Soldier on Trial

The pre-trial of one of seven soldiers accused of abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad has gotten underway.

The female soldier is accused of thirteen counts of abusing detainees and six counts stemming from possession of sexually explicit photos, which are prohibited by U.S. Army policy.

I said so before and I’ll say it again: do some of our people not know the difference between a right and wrong? Is it now acceptable behavior to force unwilling participants into committing homosexual acts on one another? Or any sexual act for that matter?

It doesn’t matter if the soldiers were ordered to do it, they had a right and a moral obligation to say “NO!” and to speak out, as one brave soldier finally did, which brought about an end to the torture.

The accused soldier may not have done what she is accused of, but she failed to say “NO!” The Army doesn’t want officers and soldiers that blindly follow orders that violate their conscience. “I was only following orders” is a pathetic excuse used by many around the world to justify war crimes, as this is.

The soldier faces up to thirty-eight years in prison if she is convicted. I have very little sympathy for a soldier that disobeys her orders, goes into a part of the prison that she has no business being in, gets caught in the sack with her boyfriend by her superiors, is counseled four times in six months for not doing her job or violating regulations, gets caught up in the scandal, and comes home pregnant. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are doing their j-o-b-s properly WITHOUT violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but these seven couldn’t?

Here’s the story: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,128095,00.html

So in the end, it doesn’t matter if they were ordered to commit these atrocities or not. They had the moral obligation to say “NO!” but they didn’t do it. They are guilty of violating moral decency and human respect. The criminals they are in charge of have basic human rights as well, even though many of them are scum and are as guilty as sin. The criminals ought to be tried under the rule of law, NOT by the law of the jungle!

If the soldiers were ordered to do it, then those responsible should be in the dock as well to face trial.

Let justice be done and the laws of the United States be vigorously enforced.