As well as reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge. At first they were gonna string the guy up, but then they realized he had only killed an Arab.
Granted, it was an Iraqi that had been previously trying to kill them. But the teenager had already been incapacitated, leaving him defenseless. The fact that some soldiers cross over the line is understandable. The idea that someone can be convicted of murder and yet only be sentenced to one year in prison is ludicrous.
Standing on the beach
With a gun in my hand
Staring at the sea
Staring at the sand
Staring down the barrel
At the arab on the ground
I can see his open mouth
But I hear no sound
I read this too, but refrained from commenting since everything and anything we do over there is apparently OK to certain people, and no matter what you say, they find a defence for it. I’m tired of hearing the same damn excuses.
I’m with you. Puno-Punoq-what the hell does your name mean? 
Turn your monitor ap!sdn umop.
So, do I understand this right? If they had killed the man in the first place, it would be ok. But because they killed him after they shot at him initially, he gets in trouble?
If they kill him when they can reasonably believe that he is a threat to them, it’s okay.
If they kill him when it’s completely obvious that he is no threat to them, it’s murder.
I apologize if this hurts your brain or anything.
A professional disciplined force starts taking prisoners and calling in medical help for the wounded once they are no longer under threat. They do not shoot captives or as I believe the defense is saying carry out “mercy” killings on the enemy.
Well, no it didn’t. I was asking a genuine question as to how I perceived the article. I wasn’t saying that one or the other was acceptable or anything like that. So, bite me, n’ stuff.
I took your post as a rhetorical question implying the moral equivalence of the two. If this was not your intent, than I apologize for my persnickitynessitudality.
Frankly, I haven’t heard enough details on the guy that was shot to form an opinion on how reasonable a year is for a sentence.
If it was a mercy killing, and the guy was plainly about to die (i.e., clutching his shredded liver and screaming), then perhaps the best way to deal with it would have been to look the other way…
If the teenager was mortally wounded and in severe pain, I wouldn’t have sentenced the soldier to any time in prison. Shooting the teenager was the humane thing to do in that situation.
Going back, I can see how my post would reflect that. So I apologize for that, n’ stuff. 
I don’t see enough relevant facts to make any decisions yet as to whether or not this was an appropriate sentence.
As an agent of the military if you carry out military actions and someone dies accidentally it isn’t the same as carrying out a premeditated murder as a civilian back in the states. At least that is the legal tradition.
Now we don’t know a situation like that happened here.
What else could have happened?
If an agent of the military kills someone who was just engaged in combat with them but who was then no threat he has committed a crime. But crimes of passion receive lesser sentences back Stateside as well, and I think battle stress is probably at times a lot more mentally upsetting than catching your significant other banging another person.
Or, maybe the guy was killed in cold blood for no reason. In that case the soldiers involves should be charged as fully as anyone back home who kills someone in cold blood like that.
But until I get a lot more specifics I won’t pass judgment on the soldiers or the legal outcome of their case.
Yes, it depends upon the circumstances. But those circumstances were adjucated in a military court of law. The jury found him guilty of murder and conspiracy to murder. He wasn’t merely accused of killing the boy. He wasn’t merely found guilty of manslaughter. Murder. How can the military code of justice allow a sentence of only one year for someone found guilty of murder?
It depends on your definitions of murder, manslaughter, etc. By most legal codes, euthanasia is first degree murder. Morally, it isn’t the same thing as walking up to a random civilian and shooting them, but the law puts them both in the same category. The military court may not have had a choice, it was the intentional and premeditated killing of a human being, even if the intent was to relieve the suffering of a human being.
Let’s say this was a mercy killing. What would have this soldier done if it was an American mortally wounded? Would he have shot him as well or would he have tried to get the poor fucker some morphine* and held his hand while he died?
I’m assuming that soldiers or at least one member of a patrol would have emergency medical supplies on them.
Would a doctor found guilty of euthanasia of a person with a terminal and painful disease expect 1 year in prison?
I wish that being convicted of murder meant something, but I don’t think it does, at least as far as prison terms go.
And while I truly appreciate the fact that we don’t know the entire story, I also wonder: If one of Our Boys was the one lying on the floor and an Iraqi soldier did him the favor of performing a “mercy killing”…how much more of the story would we demand to know before we started judging the situation? Some people–a very small minority, I’d wager–might still want to know more, but a hell of a lot of people would be screaming for blood.
Then again, here in my lovely hometown, the dad and stepmom of a battered 4 year old were basically let off (she got time served, and he got 90 days, iirc) because no one could decide who actually killed him. Apparently, if no one admits to murder, and the victim didn’t actually scrawl “Soandso killed me” in his own blood…well, I guess he isn’t dead due to blunt trauma injuries after all. Except, of course, he IS, and no one has to take the blame.
A whole different Pit thread, I know, but I’m feeling a little disillusioned.
I would have been OK with the “shot him as well” option, if the wound was obviously serious enough.
Big assumption, especially that it would include painkillers capable of killing the kind of pain we’re talking about here. Morphine doesn’t work on all kinds of pain.
These things happen in every war since time immemorial. And in fact, the fact that it is a crime and we do take so many prisoners implies that it is essentially a professional, disciplined force. Just off the top of my head, I recall a confederate that was bayonted in cold blood for having “fort pillow” stitched on his sleeve )after the famous massacre) during the civil war. Heck, in most wars this is par for the course.