought up mental health as a trial. Nobody brought that up. Even though we had three different expert witnesses, they just didn't use them. They chose not to use them.

I think it was either nine or eleven the total number of expert witnesses they asked for and were given. They didn't call single one of them a trial.

Based on the Bails trial transcripts, the prosecution called twelve witnesses and the defense six. None of them had a background of mental health, and as far as we can tell, the topic was not examined before the panel.

I think if we had had a civilian jury and a Sicilian process for Robert Bills. Our psychiatric defense would have worked. If you just read the statement of allegations, you're going to go this person's crazy, he's not meaning he's crazy. And I think we could have pursued that successfully with a civilian jury, but not with a military jury.

There was no question in my mind that he was not suffering from PTSD. If he was suffering from PTSD, not even remotely close, that would have explained a five hour killing spree.

As Robert Bale's attorney, John Henry Brown, was up against the might of the United States government, which was being channeled primarily through one man, Lieutenant Colonel J. Morse.

The first time I met Morse, he's a very good looking guy, looks like a movie star kind of and you know, he was playing the whole thing and it was really ridiculous. The guy had a chip on his shoulder that was big as a brick, and he was clearly playing to his superiors who went under the death penalty. He saw this as a career maker.

Morse rejects the idea that he took his orders from the higher.

Ups President Obama. I don't care what those guys think that has zero to do with my job. My obligation as representing the US government was that this was a death penalty case.

While the defense searched for mitigating circumstances to clear Robert Bales's name, the prosecution built a case around eyewitness testimony. One would think that the soldiers who served with Bails at ESB. Bellumbat, like Private James Alexander, would be a big part of that approach.

When we landed in America, we thought we would kind of be like we made it man, thank God, like we're here, we're safe, and we were treated like criminals. We became, you know, sort of pariahs. And we were immediately signed to NDAs Like of course, don't you can't talk about anything. You can't talk to Baales. You have no contact order with Bails because now it's a prosecution. Like I know, you guys talked to Colonel Morrise little bit. Colonel Morris and his team never interviewed us, not once.

As it turned out, Morse was more interested in the testimony of another group of people, the Afghan families who personally encountered Staff Sergeant Baales during his night raid.

I wanted this to be the opportunity for the victims to make a statement. We could have just taken their sworn statement, told the investigating officer the witnesses are unavailable, here's their statements. But I wanted them to be part of the process. And again, I was looking at this as an opportunity to refute some of the things that were out there in the media.

Morse and his team flew nine Afghans from Malakosai and Najabien to Seattle to testify against Robert Bales in person. For an American nation fighting a war against Afghan terrorist groups, it was a highly unusual move.

Up to that point. I don't know that we had brought back any victims to testify at a court martial in the US. These were people who rarely left their village. I just didn't care. I mean, these again, their families and their human beings. They deserve to have their day in court.

Hadji Wazir was one of the Afghan men who was brought overseas to the United States.

They took us to America twice and they did the trial with their law about our case, and they judged us with their blasphemy law. We stayed there for about thirteen or fourteen days. They explained to us how the court process works, where we should sit, and what we should do and what.

Not to do.

Ula Baran, the man who spoke with yalde Hakim, remembers being asked to produce evidence related to his family's murder.

But we presented them with items such as a pillow, quilts and other things that were contaminated with blood. We gave them a lot of evidence.

Many of the soldiers stationed with Bales at the VIA were also asked to make public statements before the court.

The soldiers who justified against Bobby did not want to be there. Of course, they had all the pressure of their careers, and it became very clear to me during my association with the military, and if you did one thing wrong, your career is over.

I actually don't think the defense asked me anything, but you know, Colonel Morris, I believe he was using me to kind of establish the timeline right.

Captain Fields was a senior man at VSP Bellenbach. According to the higher ups, he had some explaining to do.

At what point did I wake up? At what point did I learn what happened? Why didn't I understand right out the gate that this guy had murdered a bunch of people. So just kind of established some of those basic facts and answer some of those questions that people are asking. Honestly, the most chilling part of the entire thing was when I walked into the room. This was the first time that I had seen Bails since he took off on a helicopter, and I just remember.

Seeing him and just having intense feelings about it.

They asked me, you know who Robert Bales was, and if he was here in the courtroom, point him out, and I pointed at him, and it was just a very awkward experience to see him for the first time.

For Private Alexander, the whole ordeal was outside of anything he could have expected from his career in the service.

First of all, they called me, hey, get ready to testify, out of the blue, just like that. I've not been prepped. No one's to ask me what I'm gonna say. They're just like, you're going to testify.

Cool. So I go into this.

Old building, go down a carpeted hallway, make a left, and I'm in the smallest courtroom in America, and I'm like, holy crap, like, and there's Bails in there, his wife is in there. John Henry Brown is in there. So you know, I'm sitting down, I testify, and you know, they're like, we just want to know what was your experience. And so I started going off because I'm very garrulous whatever you want to say. It talk too much. And the judges like, hey, hey, hey, stop talking, you know,

And that never happened.

That was it.

It was like, thank you for your service, and now leave.

