Brody's Notes... Sheehan Apologises To Dutch Royal Army

Gen. John Sheehan, USMC (Ret)   

Photo Courtesy of Bechtel International

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Mar 30 | A written letter to retired General Henk van den Breemen, former Dutch chief of the defence staff, by retired USMC General John Sheehan, apologised to him and the Dutch Army for remarks he made during recent Senate testimony;

"I am sorry that my public recollection of those discussions of 15 years ago inaccurately reflected your thinking on some specific social issues on the military."

Sheehan had made his controversial remarks during a U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on March 18, in which he argued against plans to end the 'DADT' ban on allowing Gays to serve openly in the U.S. military. He told Senators that Gen Van den Breemen had told him that Gay soldiers were seen as "part of the problem" which contributed to the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces after Dutch UN peacekeepers failed to prevent the fall of the Srebrenica, Bosnia in 1995. Sheehan told Van de Breemen;

"To be clear, the failure on the ground in Srebrenica was no way the fault of individual soldiers."

A spokesman for the Dutch Defence Ministry said General Van den Breemen was satisfied with the apology.

In a related statement, a spokesperson for the "Pink Army", a group representing Gay Dutch soldiers, said that the organisation has withdrawn its threat to take Gen Sheehan to U. S. Federal Court & sue him for slander.

"It is quite something for a senior military man to admit he was wrong and say  that he is sorry," said the spokesman.