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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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August 18th,
2007 - One Soldier, Two Stories News article by San Antonio Express-News |
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By Sig Christenson San Antonio Express-News August 18, 2007 One has a spotless combat
record, is credited with leading more than 100 scout sniper missions that
saved countless GIs and is described by friends and family as the best
America has to offer. The other is said to have
crossed a line between necessary roughness and sadism, screamed at privates,
hazed younger soldiers and took pleasure in their suffering. Trey Albert Corrales' story
is the tale of two soldiers, but they are the same person. Somehow, the man
who family members call a devoted father and patriot is depicted by a fellow
GI as having a shallow conscience and being the kind of non-commissioned
officer "everybody tried to avoid." A one-time standout athlete
in San Antonio, Corrales now stands charged with premeditated murder. He
faces the death penalty even as he's up for a medal and a promotion from his
present rank of sergeant first class. "The Trey I know, you
know what sir, I'll tell you the truth: He is one of the gentlest and kindest
people I've known in my life," said Steve Falcon, a 34-year-old local
FedEx driver who met Corrales in fifth grade. Then there's the other side. "They make him seem
like the greatest guy in the world," Paul Edwards, 25, who served with
Corrales in the 25th Infantry Division, said of Corrales' family members.
"I don't know what kind of family man he was, but I saw him at work and
just thought he was a piece of crap." Even in Army records, the
two versions collide in startling ways. A near-spotless performance
evaluation, signed by three officers, was filed days before a routine
nighttime operation two months ago in Iraq that turned deadly. It happened June 23 near
Kirkuk. An Army helicopter had been fired on from a home. Prisoners were
taken. Shots rang out in a courtyard, leaving one of the detainees mortally
wounded. In a formal charge sheet
filed against him, the Army said Corrales was the gunman. He is accused of
squeezing off a burst of bullets into the prisoner, and then ordering another
soldier, Spc. Christopher P. Shore of Winder, Ga., to do the same. And yet the three-page NCO
Evaluation Report, signed by the brigade commander on June 18, seems to be
describing a completely different man. It gives Corrales near-perfect marks
and is accompanied by a Bronze Star nomination. "One of the top NCOs in
the unit," his company commander, Capt. John J. Myers, said of Corrales
in the comment section. "Is always at the tip of the spear for the task
force." Corrales, who has declined
to be interviewed, saw vindication in the report. "It says it all,"
Corrales, 34 and now of Honolulu, wrote in an e-mail to his family last week
from a base in northern Iraq. "What kind of leader I am and what type of
person I am. "It also gives a
glimpse of the dedication that I continue to give to the Army and my country
I love so much." A team player Before Corrales became a
Ranger and fought in Afghanistan, he was a phenomenon capable of great
endurance, a playmaker on Burbank High School's first-team varsity defense, a
devout believer in his team's chances despite never winning a game in his two
years on the squad. Quick at picking up new
plays, virtually robotic at taking orders, he'd run through a wall if told to
do so by his coaches. "He was here every day,
would be on time every day, never missed a day of practice and was a
righteous person - very loyal in everything he did," said Ross Ramirez,
an assistant head football coach at Burbank. "He was a machine on
the football field," agreed Joe Sanchez, a Bulldog teammate of Corrales
who's now running backs coach at the school. "Whatever the coaches asked
him to do, he did." The Trey Corrales of those
days was a stand-up guy, proud, disciplined and respectful. He lived by a
code of honor and courage instilled in him by his dad, Albert Sr., 74, -
himself a career soldier, law enforcement officer and Korean War veteran. Drive where Interstate 37
and U.S. 90 intersect on the South Side and you will see some part of
Burbank, perhaps the floodlights that tower over a pair of football fields.
