This really needs to be above-board. There's no reason the government prosecution should be able to outspend the GOVERNMENT defense by a huge amount. My experience of years on active duty was that defendants had to go outside the military for aggressive, adequately funded defense counsel...AND that funding came from the defendants hocking everything they owned just to be on par with adequacy, much less equivalence.
I was a chaplain and not a jag, so my perception could certainly be wrong, but it doesn't strike me that way.
Or, they never should have been brought.
The whole nature of the conflict in Iraq seems to me to be very similar to Viet Nam, with regard to civilian insurgents mixing with the noncombatants.
As a result of that tactic by the enemy in Viet Nam, I got the impression that pretty wide latitude was granted to our troops when such events transpired.
There could have been thousands of such charges brought in Viet Nam, if the same criteria used here were used back then.
That would have been insane.
Ergo, this Haditha prosecution is insane.
Of course it is another opportunity for the administration and the higher level officers running this war to be PC and preen sanctimoniously.