New Mexico Guard Commander Demands Apology From U.S. Army

[Hissyspit]

http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2142

New Mexican Guard Demands Apology From US Army
Posted on Sunday, April 29 @ 22:06:56 EDT by editor

The commander of New Mexico's National Guard is demanding an apology from the Army brass after dozens of his soldiers in a mostly Hispanic unit were ordered to strip to their gym shorts and searched for gang tattoos while on duty in Kuwait.

- snip -

At the time, several members of Task Force Cobra objected that the searches were racially motivated, and within days, Montoya asked his Army bosses to apologize. When that didn't happen, Montoya wrote an apology and had that read and posted at their barracks.

Montoya, in a June 1 letter to Gen. Peter Schoomaker in the office of the Army chief of staff, said the unit "was racially targeted and illegally searched for body tattoos just because the unit consists of a large number of Hispanic-surnamed soldiers. An Army CID agent without any credible evidence, and armed only with information about an individual soldier from a different base and in a different unit, made a decision to target my unit." "All I asked was that someone with equal rank to me would go over to these great Americans and apologize -- this still has not been accomplished."

After the Albuquerque Journal reported the incident this week, New Mexico's congressional delegation demanded that acting Army Secretary Pete Geren order a full investigation. Gov. Bill Richardson, the nation's only Hispanic governor and a Democratic presidential hopeful, said he supports an investigation into the "degrading searches."

MORE