Inside the school is a poster warning against drug abuse, drunken driving and
dropping out. "The choice is yours
but so are the consequences." In the administration
office, trophies and plaques mark the school's various triumphs. Those
awards, Principal Andrew Rodriguez says at lunchtime in an all but empty
hallway outside his office, aim to nurture pride. That came naturally to
Corrales, a young man who ended his sentences with "sir" and
"ma'am," a reflection of his upbringing. This time 16 years ago,
Corrales was living Bulldog orange the same way he later would Army green. He
often wore his Bulldog letter jacket and - after basic training during one
summer - an Army T-shirt. Friends going back to elementary
school say Corrales was easygoing, had a great smile, a knack for jokes and a
contagious laugh. Yet even in those days the young Trey would morph from
laid-back buddy to intense competitor. At Lowell Middle School,
Corrales led the practices and, as in high school, was a team captain. Ramiro
Fernandez, a 34-year-old management analyst with the city, said they were
always jump-starting the team. One season Lowell went undefeated, he said,
losing the championship game when the tie was settled on first downs. Armando Ybarra, a Bexar
County jail guard, is among a number of fellow football players and coaches
who say you could count on Corrales being in the gym or leading the team in
afternoon wind sprints. "In any physical
conditioning he was always the leader," said Ybarra, 33, who played with
Corrales from seventh grade to his sophomore year. "He was always the
one who did the most pushups, he was always the one doing the most
sit-ups." A force of nature The first time Sanchez, the
Burbank coach, ran windsprints in two-a-day summer workouts, he struggled in
the heat, lagging behind as the players dashed 40 yards, repeating the
process at the blow of every whistle. "That first day he ran
alongside me. From then on the advice he gave made it easier," Sanchez
said of Corrales, who breezed through the workout but didn't yell at the
slower players. "He was real supportive of me, but not just me,
everyone." By high school, Corrales was
a force of nature, the kind who sparked some mesmerized players to try to
keep up and others to shake their heads. Sanchez, who like Corrales was a
Burbank "Football Player of the Year," said: "When you saw him
practicing, you'd have thought we were 9 and 0." "I went to all his
games and he was crazy," recalled his sister, Triva Corrales, 32, of San
Antonio. "He would get everybody fired up. He was the first one out on
the field." It was an intensity that
carried over off the field. Corrales was a familiar face at "poster
parties" during Burbank's "Spirit Week" prior to the year's
biggest game against archrival Breckenridge. Students would gravitate toward
Corrales at those parties, where they made posters while barbecuing in a
parent's backyard. With an athletic build and a
charming personality, he was "very popular and quite the ladies'
man," said Burbank coach Julie Castillo, 48, of San Antonio. Corrales, she said,
"always had a story to tell." "He had a lot of
girlfriends," said Triva Corrales, now a basketball and track coach at
Wagner High School. "All the girls came up to me and said, 'Could you
give your brother this note?'" Before football, there was
home. His father and mother, Evangeline, taught the kids to support those
with problems, not look down on them. It was a strict household, his mother
said, where the children were taught good manners. And there were tasks.
Fernandez, the management analyst, recalls his best friend going home right
after practice to do his chores. Corrales was around 5 when
he began having conversations with his dad about the military. Evangeline
said their boy would ask about marching, weapons and rank structure. The
father-son talks focused on the fundamentals of military life - following the
rules, not talking back and never slacking off. "He would tell (Trey)
how things were in the military, what they expected of him, that you couldn't
do what you wanted to do once you were in the military," Evangeline
recalled. "In other words, when you join the military you belong to the
government. You're no longer mom and dad's son." Trey’s 9-11 All of Trey's schoolboy
athletic feats couldn't get him on a college football team. His mom said he
was just too small at 5 feet, 7 inches. He studied at Palo Alto
College after graduating from Burbank and worked in a restaurant. But years
before, Corrales had told Fernandez he'd join the Army if he couldn't play
college ball. Yet there was another interest
that held him close to town - a girl. Lily Molina was hesitant about getting
involved, but a persistent Corrales courted her five months before their
first date. "We joke around in my
family," said Lily Corrales, 34, of Honolulu. "We say he grew on
me." Corrales shipped out to
basic training in November 1993. His decision was driven by a 1993 battle
between GIs and insurgents in Somalia, where the corpses of American soldiers
were dragged along the streets of Mogadishu. The disaster, profiled in the
book and movie, "Black Hawk Down," became his 9-11. His wife said
it drove him not only to take the oath but also to attend Airborne, Ranger
and Pathfinder schools. "He told me when he saw
that on TV and he heard what happened, he felt something," she said. The marriage was a
traditional Hispanic affair. But before marrying at St. James the Apostle
Church, where both met in elementary school but don't remember each other,
Corrales conceived a son with another woman. Trey and Lily Corrales,
whose first son, Trey Albert II, is close to the same age, didn't learn of
his existence until after their posting in Germany in 1998. She wouldn't discuss the
details, calling it a "personal story." As Corrales rose through the
ranks, he loved to talk about Army life. At least two other people joined up
in part because of his tales: Lily and her brother, Ruben Molina. She became
a pharmacy technician after training at Fort Sam Houston. Molina, now a 101st Airborne
Division sergeant preparing for a second deployment to Iraq next month,
credits Corrales with changing his life. They met when Molina, the son of
divorced parents, was 10. Trey, out of high school, was both father and
brother, picking him up from school and taking him to games. Years later, Molina arrived
at the Corrales home in Fort Benning, Ga., badly overweight and out of shape.
