Fort Campbell, Kentucky: One of four US soldiers accused of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl last spring showed little remorse and even smiled during a confession to charges he conspired to kill her and her family.
Even before the hearing on Wednesday to announce a plea agreement, James P. Barker, 23, slapped hands with other soldiers and grinned as he smoked a cigarette in the rain. A bailiff scolded him.
And when he described for the judge the assault in his own words, he gave vivid details of the rape with a deadpan delivery.
"That's pretty much all I have to say," Barker muttered with a shrug after describing raping the screaming girl. Barker agreed to plead guilty to the charges to avoid the death penalty, his civilian attorney David Sheldon said.
In case you were thinking about looking at the occupation of Iraq from an academic point of view, I submit Exhibit A in my case of how this war is going to impact us for a generation. Think these guys are the only ones who think this way? No, they've dehumanized an entire population to the point that soldiers now think it is not only acceptable to rape a 14 year-old girl and kill her family, but praise-worthy. These guys are every bit as bad as the SS storm troopers in Nazi Germany, and they're all coming home eventually.
I posted on this back on 7 August 2006. You can find that post in my Archives if you want to get a feel for the whirlwind we're about to reap.
And for all you limousine liberals who pooh-pooh my unwillingness to support Democratic candidates who support this occupation as some sort of unreasonable moral purity, I'd like to ask you: do you think that killing people for fun or sport is wrong? That's what we have our soldiers doing over there right now. Do you think that killing people for political or economic gain is wrong? That's why our politicians sent them over there.
If you cannot agree that killing people for no reason is wrong and should be stopped immediately, then I don't know what else to say to you.
2 comments:
How could anyone think this WON'T affect us for years to come?
I remember the people returning from VietNam, I remember their problems fitting back into society. And they didn't have the support groups of older veterans the former vets had, because the goddamned American legion and VFW didn't want them around.
Only Viet vets I ever knew that said somebody treated them like shit or spit at them were talking about VFW types.
People who want us to go to war for no reason have never looked at war or the aftermath of war. Bush's war will cost at least as much over the next twenty years as it is costing right now - unless, of course, the Feds decide to simply do away with all veteran programs and cut them loose. Which very well could happen, if Repubs take the Congress again in 2008.
Considering that ALL cuts in the VA have been done by Repubs and forced over the objections of Democrats, that ALL cuts in veterans benefits in the last twenty years have been forced by Repubs and pay freezes and limits have been forced by Repubs, while carefully keeping a draft of any sort off the table to prevent the bulk of the country from seeing what was happening, I'd say cutting them loose is a very real possibility. Under the guise of "cost savings by turning it over to private enterprise", of course.
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