.IRAQ: Marine mom pleads with president for pardons
The mother of a Marine convicted in the killing of an unarmed Iraqi man has written an impassioned letter to President Bush seeking a pardon for her son and six other Marines and a Navy corpsman also convicted in the case.
In her letter, Deanna Pennington asks Bush to lift the convictions and to free Lawrence Hutchins from prison. Hutchins is serving an 11-year sentence at Ft. Leavenworth. The others served less than two years in the brig at Camp Pendleton and are now free but with the stigma of felony convictions.
The case involved the dragging of a man suspected of insurgent ties from his home in Hamandiya in April 2006 and executing him. The Marines insist, as Pennington's letter indicates, that they were forced into action to stop the planting of roadside bombs that were killing their colleagues.
Pennington's letter to the president, in part, reads:
You sent our boys to protect your girls. They were successful. Your daughters are still alive. They protected your mom and wife, too. Your family lives.
Many of the boys' friends do not. My son watched his best friend, Erick, carried out of a Fallujah courtyard in a poncho because there wasn't enough left of his body for a stretcher. This boy turned 21 on Nov. 9, 2004, the day before his gruesome death in the midst of a bloody battle that you commanded.
He was my son's roommate and best friend and called me, 'Mom.' I was proud of him and proud of that title. He was the first of 9 friends that Rob lost during his 2nd tour, but two times in hell wasn't enough. You sent him back for a 3rd tour.
On that tour, you sent him to do a mission-less job, taking censuses and looking for bad guys. More like sending him on a daily suicide mission as their area of operations required them to travel the same IED-pitted road every day where they were sitting ducks. It was like you painted a target on their backs.
We know they did what they had to do to come back home alive.... Instead of being judged for their actions, they were immediately thrown in shackles and thrown in jail so that America could show the rest of the world that we knew how to be just. They didn't have a chance at justice. It was over before they knew what happened.
I ask you as a parent to consider our sons' lives and give them an opportunity to heal and put themselves back together.... Give them back their freedom.
Babylon & Beyond
In her letter, Deanna Pennington asks Bush to lift the convictions and to free Lawrence Hutchins from prison. Hutchins is serving an 11-year sentence at Ft. Leavenworth. The others served less than two years in the brig at Camp Pendleton and are now free but with the stigma of felony convictions.
The case involved the dragging of a man suspected of insurgent ties from his home in Hamandiya in April 2006 and executing him. The Marines insist, as Pennington's letter indicates, that they were forced into action to stop the planting of roadside bombs that were killing their colleagues.
Pennington's letter to the president, in part, reads:
You sent our boys to protect your girls. They were successful. Your daughters are still alive. They protected your mom and wife, too. Your family lives.
Many of the boys' friends do not. My son watched his best friend, Erick, carried out of a Fallujah courtyard in a poncho because there wasn't enough left of his body for a stretcher. This boy turned 21 on Nov. 9, 2004, the day before his gruesome death in the midst of a bloody battle that you commanded.
He was my son's roommate and best friend and called me, 'Mom.' I was proud of him and proud of that title. He was the first of 9 friends that Rob lost during his 2nd tour, but two times in hell wasn't enough. You sent him back for a 3rd tour.
On that tour, you sent him to do a mission-less job, taking censuses and looking for bad guys. More like sending him on a daily suicide mission as their area of operations required them to travel the same IED-pitted road every day where they were sitting ducks. It was like you painted a target on their backs.
We know they did what they had to do to come back home alive.... Instead of being judged for their actions, they were immediately thrown in shackles and thrown in jail so that America could show the rest of the world that we knew how to be just. They didn't have a chance at justice. It was over before they knew what happened.
I ask you as a parent to consider our sons' lives and give them an opportunity to heal and put themselves back together.... Give them back their freedom.
Babylon & Beyond
posted by madtom at 9:17 PM
2 Comments:
Oh no Mad Tom, removing Saddam was good. Bush receives brownie points for that. What came afterwards was a disaster of biblical proportions however and whether it's by democracy, dictatorship, or coup d'etat, a fundamentalist government is still a fundamentalist government.
Of course, in Saddam's time, the reporter would be beaten and tortured to death. In today's time, the reporter may still end up tortured and dead.
LOL, maybe Bush can pardon the reporter )))
Layla Anwar and Nibras Kazimi have interesting opposing viewpoints about the reporter.
As regards the woman who wants Bush to pardon her son, if you're
dragging someone out of their building and killing them, that's a bit out of the line of duty. Why didn't they arrest him and detain him, and he would have been put out of commission for 6 months to 2 years?
However, Iraq is a hard place to employ an ethical use of force. When the Iraqis were looting the
Ministires and other buildings after the US invasion, the Coalition forces probably should
have shot to kill, to end the thievery. Looters Will Be Shot would have curtailed a lot of the final destruction of Iraq's infrastructure...
Come on MG, it's a fucking war, shit happens.
I think I may have said this before, but it's not an easy thing to do. No one could have done it perfect. I know, I know, Bush was not even in the ball park. But that is what paralyzes people, nothing gets done....Fear of failure is a great motivator if you like the status quo.
castro will rot in office because of it, I think there are two million of us here, countless died making the crossing, and who knows the lives buried on the island.
How could war be worst than dieing slowly everyday, over and over again.
You had to be there.
About the post, I have my sympathies, but I put them aside when it's one soldiers story against another. That is over my paygrade.
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