Trey Corrales got Molina on a physical training program. It was like old
times. "He'd be a little rough
with me at times, but I knew it was for my own good," said Molina, 26,
of Fort Campbell, Ky. "He wouldn't let me quit on myself, and it
definitely paid off." ‘Loud and obnoxious’ But Paul Edwards, who joined
the Army three years after dropping out of Clark High School at 16, said he
saw a darker side of Corrales. Edwards was the only person
interviewed who offered a critical view of Corrales. He said there were other
former soldiers who would support his claims, but he did not name them and
none contacted the Express-News. Corrales' wife and father,
both former soldiers, said anything Trey did had to have been legitimate,
done to improve the discipline of less experienced troops. Edwards described Corrales
as "one of those guys you can't help but notice. He would be loud and
obnoxious. Always yelling, always yelling at privates. Even if they weren't
directly underneath him he would be calling them out on anything - like a
shoelace untied." They were both members of
the 25th Infantry Division's 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry. Edwards was in a
different platoon and doesn't remember Corrales until after they deployed to
Afghanistan in April 2004. They didn't see much of each
other then, crossing paths only during helicopter pickups and now and then at
the chow hall. But back in Hawaii after that tour, Corrales was a familiar
figure at Schofield Barracks' D Quad. Still in a different platoon, Edwards
said he saw Corrales acting like a drill sergeant, the kind "everybody
tried to avoid." Corrales was known for
"smoking" privates, Edwards explained, describing the practice as
calling out subordinates for minor infractions and making them exercise until
their muscles failed. After someone had done a lot of pushups, he said,
Corrales would make them drink two or three canteens of water as they
breathed heavily. Then they would throw up. There would be more
calisthenics. More vomiting. No one stopped the practice,
Edwards said, and Corrales was one of 10 to 15 NCOs in 2-35 who dealt out
such punishment. He said Corrales smoked him on one occasion as well,
ordering him to do pushups after taking a dim view of his haircut. New arrivals from boot camp
got a peculiar welcome. Edwards said Corrales sometimes would have the job of
helping the freshly minted boots get settled into their quarters. He would
make them do pushups and jumping jacks and run up and down staircases while
carrying their duffel bags and suitcases as he yelled at them. Corrales finally would give
them a key card and tell the arrivals to go to their rooms, but Edwards said
there was a catch - the cards had not been programmed and wouldn't open any
door. Downstairs, Corrales could be heard laughing, he said, waiting for the
privates to come back. "They just looked
terrified," said Edwards, who now owns a San Antonio home remodeling
firm. "These kids are coming from basic training and think they're just
going to a regular job, that everybody's going to treat them with respect,
and that's not really the case." Grim stories Since the charges were
filed, the cheering crowds, awestruck coaches and adoring girls have been
replaced by scores of Internet citings, many of them news accounts from around
the world but one appearing under the heading, "Proof: U$ Troops are
Murderous Scum." Corrales has been removed
from his unit and shipped to northern Iraq. The Army hasn't put him in jail
or stopped him from working, but he sleeps in a tent full of strangers. There is no chow hall
conversation. "He said he doesn't
know anyone," Lily Corrales said. "No one talks to him and that's
not my husband." There are hints that
Corrales began to change even before he was charged with murder, his playful
spirit muffled by life in the war zone. In Afghanistan, Corrales was
a platoon leader for a group of scouts. Exactly what they did isn't clear to
his wife. Rather than talk about the missions, Corrales usually told her and
others about the people he met. Somehow, though, he wasn't the same. "I know he held back a
lot," Lily Corrales said. "I mean, he came back a little bit
different, and I could tell there was a lot of stuff he wasn't telling me
that bothered him. He had nightmares." Last summer, his 25th
Infantry Division left Hawaii for Iraq. Though his area of operations in
Kirkuk is often thought of as tranquil, especially compared to Baghdad, it
has been the scene of bombings and intense insurgent clashes. Triva Corrales said the
brother who "would definitely out-talk anybody I knew" told
"crazy stories as you can imagine about kids out there and soldiers
dying." That was last Christmas. Corrales was in San Antonio
on leave. Molina, his brother-in-law, said it's common for troops on leave in
the United States to have their minds on the war zone - where their comrades
are fighting. The feeling is one of being in two very different places at
once, of being happy about spending time with family but carrying a strong
sense of guilt for being far from your men. "I know when I was
around him we would joke around a lot, but I could tell there were just
