"Richard Anthony Rodriguez served in the U.S. Army from August 1991 to August 2012," said Army spokesman William Sharp. "He attained the rank of master sergeant and held the military occupational specialties of infantryman, weapons sergeant, and senior sergeant. During his service he deployed to Afghanistan four times between 2006 and 2011."
U.S. military officials are refusing to provide the most basic information about the death of an American contractor in Iraq, for which two Marines and a sailor are reportedly under investigation.
The Daily Beast has identified the contractor as former Green Beret Rick Rodriguez, who worked for Lockheed Martin in Irbil. Rodriguez died at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, on Jan. 4, reportedly from injuries that he sustained during a fight with U.S. service members.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is looking into a Marine for allegedly making comments on Facebook blaming sexual violence on young girls, a 2nd Marine Logistics Group spokesman told Task & Purpose.
Master Sgt. Mark McBride made the comments on Sunday as part of a discussion about rap artist R. Kelly, who has been accused of statutory rape in a recent documentary.
In the months since the exposure of revenge porn social media sites such as “Marines United,” the Marine Corps has been forced to confront the digital manifestation of its culture of toxic masculinity. The Marines United Facebook group was just one of numerous social media websites where intimate images of female Marines were shared without their consent.
The NCIS task force that has spearheaded the forensic investigation to identify victims of the 30,000-member ‘Marines United’ Facebook group, which served as a breeding ground for revenge porn, has a very special name.
A significant portion of court-martial proceedings for Marine Corps personnel since the start of 2017 have included charges involving the sexual abuse of children, according to Department of Defense data reviewed by Task & Purpose, further detailing the growing scourge of child sexual abuse that’s marred the armed forces in recent years.
