Marine to serve 8 years for killing in Iraq! What is he there for?
CNN is reporting that Marine LCpl Pennington will serve 8 years. How can we maintain moral in a war zone if you are trying our troops for murder in a combat zone? Will it cause our Marines to delay in taking action while they think what is white or black? Will that moment of pause to think cost them their lives? I realize that I am over simplfying the situation, but a Marine in a combat zone must make life or death decisions in split seconds and we do not need to pause while the JAG or the news media renders an opinion.
CAMP PENDLETON, California (CNN) -- A U.S. Marine will serve no more than eight years in prison in connection with the killing of an Iraqi civilian, a Marine Corps spokesman said Saturday.
Marine Lance Cpl. Robert Pennington was sentenced to 14 years' confinement but will serve no more than eight under a plea agreement, Marine spokesman Sean Gibson told CNN.
Pennington pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges regarding the death of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, 52, in Hamdaniya, west of Baghdad.
Pennington was among a group of seven Marines and a Navy medic charged in Awad's death. He and two other Marines were ordered to stand trial in October.
Pennington agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit premeditated murder and kidnapping, and to a kidnapping charge. Other charges he faced were dismissed at sentencing.
He was given credit for the 340 days he served in pretrial confinement, Gibson said.
For full story: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/08/marines.hamdaniya.ap/index.html
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1 comments:
IT FALLS ON YOU
"He´s fucking faking that he´s dead,"
So said the young marine
Before two gunshots to the head:
So videotape has seen.
You saw the tape, and so did I,
Such murders, in a war
Come commonplace, no infamy
Especial, wide nor far;
Yet it did not get broadcast long,
Civilians so protested
Vituperative, the message strong,
Because the scene suggested
That soldiers of these USA
Like any soldiers are
In league with savagery when they
Participate in war.
The journalist as shot the tape
Received from far and wide
Death threats--civilians, you escape
Awhile but cannot hide.
The leveling of neighborhoods,
The raping of young children,
Routine the pilfering of goods,
All deeds for which no gildering,
These rest upon your stupid souls,
Exporting, by war´s means,
Domestic hatreds--on the doles
Compounded yet the liens.
Murders in war, if not routine
Belie the commonplacer
Deaths of civilians--war´s machine
Of beauty is defacer.
The little girl, all prettified
Dressed in her schoolgirl skirt,
Legs crushed, war wound tore open wide,
A dead thing in the dirt.
It falls upon you, O who love
To view the cause as noble,
Aggressive war--but not enough
In Basra or in Kabul
To justify that lily-white
The hands you love to wash so
Are sinless, even though they quite
Applaud the big kibosh so.
So you love censorship, but though
Your hand felt not the trigger,
It was your deed, and more you know
Than merely one sand nigger.
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