On the rapper, Army Times reports:

Army spokesman Lt. Col. Eric Bloom said Saturday that top brass decided to discharge Hall instead of taking him to trial in part because he admitted his guilt.

Army Times noted this context for the case:

Army lawyers concede that Hall never took physical action against any troops. His threat came the month after Maj. Nidal Hassan allegedly killed 13 people in a shooting spree at Ft. Hood, Texas — a period when the Pentagon was taking extra precautions about potentially violent soldiers.

Stars & Stripes reports:

A soldier charged with making threats to other soldiers in a rap song he wrote to protest his stop-loss will be discharged from the military. Spc. Marc A. Hall, of the 1st Heavy Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, will receive an other-than-honorable discharge from the Army, reduction to E-1 and will also lose a “substantial number” of military and veteran benefits, according to a statement issued Saturday by U.S. Division-Center in Baghdad. Hall has been in confinement for the past four months, most recently before standing trial in Kuwait, the release states. As part of his discharge deal, which came after charges were referred on March 30, Hall acknowledged he was guilty of at least one of the five offenses he faced, according to the release. The convening authority for the case, Maj. Gen. Terry A. Wolff, accepted Hall’s plea after considering the amount of time he had already spent in jail, his acknowledgement of guilt, prior service and the benefits Hall will lose, the release states.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today that he has forwarded recommendations to the Army for disciplinary action against supervisors of the accused Ft. Hood shooter.

The LA Times reports.

The report recommends clarifying for unit commanders their responsibility in identifying people who could pose a threat. Unit commanders, according to the report, must become attuned to indicators of behavioral problems or the potential for violence or radicalization.

In this context, people may well be following the case of a Soldier in pretrial confinement accused of threatening his leaders in a rap type song on his website. See:

Fragging and rapping

Rapping rap II

Rapping rap

Tim King, The Fragging of American Officers: Historic Problems and Future Planning, Salem-News.com.

What we call fragging the British Navy called “Shot Rolling” after the practice of rolling a cannon ball across the deck for the purpose of injuring an officer. The methods may vary but the results are the same. The reasons behind such rash decisions may vary, ranging from cowardice, to revenge, to insanity and countless things in between. Dr. Phil Leveque points to PTSD as a primary reason in many cases, referring to the endless number of human beings who break down in war, sometimes with disastrous results. There is not a current draft in the U.S., but there is a Stop-Loss program that prevents soldiers from exiting the Army on their end of service date. Not a draft, but the results are similar on more than one level. The policy has great impact on multiple tour combat veterans who simply need to exit the military, but are forced to stay. The problems stemming from the lowered enlistment requirements and forced tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan are not of the same magnitude as Vietnam, at least not yet, but still worth noting.

To me this seems to have some relevance to the ongoing discussion about the rapper now pending court-martial charges for allegedly threatening various members of his unit, blogged here, and here, and here by CAAFLog (a link is there to the charge sheet).