Reply #35: Good. [View All]

They should be punished. I understand that soldiers are put into a hellish experience, trained to kill & overwhelmed. They're not properly trained & forced into a war most never wanted to fight, for politicians who don't really care what happens to them. Where I differ is in your characterization that these particular soldiers should be treated w/leniency because they're in a war zone. IMO, that seems to cross the line from explaining these actions to apologizing for it. I could almost understand an incident like Haditha, where troops acted right after being bombed by insurgents. That's not what happened here. This didn't occur in a combat zone, or in the heat of battle. If the allegations are true, this was a cold-blooded, premeditated crime. According to the soldier, these soldiers "noticed" the Iraqi woman on patrol & then made plans to assault her, possibly to kill her, & returned to the barracks w/bloody uniforms. That's pre-meditated rape & murder. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have served in Iraq w/o becoming monsters; it seems to do them a disservice to imply that serving in a war zone means that a soldier can no longer distinguish between right & wrong.

And the military itself disagrees with you - troops who murder/rape civilians are subject to court martial & even death under the Military Code. It is a war crime & justifiably carries harsh sentences under both US military law & international law. If someone rapes & murders a family in the US, they are most definitely a thug. The same goes for troops in Iraq. Not everyone was born a thug; people are victims of circumstance & bad luck & hard lives & traumatic experiences. But there comes a point where you have to take personal responsibility for your own actions. If they commited this crime in the US, or Japan, they'd face trial & sentence. And they should face the same sentence in Iraq. Thank you for offering the perspective of a war veteran. Look at through the eyes of the troops, but also try looking at it through the eyes of the victims, and their loved ones. They deserve justice, too. If this doesn't deserve a life sentence, I'm not sure what does. It might be politically expedient for them to go on trial :eyes:, but it's also the right thing to do. We can hardly scream about the rule of law when it comes to Gitmo & then fail to apply it when it comes to US troops.