certain times when he would want to be left alone," said Molina, who
served in Iraq from December 2005 until late October. "I know like when
I first returned, it's like everybody wants to be with you and spend time
with you, but you still need that space to transition." Corrales recalled tales of a
bitter war. One story that lingers with Triva seems to show that some of what
he had seen left him with a lot on his mind. It concerned a young soldier
who killed a man for the first time. As Trey told it, the young soldier went
up to the corpse, picked up a severed arm and screamed. Sgt. 1st Class Trey
Corrales tried to console him as the soldier talked about killing himself. "And so he calmed him
down and talked him out of it," Triva Corrales said, "and he said
just the way this boy was crying, you could tell he lost part of his soul." External link: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA081907.01A.Trey_Corrales.346bc71.html ‘I am not a murderer,’
Winder soldier says By Moni Basu The Atlanta Journal-Constitution August 18, 2007 He is already half prisoner
now, barred from carrying his weapon and riding out in a Humvee onto Iraq's
battlefields. He knows people have judged
him. He saw a Web posting that called him a "scumbag." It's hard to
sleep, he says, when your career - when your entire future - is suddenly
unknown. Spc. Christopher Phillip
Shore is accused of killing a man his unit captured in Iraq. He denies the
charges, pointing out he stepped forward because 'the events that had taken
place were wrong.' Army Spc. Christopher
Phillip Shore, a 25-year-old man who cherished a simple life lived entirely
within the confines of two Georgia counties, now finds himself in a heap of
trouble in a foreign land. The Army has charged the
Winder native with murdering a man captured by his unit. If found guilty,
Shore could get the death penalty. On his bunk in the barracks
at Forward Operating Base Warrior, in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk,
Shore lies awake late into the searing summer night. The accusations are
crushing to one who insists he has not crossed the line from combat to war
crime. He stares at the planks of
plywood separating his living space from others and contemplates how he came
to be accused by an institution he wholly admired. What troubles him even more
is that perhaps he would not have been charged at all had he kept silent
about the events that transpired on a tense mission in June. But Shore says
he was plagued by conscience, by his sense of right and wrong, and stepped
forward. "My heart dropped and I
was very mad," Shore says about the day he was charged. "I am not a
murderer," he says, in an e-mail to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"This isn't fair to me or my family." They are hard-working folks,
sponsoring everything from rifle raffles to chicken barbecues to raise money
to defend their soldier. Shore's father, Brian,
doesn't like to ask questions. He listens to what his son volunteers about
the night of the alleged murder and all the other nights and days spent in
Iraq. "He's seen a lot of
things he wishes he hadn't," the elder Shore says. "I know my son. I don't
have to ask him if he's innocent." Shore’s version of story The Army charge sheet on
Shore says he shot a detainee of Middle Eastern descent multiple times on
June 23. Military officials won't discuss the details of the ongoing
investigation. But Shore's version of that
night begins like this: "It was an intense,
complicated mission. We had to be switched on. Everything was split-second
decisions." According to Shore, his
scout platoon got a call telling them that 2-35 Infantry's Alpha Company was
pinned down in a house in al Saheed, a village near Kirkuk. Insurgents suspected of
planting bombs on roads used by the Americans were firing at Kiowa
helicopters hovering overhead. Flames engulfed a car shot up by one of the
choppers. When Shore and his platoon
were airlifted to the scene, the Kiowas were firing back into a house
harboring insurgents. The soldiers knew the
insurgents had laced the area with explosives. Shore was told to lead the
charge and clear the buildings. He was so sure he would get hit that he
unsnapped his pouch containing medical supplies for easier access when he
went down. The soldiers fired a SMAW-D,
a hand-held rocket, from one house into the courtyard of the target house.
Patrol leader Sgt. 1st Class Trey Corrales ordered his men to "kill all
the males in the house." It was after 2 in the
morning. Pitch black. Dust swirled about from the rocket blast. Shore could
not make out the shadowy outlines of people: whether they were men or women
or whether they posed any threat. He got everyone down on the
ground. The soldiers cuffed the men and began questioning them. They tested
their hands for explosives residue. The strips turned pink for positive. Outside, a series of shots
pierced the night air. "I ran towards the
shots. I was not sure what happened ... if one of our guys was in contact or
what." When he got out the back
door, Shore says he saw Corrales standing over a man on the ground. He was
hurt and losing blood. "Finish him,"
Corrales ordered. Shore fired his M-4 Carbine.
