Sunday, January 22, 2006

General Hospital(ity) Can Be Murder

I just read the news story of how yet another "high ranking" military man has basically gotten away with murder. Do you know what rank he had? Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer is literally the hightest level officer so far held accountable even to this pathetic non-standard of military injustice. (Anyone want to bet me, he will not spend even the 3 years in jail that is possible for that crime?)

Anyway, he has been found guilty of "negligent homicide" but NOT even guilty of manslaughter, much less murder, even though he personally murdered an Iraqi prisoner of war.

Let's think about this for a second. This murderer is a "high ranking" officer. (Though we never hear of Generals and high ups, who give the orders to torture and kill prisoners, being prosecuted).

But the story says, this officer was confused about the rules. Hmmm... he was confused? He stuffed something in a prisoner's mouth to choke him, shoved him into a tight bag to sufocate him and then SAT on the victim's chest.

How could he POSSIBLY have known the prisoner could die? I mean, he's a military officer, not a Doctor. He was just trying to make the prisoner feel warm and secure. He was just being kind, in general, hospitality is what he was showing.

Phew. Thank God he is just another man in our uniform, defending us against people choking to death in a sleeping bag. He commands our troops and weapons but at least he is not our President.... yet. So, notch one for winning hearts and minds, one dead prisoner at a time.

4 comments:

j-ro said...

Maybe the military officer felt sorry for the POW because the POW was hungry. Since there was no food around, the nice, thoughtful military officer thought that stuffing something in the POW's mouth, sufocating him and then sitting on his chest would cure the hunger pangs.

Just because he's a high-ranking military officer doesn't necessarily mean he's incredibly intelligent (toutureously inventive, but definitely not intelligent). :P

Although I haven't read the article, things like this do disgust me. Thanks for the post.

IMRAN™ said...

Very well spoken Joanne. The tragedy is how most of the people in our nation do not bat an eye lid when these news items come out. What have we become?

Imran

j-ro said...

Hmmm? What? Did you say something meaningful?

I'm sorry. I was too busy watching re-runs of Project Runway. I'll get back to you after a few hours of mouth-watering, mindless reality TV.

until then...

IMRAN™ said...

Yes, I did say something meaningful, it was your mindless comment I was thanking you for. :-) But, I almost missed it because I was in a stupor from listening to Senator Biden ask 2 hour long questions and Judge Alito's lies and evasions when he DID answer. :-) . In other words, another great day for democracy. Sorry, I can't call you, George Bush might be listening in.

Imran