[2500] in Depressing_Thoughts
Our tax dollars at work....
sethg@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sethg@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon Nov 11 21:18:10 1991
WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The Supreme Court Monday refused to disturb a
ruling that the Navy cannot be sued by the family of a recruit who
died when officers repeatedly forced him under water as he screamed
for help during a training exercise. The court, without comment, let
stand a decision that the so-called Feres doctrine, a 1950 ruling by
the high court that exempts the military from suit by service members
injured ``in the course of activity incident to service,'' applies
even when the government engages in alleged ``egregious and
torturous'' actions . . .
On March 2, 1988, Mirecki and his classmates again began
the ``sharks and daisies'' routine. Fifteen minutes into the drill,
Mirecki had trouble performing the escape procedures and began to
panic. ``He grabbed the edge of the pool, stating he was tired and
dizzy and wanted to quit,'' attorneys for Mirecki's family wrote.
``Three instructors forced him from the wall and took him to the
center of the pool to continue with the exercise'' with Mirecki
yelling ``help'' and ``I quit.'' ``The instructors, however, did not
let him go or terminate training, as Mirecki's contract provided.
Instead, the instructors decided to perform an act on Mirecki known
as 'smurfing.' This act involved the instructors forcibly holding a
recruit under water until the recruit reached a semi-conscious state
and started turning blue.'' In the past, the procedure had caused a
half-dozen recruits to be physically revived. At one point Mirecki
broke free, swam to the pool side and climbed out. He crawled to an
equipment rack and wrapped his arms around it, screaming for help and
stating that he quit the program. Classmates, who had been ordered
from the pool, were instructed to turn away from Mirecki and sing the
``National Anthem'' as loud as possible. Mirecki was forced back
into the pool, but grabbed a floating rope that divided the pool, and
continued screaming. An instructor then disconnected the rope from
poolside. He was put in a rear head-hold, dragged to the pool's deep
end, and dunked for 10- to 15-second intervals. Even after becoming
semi-conscious and beginning to turn blue, the dunking continued.
Mirecki was unconscious when finally taken from the pool and he later
died. The Bush administration does not dispute the facts of the
case, but claimed that allowing servicemembers or their families to
sue the military for ``service-connected injuries'' could hurt
military morale . . .
