{"id":978,"date":"2006-01-25T15:59:39","date_gmt":"2006-01-25T15:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:32","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:32","slug":"ok_this_is_bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=978","title":{"rendered":"OK, This Is Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve deflected the “we’re torturing folks” meme by arguing that the people who did the bad things were being prosecuted and, where appropriate, convicted and punished. <\/p>\n

Not so much, it appears.<\/p>\n

A Chief Warrant officer who was brutally interrogating an Iraqi general – not a Geneva-convention-flaunting guerilla or terrorist – tied him up, stuffed him in a sleeping bag, sat on him, and killed him.<\/p>\n

His punishment<\/a>?<\/p>\n

…instead of serving jail time and being forced from the military, Welshofer would receive a formal reprimand, forfeit $6,000 of his salary and spend 60 days restricted to his home, office and church.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m sorry, but that doesn’t cut it.<\/p>\n

Overall, other than the telegenic Abu Ghreib defendants, the penalties meted out for killing Iraqi prisoners appear to have been very light.<\/p>\n

This kind of blows my argument – that this isn’t an issue because we find the people who do Bad Stuff and punish them – out the window.And it implies a higher level of organizational responsibility than makes me happy. I’m not advocating closing Camp X-Ray, nor am I suddenly of the belief that reading terrorists their rights in the heat of battle before shooting them is a requirement. But there is a line, and it looks to me like we are on the wrong side of it.<\/p>\n

I need to think about this a bit. But it’s clear that supporters of the war – folks like me – have a responsibility to take a stand on this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Light punishment for abusive troops? That ought to be a problem for the pro-war folks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}