GIs thought killings were within rules when they killed local Iraqi citizens

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/540812,CST-NWS-aclu04.article

GIs thought killings were within rules
LABEL 11PT | Deck head is 16 pt Utopia Semibold

September 4, 2007
BY RYAN LENZ

Newly released documents regarding crimes committed by U.S. soldiers against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan detail a pattern of troops failing to understand and follow the rules that govern interrogations and deadly actions.

The documents, released Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union ahead of a lawsuit, total nearly 10,000 pages of courts-martial summaries, transcripts and military investigative reports about 22 incidents.

They show repeated examples of soldiers believing they were within the law when they killed local citizens.

The killings include the drowning of a man soldiers pushed from a bridge into the Tigris River as punishment for breaking curfew, and the suffocation during interrogation of a former Iraqi general believed to be helping insurgents.

In the suffocation, soldiers covered the man's head with a sleeping bag, then wrapped his neck with an electrical cord for a ''stress position.''

they get punished.

Let's give the troops the same courtesy that we give to civilian defendants and believe that they are innocent until proven guilty.

At the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, superiors all the way up the chain of command into the executive branches of government were held responsible for the war crimes committed by their subordinates, even if they didn't know about individual cases.

The idea was that they should have made it clear to their subordinates that torture, massacres, and summary executions of civilians and prisoners were forbidden.

In the Tokyo trials, the prosecutors found "smoking gun" papers in which commanders told the men in the field that "it didn't matter" what they did with their prisoners.

Obviously, U.S. commanders, all the way up the chain of command into the White House, have either looked the other way or specifically condoned mistreatment of civilians and prisoners, and as such, they need to be on a fast plane to The Hague.

I NEVER said that drowning someone was acceptable for breaking curfew.

The title sort of suggests the troops are admitting to the killings.

Did you miss that part?

If a military member kills an Iraqi, though whatever means you can think of, numbers don't matter much either, they get somewhere around 18 months to 5 years in jail. A civilian doing the exact same thing would get the Death Penalty or life without parole. I do NOT, repeat, do NOT, want these criminals walking the streets of this country, ever again. They are dangerous and unpredictable, I say turn them over to Iraqi courts or the ICC.

impression that these matters are addressed in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and that all service members learn this during basic training along with the rules of the Geneva Convention. Is this correct or not?

.... I wonder what will be Third? :popcorn:

Has anyone who has commented yet ever seen a combat situation?

I have.

I am not condoning any violations of the UCMJ or Geneva Convention, but I am saying that there are frameworks in place to punish those who commit the acts and lynch mobs are NOt the answer.

Combat is when you have two combatants fighting one another.

This is picking innocent people up off the streets and drowning and suffocating them to death.

Don't sound much like combat to me.

Don

one might think that his followers in the military believe, "rules-schmules".