May 2021 Newsletter

WWW.MHCE.US Monthly Newsletter | 15
In Wednesday's interview, Parlatore said the SEALs
"did not intend to kill an unarmed prisoner using
medical treatment," and that Gallagher's statements
have been misinterpreted.
Gallagher and the rest of the SEALs did intend to
kill members of ISIS, Parlatore said, but did so by
calling in a Hellfire missile strike on their building.
That strike killed all the ISIS members except the
prisoner, who was badly wounded and, they believed,
likely to die, he added.
After the strike, the SEALs conducted medical
treatment on the prisoner to practice their skills,
Parlatore said.
"By the time he got to them, he was dying," the
lawyer said. "There was no way to save him. They
made a decision, and they agreed they would perform
medical treatment on him until he expired. They
did that for training purposes; they did it to prevent
[the Emergency Response Division, an Iraqi special
forces unit accused of torture and other abuses] from
torturing him. It was not done with the intent of
using medical procedures to hasten his death."
When asked about Gallagher's statement that the
prisoner "died from all the medical treatments that
were done," Parlatore said, "That may have been an
inartful way of saying it.
"Eddie's an operator, he's not an orator," he added.
Parlatore said the medical treatments may have
prolonged the prisoner's life, including a treatment
Gallagher administered that he said cleared the
prisoner's airway and allowed him to breathe again.
Gallagher's court-martial was upended by the
shocking testimony of one of his platoon mates,
Special Operator 1st Class Corey Scott, who changed
his story on the stand and testified that he himself
killed the prisoner by asphyxiating him.
Parlatore said that practicing medical treatments on
a dying patient who was beyond saving is legal and
commonly done by doctors in emergency rooms,
though they typically get the patients' consent before
doing so.
"The ethics opinions ultimately come down to say,
you really should get informed consent from the
patient before doing this," Parlatore said. "Obviously,
they did not get informed consent from the terrorist,
but what they did is not illegal."
When asked whether it was ethical to practice
medical procedures on a prisoner who had not
granted consent, Parlatore said, "According to the
[American Medical Association], they should have
gotten the terrorist's consent. And so maybe Eddie
shouldn't be practicing medicine anymore. But it is
what they did in a combat scenario."
Parlatore said one of the junior members of the
platoon was allowed to insert a chest tube and
conduct a needle decompression on the prisoner.
That junior member had learned how to conduct
those procedures in class, he said, but had never
before performed them on an actual patient.
"It is valuable training," Parlatore said. "He got the
opportunity to get that training, to know how to do
it, so that the first time that he has to actually do it in
real life isn't when one of his buddies is about to die.
It's not pretty, it's not something that we like to talk
about, but that's the truth."
When asked about Gallagher's podcast remarks
during a press briefing Wednesday, Pentagon Press
Secretary John Kirby said, "I'm not sure I'm going to
dignify those comments with a response."