As the legal process drew on in twenty twelve became twenty thirteen, Robert Bales's prospects were heading in the wrong direction relatively on practice. In the insulated world of the military, John Henry Brown was having trouble making inroads with the presiding judge, Colonel Jeffrey Nance.

The judge assigned to our case. He seemed like a decent guy, actually, but he clearly was marching to a drummer that was above him. And one of the things I said to him in court, which really upset him. I said, well, you are. I respect you as a judge because I respect all the judges, but you are not my superior officer. He didn't care for them.

The defense had reached a fork in the road. They could take a risk by crafting a mental health defense that, if successful, could exonerate Bails completely, or they could work with the US Army take a plea and ensure that Bails would not be executed. Brown initially disagreed with his co consul Emma Scanlon on the strategy.

We had to make a decision as to whether to go for broke and basically put on our mental defense. Bobby and I had an inclination to do that. But the other side, which Emma, who worked for me, who's the best lawyer I've ever known, She was of the more conservative position that, know, we better just not put out the trash out there because the Army will get pissed and he'll get the death penalty.

Are there clients out there that would just rather be put to death and surrout a sentence where they're stuck in prison for their natural life.

Yeah, I believe there are people like that, and I could certainly understand if I was accused of something, they're horrific and the only option was life in prison without parole. I could certainly see rationalizing not living anymore. You know, spending the rest of your life in a cage is not real attractive. And I know there's others they called volunteers, and those are people who voluntarily take the death penalty rather than go spend the rest of their lives in prison.

For Carrie Bales, it was paramount that the father of her children stay alive.

Of course, I.

Didn't want Bob to get the death penalty. We just wouldn't have ever been able to hug him again, or you know, we would have always had to see him behind class. That was like the biggest reason that I wanted the death penalty off the table, was so that even if he was incarcerated forever, we would still I'll be able to hug him and be near him.

Bob Bales will never admit to you that he's a victim. Bob Bals is still very much a man. He's still very much confident, And this.

Kind of makes me frustrated. The idea that I took the plea deal to avoid the death penalty.

Right.

It kind of bothers me when people say, now, well, he took that so that he avoided the death since and that's not the truth, because there were still guys on the ground, you know what I mean. You know there are guys on the ground that are being shot at every day at that time. And if whatever we could do to him to kind of get that.

So your conviction would then wyattee that game of.

Enemy, right, and it wouldn't be as easy for them to use this as a recruiting video for the Taliban.

Robert Bales claims that he wanted his case to be resolved to protect the American soldiers still in Afghanistan and speak to his motivations, but his comments ignore in uncomfortable reality about the night of March eleventh, twenty twelve, after Bales had killed sixteen civilians, he put the gun in his mouth and he decided not to pull the trigger. GQ writer Brendan Vaughan recollects his conversation with Bails on the subject.

He didn't intimate anything about saying that he had a death wish, but he did describe the dawning on him of what he had just done. In that moment right before he puts the gun in his mouth, he describes realizing what he had done and realizing that his life was effectively over and that because of that, why not end it? And he put his gun in his mouth, and he thought about his kids back in Washington.

And decided not to do it.

What would it be like to not be in Bob's life and not take the kids to see their dad and not be there and have another life? And I just I couldn't imagine my life like that, and how sad it would be.

As a reminder, here's what Baile said to staff Sergeant McLaughlin in between his trips to Alakosi and Nonage Been.

I go in and I see my friend and I'm like, hey, man, I was killed some military age males up and al Kozi. I'm going to naj Andbian to finish it. I was like, take care of my wife and kids. Seriously, take care of my wife and kids.

A lot of people don't agree on whether a man like Robert Bales follows moral compass, but this much is clear. On June fifth, twenty thirteen, Bals pled guilty to the unlawful killings. He carried out Panjue Afghanistan for many reasons, but above all, it seems for his family.

Look, we're punished.

I know what I'm missing.

I mean, I know what my kid I am, my kids, you know, without their father. You know, I don't want to be here. You know, nobody really wants to be here. Where there's life, there's hope, and so hopefully you know, I still have life, still have some hope left that you know, maybe twenty twenty five years from now, somebody will review this and say, you know, this guy, let's let him go, let's let him out.

Coming up on the war within this case smacks of institutional bias.

It's time to go whole home.

Whatever we can do to make as much stink, to make as much notification of this, you need to do it.

I want the jury to have sympathy for the Afghan victims.

The job of the infantry is very simply. You want to find, fix and finish the enemey.

There's no uniforms in Afghanistan. They blend in with the population and it's a gorilla war.

We found a picture of Haiji Wazir online, who made a terrorist video but the whole time he's holding up his Taliban tattoo.

That panel, they knew that the Taliban was sitting in an American courtroom, it might have had a little bit of a different.

View of the prosecution.

How many times do we let Americans die when we know where the bad guys aren't, we don't go get them?

The war within the Robert Bayls Story. It is a production of Bungalow Media and Entertainment, Checkpoint Productions and Mosquito Park Pictures in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created by executive producers Paul Polowski and David check Executive producers for Bungalow Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and Mike Powers. The podcast was written and produced by Max Nelson and hosted by me McGinnis. Editing was done by