But he says he purposely missed the man. The wounded suspect was
treated by medics and evacuated to a combat hospital. He died two days later
from two gunshot wounds, according to an autopsy provided to Shore's defense
attorney, Michael Waddington. Waddington says bullets
fired from Shore's weapon did not hit the man. He says Shore was standing 4
feet from the wounded suspect, but the autopsy report shows the fatal bullets
were not fired at close range. Advised by his lawyer, Shore
would not answer questions about why, in that moment, he did not refuse
Corrales' order. But a few hours after the al Saheed incident, Shore and four
other soldiers decided to tell their supervising sergeants. Eventually they gave
their accounts of what they saw to their company commander. "We decided to go
forward because the events that had taken place were wrong, and there was no
need to allow anyone to do things that put us in danger or morally
compromising situations. There is enough danger in war without making
more," Shore says. "Plus, it was just the
right thing to do." Shore was questioned by
investigating officers. In the end, battalion commander Lt. Col. Michael
Browder was relieved of command. Corrales faces charges of premeditated
murder. So does Shore. "I do not understand
how I could be charged with murder," Shore says. "I went forward
about the situation." Wants to see his girls In the fall, the Army will
hold an Article 32 hearing, in which it will lay out its case against the two
soldiers. By then, Shore's unit, 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, will
be back at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. Shore hopes the Army will
let him come home to Georgia before his legal ordeal begins. He wants to hold his two little
girls again. Several months ago, daughter
Cassidy, 6, read to him from a book over the phone. Shore listened intently,
from almost 8,000 miles away. It was, he says, one of his proudest moments. When he was Cassidy's age or
perhaps a little older, Shore, known as Phil to family and friends, begged
his parents to buy him adult-size Army fatigues. His father worked for many
years as a supervisor at the Walton Cotton Mill; his mother, Debra, was a
weaver there. When the mill shuttered, the Shores moved to Loganville, where
Phil Shore began his education in a Christian school so that, as his father
says, he would be well grounded. He grew into adulthood
swinging on trees, hiding in honeysuckle vines, hunting, fishing and playing
little league ball. Even when he got into
trouble, he didn't lie, says Brian Shore, recalling a time when his boy came
home soaking wet and claimed he had fallen into the strong currents of the
flooded Apalachee River. When asked about what really happened, Shore told
the truth: that he and his friend had purposely jumped in. Phil Shore's desire for
soldiering was cemented after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He
joined the Army and for the first time, stepped foot on foreign soil, in the
unforgiving terrain of Afghanistan. After that tour, he tried
his hand in the civilian world, fixing cars, selling cellphones. Then went
right back to where his heart was - the Army. Last summer, he deployed to
Iraq. "I knew it would be a
trying, difficult time," he says in his e-mail. "I guess you could
say it is like getting into a car wreck. Think of the adrenaline and anxiety
you feel. Your heart rate increases. Sometimes your hands shake. You get disoriented.
That is a combination of feelings that are hard to go through let alone
continue to function through. Every day here is like that." Shore blacked out once after
being hit by the blast of a car bomb. A sniper's bullet penetrated the helmet
of his best friend. He lived, but Shore's battalion has lost several men. At
night, Shore listens to the base sirens warning of incoming fire. A walk to
the shower could mean the end of everything. Fifteen months, he says, is
too long in the war zone. Overprotective daddy Brian Shore calls himself an
overprotective daddy. "Quite frankly, I'm a
redneck, country boy," he says. "But I'd give anything I have for
my son." He spends his time outside
his job as a salesman at Cook's Pest Control arranging fund-raisers for his
son's defense. He doesn't think about the
worst-case scenario. Neither does his son. Shore wonders if he will still be
able to make a career out of the military once this is over - if he is
exonerated. Shore keeps a MySpace page.
His father checks it often and when silence befalls the site, the worst
thoughts get the best of him. "You think I died,
didn't you?" Phil Shore responds out of the blue. After June 23, he made a
similarly halting statement telling his father the Army had charged him with
murder. Then he told him: "Dad,
I know what happened that night. I didn't do anything wrong." External link: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2007/08/18/shore_0819.html |