No. Capital punishment is wrong, always and everywhere.
He should (upon conviction, of course) be sentenced to solitary confinement until he brings those people back to life.
And even though I didn’t select the fourth option, I still want punch and pie.
Of course Staff Sgt. Bales should be executed. Same goes for Breivik, Loughner, Holmes, Hassan, and Tsarnaev. I don’t always support the death penalty but when I do its for those guilty of mass killings.
Sure, the SO leaves and there you are flirting. 
I’m against the death penalty in general only because so many innocent people are executed. There is simply no redress of grievance in case of a mistake. But I have no problem applying it to the really heinous bastards like Manson or John Wayne Gacy or this guy. If only there were a way to be 100% sure in every case.
So for this guy, I would vote give it to him. While freely admitting I am not on his jury and have not studied the evidence, I would have no problem seeing this bastard shot. Period.
get out the snips and MAKE him an Afghan woman.
“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.”
Anyway, no. If you ain’t got the balls for your own penal torture and murder, don’t sub-contract the job.
No, because I’m against all killing of people.
Thank you! I forgot the last line.
That’s hardly a parallel. Murder is a universal taboo, pot-smoking is not. I wonder what the fallout would have been if the Abu Ghraib staff had been turned over to the Iraqis.
A good point is made above about soldiers having a reasonable expectation of being governed by the UCMJ when they sign up. The DO tend to find themselves working in a lot of vastly different jurisdictions. But the UCMJ can be changed. They could add a “dead to me” chapter wherein for certain crimes the soldier is tried by court marshal, fired if guilty, and turned over to the authorities where he committed the crime to experience some of the local culture.
If they turned a guy over for murder, the locals would expect US personnel to be turned over for parking tickets and burn the embassy. 
I don’t think a civilized government should be in the business of killing people, even heinous murderers.
That said, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill someone to prevent them killing someone else (imagine a pointed gun scenario). In theory, I wouldn’t feel bad about it afterwards, either, even if their gun ended up being unloaded. In practice, since I’ve never killed anyone, I can’t really predict how I’d feel.
If we can execute soldiers for war crimes when they were just following orders, I certainly have no issue executing a soldier when they are following their own whims.
The fact that it was his choice, in my opinion, aggravates the crime above and beyond that of those who were blindly following orders.
I voted yes, even though I am in favor of abolishing the death penalty in the US. My objection to the death penalty stems more from practical considerations than it does from a moral objection.
In this case I would prefer local law to prevail. Putting our citizens above the local law promotes the view of America as arrogant bullies. In think that whenever possible Americans committing crimes in other countries should be subject to the local laws. Imagine if a French Soldier in the US as part of a joint training exercise murdered 16 Americans. You can bet that there is no way that we would let this be handled by a French Military court.
I am willing to turn a US service member over to the local justice system if I believed that the person would receive a fair trial according to my own standards.
I believe that the courts in France, the UK, and Japan, are fair and/or relatively corruption free.
Afghanistan, I am not so sure.
I say “my” standards, because I believe everyone has a right to an impartial jury and/or judge, the defense is allowed to cross examine witnesses or contest evidence, etc.
I would rather the US place the Sgt on trial in a U.S. courts system (civilian or military) than send him to a “kangaroo” court, even if that Sgt confessed, or indicated he planned on pleading “guilty”. I lean to the “lawful good” end of the RPG alignment system when it comes to how our government deals with it’s citizens, as opposed to “chaotic good”.
Your point is a good one and brought quite a bit of internal debate. I agree with you about the need for a constitution; however, Afghanistan has had one since 2004. I understand that there is some debate as to whether the constitution is Sharia law-based, but I think it would go a long way for the U.S. to support the Afghan constitution that was made because of the war the U.S. started. Especially with other new constitutions in flux throughout many other Muslim countries, it would demonstrate that the U.S. supports those efforts toward democracy as well.
Ok let me put in another way. There is a SOFA in place agreed upon by both governments. The SOFA states that the US has legal jurisdiction over US military personnel. Letting Karzai ignore the SOFA when it is politically expedient for him to do so is also a horrible precedent.
and it looks like the judge accepted the plea deal so the DP is off the table. Sentencing won’t be until August.
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I’m still not sure why anyone allowed the DP to be removed from the case. I can’t come up with a good reason in this world not to execute the guy for his crimes.
And another one here. Mind you, I really don’t understand the logic of “he pleads guilty so he gets a lesser sentence”.
It’s a reward for not putting the state through all the time and expense of a regular trial, especially in a system that has a huge backlog.
Not only that. Not mostly that. A prosecutor will generally take a plea to take the case out of the hands of a jury. No matter how strong a case you have you never know what a jury will do. I don’t think there is anyway that there could be a not guilty verdict but they might have been afraid that once his mental state was brought in there could have been a verdict for a lesser charge. One that would allow him to get out of prison.
He should have gotten more !