Friday, December 10, 2004
What do you call it when the assassins accuse the assassin?
Erhmmm... The U.S. Military?
This story is fishier than a cannery. The essence, as it has been reported, is that a soldier just pleaded guilty to murder charges for wasting a wounded Iraqi. The devil of this bitch is in the details, which sadly, are beyond my grasp, because I can only run with what the press (A.K.A. the military) is giving me.
What I can muster is that in the course of a patrol, a group of soldiers shot up a garbage truck that they claim was dropping off bombs. They disabled the truck, and it caught on fire. One of the individuals in the truck managed to get out, but was severely burned, and also had wounds from either bullets or shrapnel. One of the soldiers (the one who pleaded guilty to murder) decided that the guy was beyond help, and so he executed him.
Now, I am certainly not trying to say that I condone execution - legal or otherwise - but I don't condone war in the first place, and so, this seems to me to be just more insipid American hypocrisy.
Seriously, if it is OK to open fire on the garbage truck, and burn and maim its occupants in the first place, then how is it any worse to finish the job, and expedite the inevitable?
I don't know what really happened, but if the soldier involved is telling the truth - that the guy was done for anyway - then what he did is no crime. The real criminals are the ones who ordered our soldiers onto the battlefield in the first place.
This story is fishier than a cannery. The essence, as it has been reported, is that a soldier just pleaded guilty to murder charges for wasting a wounded Iraqi. The devil of this bitch is in the details, which sadly, are beyond my grasp, because I can only run with what the press (A.K.A. the military) is giving me.
What I can muster is that in the course of a patrol, a group of soldiers shot up a garbage truck that they claim was dropping off bombs. They disabled the truck, and it caught on fire. One of the individuals in the truck managed to get out, but was severely burned, and also had wounds from either bullets or shrapnel. One of the soldiers (the one who pleaded guilty to murder) decided that the guy was beyond help, and so he executed him.
Now, I am certainly not trying to say that I condone execution - legal or otherwise - but I don't condone war in the first place, and so, this seems to me to be just more insipid American hypocrisy.
Seriously, if it is OK to open fire on the garbage truck, and burn and maim its occupants in the first place, then how is it any worse to finish the job, and expedite the inevitable?
I don't know what really happened, but if the soldier involved is telling the truth - that the guy was done for anyway - then what he did is no crime. The real criminals are the ones who ordered our soldiers onto the battlefield in the first place.
