President Donald Trump has been an outspoken defender of Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, the Navy SEAL who was prosecuted for murder for allegedly killing a captured prisoner of war and ISIS fighter in Iraq. Gallagher was acquitted in July, and officials for the U.S. Navy announced on Wednesday that military prosecutors in the case would be losing the achievement medals they had received.
Trump, earlier on Wednesday, had tweeted that he directed the secretary of the U.S. Navy and the naval operations chief to “immediately withdraw and rescind” the Navy Achievement Medal from those prosecutors. Cdr. Jereal Dorsey, a U.S. Navy spokesman, said that Navy Secretary Richard Spencer had rescinded the awards and that he had the authority to do so.
But David Lapan, a retired U.S. Marines colonel and former Pentagon spokesman, was highly critical of the action — describing it as “ludicrous” and an example of the “further politicization of our military.”
View the complete August 1 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.