PFC David Lawrence, a 20 year old Indiana native who was serving in Afghanistan with the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division has been charged with premeditated murder for the alleged shooting of Mullah Mohebullah, a Senior Taliban Leader, on Oct. 17, 2010 while guarding him in Kandahar province, Afghanistan.
However, the circumstances surrounding Lawrence’s alleged actions are extremely odd. You see Lawrence was certified by the U.S. Army’s own Doctor as suffering from PTSD and schizophrenia.
Prior to the shooting of Mohebullah, Lawrence was flown to a Combat Stress Clinic in Kandahar, Afghanistan because he had repeatedly expressed severe mental distress to his leadership.
Lawrence spent 5 days there and was prescribed 2 drugs by an Army Doctor. Those drugs are Zoloft and Trezodone. When taken in combination the FDA reports the drugs can cause suicidal thoughts, altered consciousness, confusion, hallucinations and coma.
Then the Army sent Lawrence back to his unit, put him back on guard duty unsupervised, had him guard this particular prisoner, and made him serve long hours of duty more than he had served prior to going to the Combat Stress Center.
On WWW.pfcdavidlawrence.org states:
“He is accused of premeditated murder for the alleged shooting of Mullah Mohebullah on Oct. 17, 2010 while guarding him in Kandahar province, Afghanistan. Mullah Mohebullah was a senior Taliban commander and had been captured by U.S. forces the day before his death. Mohebullah's death was announced by an angry Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Oct. 19, 2010. Formal charges were filed against PFC Lawrence by the U.S. Army on the same day”.
“On January 20, 2011, a team of Army forensic psychiatrists issued a formal opinion that at the time of the alleged offense, David suffered from severe schizophrenia as well as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The team of Army psychiatric experts, formally known in the military as a Sanity Board, also determined that as a result of the severe nature of David's mental illnesses, he was "unable to appreciate the nature and quality or wrongfulness of his conduct at the time of the alleged criminal misconduct." Although the medical conclusions of the Sanity Board are tantamount to a finding of not guilty by reason of lack of mental responsibility, the criminal charges against David have not been withdrawn. Rather, on January 31, 2011, the Lawrence family was officially notified that despite the Army's medical determination that David was not mentally responsible for the killing of Mohebullah, David would still be prosecuted for the alleged premeditated murder of Mullah Mohebullah at a general court-martial”.
“The prosecution of PFC David Lawrence is not without political implication. President Barack Obama traveled to Afghanistan on Dec. 3, 2010 to meet with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. One of the reported purposes of President Obama's visit was to ease tensions caused by Mohebullah's killing”.
There are reports that Mohebullah had been released from Guantanamo Bay and came back to fight with the Taliban. A search of the internet found many many ‘search results’ of this, yet when clicking on these search results many pages have been taken down. One might question; is our government, or a political faction in America, trying to censor information to hide or minimize these actions?
Here are some search results though...
The Dallas Morning News reports:
Culp said he believes Mohebullah may have been arrested previously, held at Guantanamo Bay and released. Culp said the Army may have dropped Mohebullah's name because of the potential embarrassment over the government releasing a prisoner who then resurfaced as a Taliban member.
Boston.com reports:
Culp said he believes Mohebullah may have been arrested previously, held at Guantanamo Bay and released. Culp said the Army may have dropped Mohebullah's name because of the potential embarrassment over the government releasing a prisoner who then resurfaced as a Taliban member.
During my research I found that The Huffington Post (a liberal/progressive news (?) outlet) showed (in my opinion) their contempt for this soldier; they practically hung him before he was even tried. Nowhere in their report did they suggest that Mohebullah may have been released from Gitmo.
Here are some takeouts from the Huffington Post report:
The article started with this comment: “A Fort Carson soldier was so eager to fight "the bad guys" in Afghanistan that he shot and killed a Taliban member who was sleeping in a jail cell”
"Pfc. Lawrence's zeal to kill the bad guys" led him to shoot the Taliban detainee
In testimony by speaker phone from Afghanistan, two soldiers who guarded Lawrence after his arrest said he told them that he and his lawyer might "play the crazy card."
They said that before Lawrence had his first judicial hearing in Afghanistan, he was smiling and laughing, with Miller saying he appeared "almost cocky."
"Well, if I get 20 years, I'll get out when I'm 40 and that wouldn't be too bad," Miller quoted Lawrence as saying.
However, the Huffington Post reporting on Lawrence’s mental state only said: Lawrence was sent to an Army combat stress center in Afghanistan for a few days, and when he returned to his unit, he was assigned to guard duty, which included guarding the captured Taliban member in his cell.
What The Huffington Post left out was any and all mental health information that is listed at the top of this post.
Lawrence was ‘rushed’ through the Army’s Article 32 hearings and set for Court Martial trial.
But does anyone remember the Fort Hood shootings. On Nov 5th 2009 An Army Doctor killed 15 American soldiers with lots of eye witnesses standing by. On Feb. 22, 2011 The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune reports: A military official is considering whether an Army psychiatrist should be court-martialed and face the death penalty for the mass shooting at Fort Hood.
In one instance we have the ‘rush to justice’ for the killing of an enemy prisoner by a mentally ill American soldier and in the other case we have a slow process to judgment for the slaughter of 15 American soldiers by an Army Doctor who is an American born Muslim of Palestinian decent with evidence of Jihad towards America.
The one main issue I am confused over is why the Army even brought Lawrence into a profession that has a primary tool of a gun, especially with Lawrence’s family history of schizophrenia and that a his Grandmother and Uncle had lost children to the disease?
All that is stated here gives the impression that:
1) The Army is outrageously incompetent and is trying to cover up their incompetence.
2) The Obama Administration is trying to appease Karzai, so he throws a mentally ill soldier under the bus. (and we know Obama has thrown others under the bus before).
3) Or The U.S. Government has found a new away to eliminate captured Taliban soldiers and hang our own mentally ill for it. Does this then make David Lawrence a ‘political prisoner’ of his own country?
Here is a link to the complete news video of David Lawrence's story!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRxQxD1RbvQ
