Yet again, the US military investigates its own for the Haditha massacre, and finds them innocent.
Sharratt is the second Marine to have murder charges dropped after allegations against Sergeant Sanick DeLa Cruz were withdrawn in April.
Similarly, soldiers who finish off Iraqi’s are also to be found innocent.
Of course these people are innocent. They are after all, just doing their job, which includes killing Iraqis.
Last but not least, there is the atrocity at Hamdaniya.
Jackson, Shumate, five other Marines and a Navy corpsman kidnapped and killed a man in Hamdaniya, Iraq, on April 26, 2006. They snatched the victim from his bed, took him to a roadside hole, bound him and killed him with a barrage of bullets.
Afterward, the squad tried to disguise the killing as a firefight between U.S. troops and an insurgent trying to plant a bomb.
The defendants said they partly wanted to send a message that insurgents and their supporters in Hamdaniya would pay a dear price. They had become frustrated after repeatedly arresting a suspect and turning him over to Iraqi authorities, only to see him released every time.
And the military response to this act of liberation?
A general at Camp Pendleton has cut short the sentences of two Marines imprisoned in the Hamdaniya murder case and might do the same for two others.
John Cole couldn’t have put it better.
If a few months in the brig is the punishment for kidnapping, murder, and an attempted coverup, by my calculation, Beauchamp’s punishment for penning essays should be a blowjob, a bucket of KFC, and a twelve-pack, followed by monthly massages from a topless model (think of it as probation).