Posted on 06/21/2006 8:17:21 AM PDT by areafiftyone
Official: Marines, sailor to face charges in Iraqi death
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. Marine Corps on Wednesday planned to charge seven Marines and one sailor with murder in connection with the April death of an Iraqi civilian, a defense official said.
At Camp Pendleton, California, where the eight accused service members have been held in a military prison since late May, officials announced that a news conference would be held later Wednesday concerning the alleged killing of the Iraqi in the village of Hamdaniya. The announcement did not mention murder or other charges.
The official who disclosed the Marine plans asked not to be identified publicly because the official announcement was still pending.
The allegation is that Marines pulled an unarmed Iraqi man from his home on April 26 and shot him to death without provocation.
Seven Marines and one Navy corpsman from the Pendleton-based 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment were taken out of Iraq and put in the prison pending the filing of any charges against them.
You can read the rest HERE
I do that's who. In a U.S. criminal court you have a point in war however you don't. These men are fighting a war. War knows no innocents. That is the whole problem our POTUS, Sec of Defense, Congress, media, and others have forgotten or ignore the fact of. They prefer the kinder, gentler, wars. Well a news alert for them. There is no such thing. What would a few of the Political princes binding the hands of our troops do it was their pathetic hides getting popped over there by an enemy that wears no uniform?
You don't really like our soldiers, do you? You don't want to give them the benefit of the doubt. You don't want to know that before they may have unjustifiably killed some probable terrorist, that they saved 1000 schoolchildren by risking their lives in disarming a bomb or by raiding a bomb factory.
That's pretty sad, Jude. These guys are presumed innocent. I also suspect that these guys did not willy nilly just pick their victim out and shoot him for no reason. I suspect they had a reason to single him out and that perhaps someone got carried away. That, at worst, is voluntary manslaugter and not murder. So far all we have is the MSN telling us these guys are cold blooded murderers. Tokyo Rose was more honest with the American people than the MSN is now.
They had it breaking on monday too. We had several threads about it. And I saw no added information. CNN/Reuters/AP/BBC/Fox all had it as breaking on monday. No idea why its breaking again, except that it did not get enough "traction" the 1st time.
Is he talking about the 7 guys in this case or the Haditha Marines?
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Nonsense.
That is wierd! I guess the MSM can't get enough of these stories to satisfy their hatred of our troops!
My mistake, I think it was a separate case.
I'll go back and double check
McInerny calling for the release of the Marines in the brig....and I know he said Haditha....He said Haditha is a hoax
Another Freeper said I was wrong, and it mush have been Hamadiya?????
Then STFU, Mr Unidentified Leaker. It serves no purpose to leak this info other than to give the Lamestream press ammo with which to bash the war effort.
That's okay. I'm on the side of the Marines and the Navy Corpsman.
If he was confused about where Okinawa is, maybe he got one of the other incidents confused with Haditha.
Yup - they already think our soldiers are murderers, rapists and baby killers! This is like giving them intravenous.
The national media ignored a protest by supporters outside Camp Pendleton over the weekend. Not a peep heard yet from the American Civil Liberties Union. The website of the self-anointed crusaders for individual rights contains hundreds of articles on the rights of al Qaeda suspects and an indignant press release on the suicides of Guantanamo Bay detainees. But no mention of the Camp Pendleton Eight. For their part, human rights groups were too busy shedding tears for the Gitmo terrorist suicide squad and lionizing them as "heroes" in the words of William Goodman of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Editorial cartoonists have been preoccupied desecrating the Marine Corps logo and tarring troops as baby-killers.A clarion voice stepped into the fray this week to push back against the global rush to judgment against our troops. Ilario Pantano, a Desert Storm vet-turned-Wall Street banker and new media entrepreneur-turned-commissioned Marine officer from Hell's Kitchen, launched his gripping book "Warlord: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy" this week, which recounts his harrowing ordeal as a Marine smeared and cleared. Last spring, he faced the death penalty for defending himself and his men in the heat of battle and killing two Iraqi insurgents. He was accused then, as Marines are being accused now, of wantonly executing Iraqis to send a message. His family and friends' defense of Pantano was met, as those of Marines are being met now, with incredulity or apathy.
There were no pleas to withhold judgment against Pantano from the New York Times then. No Oprah sit-downs now with the wives and children of accused troops.
As an agitated, condescending Ann Curry of NBC's "Today Show" tried to paint Pantano Monday as a callous thug, he replied with quiet dignity: "I don't think it's helpful to national security to have this kind of self-flagellation before the facts are actually disclosed."
Innocent until proven guilty? Justice for all? Benefit of the doubt? These are apparently foreign concepts when it comes to Americans in uniform being held on American soil. Perhaps if our troops proclaimed themselves "conscientious objectors" and converted to Islam, they might start getting some sympathy.
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pissant, I think they were accused 3 days ago, but today its all over the news that they are being CHARGED with murder.
Without question the role of overzealous JAGs are playing a role in all this -
The reality is plenty are acquitted of such chargers. A all of these very likely could be as well.
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