Weirdest Bank Robbery Ever?

I’ve been mystified for awhile now with how little coverage has been given to Luke Sommer.  The story would appear to be as sexy as a journalist could ask for:

The Bank of America branch in Tacoma, Washington got robbed of $54,000 in cash by a four-man crew of Army Rangers from Fort Lewis.  That alone is interesting enough, but then when the ringleader gets arrested, he insists that the crime was a deliberate attempt to get caught so that he could present information about US War crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So this morning, Brainsturbator returns to form with a tasty breakfast political intrigue, life imitating art (or at least TV and movies), and the Great American Pastime itself: robbing f***ing banks and getting away with it.

I’m not gonna re-write poetry, and Solider of Fortune magazine, like it or not, is just that.  Correspondent Rick Anderson’s account of the robbery cannot be improved upon, so I will merely repeat it here:

To customers and employees in the Bank of America branch that Monday, the invaders rushing through the door had the appearance of commandos on a raid. Ski-masked men in heavy clothing, armed with automatic rifles and sporting soft body armor under their jackets, stormed the one-story South Tacoma BOA branch near closing time, shouting orders and forcing everyone to the floor.

The four-man robbery team brandished handguns, pointed AK-47s, and seemed ready for a firefight, bringing along extra banana-style ammunition clips. “That’s a tremendous amount of weaponry and ammunition for a bank robbery,” says assistant U.S. attorney Michael Dion in Tacoma.

Though apparently young and of average builds, the four seemed imposing and confident. At 5:15 p.m. Aug. 7, Purple Heart Day in America, they entered through the swinging glass doors on two sides of the neighborhood bank that is sandwiched among the storefronts and car lots of busy South Tacoma Way and almost immediately began counting off the seconds, one robber shouting out the time every half-minute.

So who is Sommer?  He’s a dual citizen, for one thing, which is why he’s currently under house arrest and awaiting extradition hearing up in Vancouver.  The picture that emerges from news reports is a guy who’d be a lot of fun at parties. 

A search of Sommer’s room at Fort Lewis Tuesday turned up $10,000 in $100 and $50 bills; two semiautomatic handguns; eight loaded AK-47 ammunition clips; and two AK-47 assault rifles hidden behind ceiling tiles above his bed.

Please Consider The Following

is in Canada. The United States and Canada do have an existing treaty to extradite criminals back and forth, however, Canada makes exceptions for crimes which are political in nature. So it’s definitely a shrewd move by Sommer to cast his heist in political terms, especially to the media.  To say the least, it’s rather interesting that he’s so open with reporters about his reasons but has yet to bring any evidence to light. 

The Moment of Truth is coming, though, and Sommer knows it:

“I’m untouchable, as long as I can prove in court that the reasons that I had were political. And I can. Trust me.”

The charges would be devastating—assuming the United States has any shame left, which we probably don’t—and Sommers claims to have some some damning testimony:

Sommer’s allegations of U.S. involvement in war crimes stem from incidents he claims to have witnessed while on combat deployments in Iraq in 2004 and Afghanistan in 2005.

Among his most sensitive allegations: Sommer claims he saw an Iraqi woman raped by a member of the Army’s elite Delta Force while guarding prisoners in Baghdad in 2004. He said he was outraged and expressed concerns to two superior officers, who told him to forget about it.

He also claims he has proof that a Navy Seal unit executed 12 to 17 prisoners in Afghanistan.

The Army has confirmed Sommer saw combat in Iraq in 2004 and in Afghanistan in 2005. But details of Ranger missions are classified.

The Soldier of Fortune article phrases it differently enough to be equally signifigant:

“One of the people implicated in the robbery is a witness to rape and the murder of 16 people at a battlefield interrogation facility, which makes Abu Ghraib [prison] look like kindergarten,” said the [Sommer], who spoke at times in the third person and referred to “hypotheticals” when discussing the heist so as not to directly admit any role.

“Another [accused robber] has electronic access to the locations of 65 CIA prisons around the world. Sixty-five! There’s a lot of shit out there that has to get said.”

The Very American Story of Pat Tillman

Exceptionally odd: all four of the Army Rangers who were arrested in connection with this robbery served in the same unit as Pat Tillman, who is simultaneously a genuine American hero and a Pentagon “PsyOp”. 

Tillman, as you might recall, quit his NFL position with the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the US military after the 9/11 attacks.  He trained as an Army Ranger and did a tour of duty in Iraq for several months, then got re-deployed to Afghanistan.  He was killed in Afghanistan, and the circumstances of his death remain a mystery.  Pat Tillman was awarded a Silver Star and Purple Heart and the Army insisted that Tillman was killed in a battle with enemy forces.

Tillman’s father was unequivocal:

“After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this. They purposely interfered with the investigation; they covered it up. I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out. They blew up their poster boy.”

The poster boy was very uncomfortable in his role: Tillman was in fact increasingly critical of the Bush administration and skeptical of the real reasons behind the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It speaks volumes that Tillman had arranged to meet with Noam Chomsky once he returned from Afghanistan. 

I am absolutely implying the possibility Tillman’s “friendly fire” death was intentional.  Having their “poster boy” defect and start speaking out against the war would be disastrous.  It’s hardly stretching the imagination to consider that the Army might kill someone, we are after all discussing an organization which is nearing a casualty count of a million civilians in Iraq alone.

Would Anything Really Shock You?

To me the single most important part of the Abu Ghraib incident is not the photos—it’s the hundreds of photos and videos that the US government refused to release. Their logic—which is actually fairly airtight—is that releasing them would “fuel additional hatred for the United States and put U.S. troops in harm’s way.”

Seymour Hersh, who helped to break the story, was pretty blunt about the contents of the unreleased videos:

“ Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib. The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.”

It hasn’t come out yet, and it probably never will.  (Although I’m willing to bet Dick Cheney has a personal copy of each tape.)

Also consider what two other people have to say about the unseen footage:

“First, beyond abuse of prisoners, there are other photos that depict incidents of physical violence toward prisoners, acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman.”

--Donald Rumsfield

“The American public needs to understand, we’re talking about rape and murder here. We’re not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We’re talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges.”

--Sen. Lindsey Graham

“Limited Hangout”

CALLER: It was like a college fraternity prank that stacked up naked men --

LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we’re going to ruin people’s lives over it and we’re going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?

I’m not including that quote as a “what a sad tub of medicated lard” Limbaugh diss—I only mean to point out that in terms of what Americans got to see on the news, Limbaugh’s riff there probably made a lot of sense.  There was no footage on CBS of women being raped by groups of soldiers, in front of their spouses and relatives who were being held prisoner.  There was no footage of attack dogs being let loose on children floating around the internet.

If you’re interested in watching a brutally depressing documentary on what footage and knowledge does exist, then check this out.

Well, That’s Plenty for Today

Even more grim horror tomorrow.