{"id":988,"date":"2005-07-28T22:12:11","date_gmt":"2005-07-29T03:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=988"},"modified":"2005-07-28T22:12:25","modified_gmt":"2005-07-29T03:12:25","slug":"who-will-guard-the-guards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=988","title":{"rendered":"Who Will Guard the Guards?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Specifically, I&#8217;m talking about soldiers of the California National Guard.  Once again, their back in the news and, once again, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alertnet.org\/thenews\/newsdesk\/N27261136.htm\">not in a good way<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>At least 23 members of a California National Guard battalion serving in Iraq are under investigation for the alleged abuse of Iraqi detainees and for a $30,000 extortion scheme involving promises to protect shopkeepers from insurgents, the Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Citing military officials and unnamed members of the unit, the newspaper said the abuse allegations focused on an incident in which a stun gun was apparently used to torture Iraqi detainees after an insurgent attack in June on a Baghdad area power plant. At least 17 soldiers are under investigation.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The extortion scheme under investigation is said to have involved at least six soldiers on night patrols in the Baghdad areas who demanded more than $30,000 from shopkeepers in exchange for protection from insurgents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Add these investigations from abroad to the California Guard&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=926\">recent<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=950\">difficulties<\/a> at home and you&#8217;re well on your way to a very ugly black eye for the reserve components.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Specifically, I&#8217;m talking about soldiers of the California National Guard. Once again, their back in the news and, once again, not in a good way. At least 23 members of a California National Guard battalion serving in Iraq are under investigation for the alleged abuse of Iraqi detainees and for a $30,000 extortion scheme involving [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}