[exlrrp]

I'm glad that GI got off for finshing off that Iraqi. The prosecution was right--it was heat of battle. Combat soldiers must protect themselves. A wounded man can be dangerous untill dead and dangerous even then.
Boy am I glad we didn't have reporters embedded with us, we would have had to kill em.
Now here's the ambiguity: at what point does the situation change from one trying bravely to kill the enemy to murdering a wounded man.
We finished wounded enemy off routinely--I saw this done. I also have to say that at the worst of the Abu Ghraib scandal, it still looked better than what I saw done to prisoners in Vietnam fairly routinely.
I look back and I think we were very very lucky not to have all the media hanging around and that the state of the art media technology hadn't progressed to minature cameras. Fuck them--if the public sends me to war the public has a right to know only what I tell em about it is what I think!
It would have been a travesty of justice to have tried that GI, I hope every other GI would have quit at that point.
James