JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. — Raging on steroids, fear and insecurity, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales threw himself into one of life’s great stress-relievers: chopping wood. He sawed and hacked from morning ‘til almost dusk, attacking a large tree he and his soldiers had laid low near their remote outpost in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan.
It wasn’t enough.
Bradley Manning protests, Bo Xilai trial in China, California wildfire, Syrian attack victims and more.
Hours later, after drinking with his buddies, the soldier outfitted himself with a 9 mm pistol and an M-4 rifle, and headed out in the middle of the night to commit one of the worst atrocities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — the slaughter of 16 men, women and children in two nearby villages. Some screamed for mercy. Others didn’t even have a chance to get out of bed.
For the first time, Bales apologized for the attack Thursday as he addressed six jurors determining whether his life sentence will include the possibility of parole. Responding to gentle questioning from one of his defense attorneys, Emma Scanlan, the 40-year-old said he’d bring back the victims “in a heartbeat” if he could.
“I’m truly, truly sorry to those people whose families got taken away,” he said in a mostly steady voice. “I can’t comprehend their loss. I think about it every time I look at my kids.”
Bales, 40, pleaded guilty in June in a deal to avoid the death penalty. He did not recount specifics of the horrors in court Thursday or offer an explanation for the violence, but he described the killings as an “act of cowardice, behind a mask of fear, bullshit and bravado.”
He said he hoped his words would be translated for the nine villagers who traveled from Afghanistan to testify against him — none of whom elected to be in court to hear from him.
The father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., was serving his fourth combat deployment when he left his outpost at Camp Belambay, in Kandahar Province, in the middle of the night to attack two villages, exhibiting an unimaginable brutality as he gunned down his victims and set some of their bodies, stacked like wood, on fire with a kerosene lantern.
His attorneys have made much of Bales’ repeated deployments and suggested that post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury may have played a role in the killings. But they offered no testimony from psychiatrists or other doctors, saying they saw little point in making the case a battle of the experts.
Instead, they had Bales and some of his fellow soldiers to testify about the difficulties they endured and the images that stuck with them after earlier tours in Iraq. They rested their defense after Bales finished speaking, and closing arguments were scheduled Friday morning.
If the defense can convince two of six jurors that Bales deserves leniency because he was a good soldier who simply snapped, he would be eligible for parole in 20 years.
Bales said he was nervous to address the court, and he sat at the witness stand as his wife cried in the front row of the courtroom. He sometimes became emotional, especially choking up as he apologized to his fellow soldiers.
It wasn’t enough.
Bradley Manning protests, Bo Xilai trial in China, California wildfire, Syrian attack victims and more.
Hours later, after drinking with his buddies, the soldier outfitted himself with a 9 mm pistol and an M-4 rifle, and headed out in the middle of the night to commit one of the worst atrocities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — the slaughter of 16 men, women and children in two nearby villages. Some screamed for mercy. Others didn’t even have a chance to get out of bed.
For the first time, Bales apologized for the attack Thursday as he addressed six jurors determining whether his life sentence will include the possibility of parole. Responding to gentle questioning from one of his defense attorneys, Emma Scanlan, the 40-year-old said he’d bring back the victims “in a heartbeat” if he could.
“I’m truly, truly sorry to those people whose families got taken away,” he said in a mostly steady voice. “I can’t comprehend their loss. I think about it every time I look at my kids.”
Bales, 40, pleaded guilty in June in a deal to avoid the death penalty. He did not recount specifics of the horrors in court Thursday or offer an explanation for the violence, but he described the killings as an “act of cowardice, behind a mask of fear, bullshit and bravado.”
He said he hoped his words would be translated for the nine villagers who traveled from Afghanistan to testify against him — none of whom elected to be in court to hear from him.
The father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., was serving his fourth combat deployment when he left his outpost at Camp Belambay, in Kandahar Province, in the middle of the night to attack two villages, exhibiting an unimaginable brutality as he gunned down his victims and set some of their bodies, stacked like wood, on fire with a kerosene lantern.
His attorneys have made much of Bales’ repeated deployments and suggested that post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury may have played a role in the killings. But they offered no testimony from psychiatrists or other doctors, saying they saw little point in making the case a battle of the experts.
Instead, they had Bales and some of his fellow soldiers to testify about the difficulties they endured and the images that stuck with them after earlier tours in Iraq. They rested their defense after Bales finished speaking, and closing arguments were scheduled Friday morning.
If the defense can convince two of six jurors that Bales deserves leniency because he was a good soldier who simply snapped, he would be eligible for parole in 20 years.
Bales said he was nervous to address the court, and he sat at the witness stand as his wife cried in the front row of the courtroom. He sometimes became emotional, especially choking up as he apologized to his fellow soldiers.