Point taken. I pray you are wrong this time, but must admit I fear you might be correct.
I agree 100%.
I certainly hope that the Iraqi people get to see that these soldiers will be punished, and punished harshly.
I know I was pissed in the 1990’s when the three Marines were accused of raping a 12 yo Okinawan girl, and after a year of negotiations, the Clinton administration transferred all three to the Japanese civil authorities for trial and punishment. As other posters have already put forth: Forcible rape by armed forces personnel in occupied territories is punishable by a court-martial with any sentence up to death by firing squad.
Both then, and now, the civil authorities shouldn’t get a chance to prosecute the accused until they’ve been tried, and punished, for their violations of the UCMJ. (Note, AIUI, this is not a violation of the US double-jeopardy rules, since violation of the UCMJ is a crime under different statutes than civil rape or murder statutes.) If these soldiers are found guilty by the courts-martial, the civilian trials should be very boring.
I don’t think this thread would be the tipping point. 
I don’t support the death penalty but don’t lose much sleep when say, someone like Jeffrey Dahmer bites the dust. My reasoning has always been that’s it’s wrong TO KILL. Dahmer may not have deserved to live, but no one had the right to TAKE his life. Wearing a black mask while hidden behind a one-way mirror as you push the button under the order of a faceless government still doesn’t exonerate anyone in my opinion.
What he said.
Do you have any idea of what you’re talking about? The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) is a treaty between the United States of America and Japan. The SOFA provided that the accused would be held in US military custody until they were indicted by the Japanese prosecutor’s office. Once that happened, then the accused were transferred to Japanese civil authorities. They were then tried, convicted, sentenced, imprisoned, had their sentences appealed, the appeals rejected, and served (or are continuing to serve) their sentences in a Japanese prison.
There were negotiations during that time, but it was not about how to handle that case. Those negotiations were to come to an agreement on how and when to hand over US military personnel accused of crimes under Japanese law.
BTW, the offense of rape being perpetrated in an occupied territory has nothing to do with it. For your reading pleasure, here is Article 120 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice:
Do you see “in an occupied territory” there? Me neither.
Oh, and the US military doesn’t use firing squads anymore. The last military execution (for the crimes of rape and attempted murder) was in 1961. The method of execution was hanging. There’s a download link on that site for the new regulations regarding military executions, but I must warn you that it’s for a PDF. From that PDF (Army Regulation 190-55):
p.s. While I was living in Japan and the ruckus was going on about that case, there wasn’t any question about the accused being tried under Japanese law. What the protestors were griping about were two things: (1) they wanted the accused transferred to the Japanese authorities before indictment (contrary to the treaty) and (2) the US military presence in Japan.
I really don’t understand where this is coming from. John Mace is, as usual, asking some good questions, and the issues he’s raising are hardly out of left field.
But returning perhaps closer to the main point, does anyone see such atrocities diminishing in frequency if our presence in Iraq continues at roughly its current level?
One more reason why we should accept any semi-respectable peace plan that comes along. In addition to what it does to the morale of our own military, to have a growing history of Abu Ghraibs and Hadithas and episodes like this, there’s how it looks through Iraqi eyes. To them, episodes like these aren’t isolated at all; they are the icing on top of a large cake of ‘collateral damage’ in bombings, checkpoint shootings, and the like. As a result, we are hated and feared, and our troops know that, which makes them more hostile towards the locals, which brings them a step or two closer to committing acts such as this.
How can one unravel this much mistrust, fear, and hatred? I don’t think it can be done while we remain there. One way or another, we need to construct a plan for extricating ourselves from this mess.
When a whole generation of Iraqis think of America, they’re not going to think of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln or D-Day or the Moon landing, they’re going to think of the thugs who raped that girl and killed her family.
I am becoming more and more opposed to the death penalty. Then a case like this comes along.
Try them, convict them, kill them.
Nope. Try them, convict them if they are guilty, punishment as mandated by law, preferably not death penalty, as I against death penalties on principle.
Crap, when will I learn to preview?
I understand, I sympathize, I am torn.
But I am a retired Army guy. I can forgive rape, I can forgive murder, I cannot forgive making this war worse and longer for everyone involved.
I only regret they did away with firing squads the last time we revised the regulation.
I guess I don’t agree. I think some people do things that are so bad that they indeed deserve death. But I don’t think that the State has the authority to sentence them to death. When I say that someone deserves death, I can do so with the confidence that I don’t have the power to give it to them - thus I don’t have to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are guilty. I don’t believe the State should have that power either, and I think the problems with death penalty trials being performed incompetently are the major logistical problem with it. Further, though, I don’t think it’s right for a society to hold the power of life and death over its inhabitants; I think the death penalty is barbaric and that it has no place in civil society.
Nevertheless I’m not inclined to shed many tears when a rapist or murderer is killed. There’s something particularly ugly about taking advantage of one’s position as the member of an occupation to do so - and there is the danger of worsening the war by inciting revenge killings. I won’t lose sleep if such people are killed. That doesn’t mean I think they should be, though.
Call For a Moderator!!!
This the Pit for crying out loud! there has been no cussing no unreasonable rants! Just reasonable discussion! Lots of threads get moved from GD to the pit, be the first to move a thread from the Pit to GD! It will be a hallowed moment in the history of SDMB!
Sure, but on the other hand John can hang another little “Mission Accomplished” banner above his monitor.
Platteville, eh? I seem to recall an adage back in the college days that ‘once you go Platte you never go back’.
-Joe
yeah, born in Chicago, went to school in Platteville and never escaped. They don’t call this place the “Resume stain” for nothing…
IIRC, it’s happened before. Couldn’t tell you what the thread was about, but I swear I participated in a thread that got moved from here to GD.
Damned if I know how you’d search for something like that, though.
It happened in the second post, before any cussin’ had started, though, so I don’t know if this is the one you recall seeing.
Note to everybody: Not to be a junior Mod, or anything, but please note that this thread is a year and a half old. Please think about zombie threads if you decide to pose to it.
That’s post to it, of course.