Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher’s case pits a Pentagon hierarchy committed to enforcing longstanding rules of combat against a commander in chief with no military experience but a finely honed sense of grievance against authority.
He was limp and dusty from an explosion, conscious but barely. A far cry from the fierce, masked Islamic State fighters who once seized vast swaths of Iraq and Syria, the captive was a scraggly teenager in a tank top with limbs so thin that his watch slid easily off his wrist.
Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher and other Navy SEALs gave the young captive medical aid that day in Iraq in 2017, sedating him and cutting an airway in his throat to help him breathe. Then, without warning, according to colleagues, Chief Gallagher pulled a small hunting knife from a sheath and stabbed the sedated captive in the neck. Continue reading “Trump’s Intervention in SEALs Case Tests Pentagon’s Tolerance”