OK, so Shrub's throwaway remark wasn't quite as loony--his exact words were "We'll succeed unless we quit"--but my first thought upon hearing Dim Son's "sage pronouncement" was that he was channeling his daddy's veep...although instead of Quayle's deer-in-the-headlights, dimwitted innocence, we have Shrub's beady-eyed, I'm-sure-he-thinks-it-conveys-resolve-but-it-actually-reveals-vicious-small-minded-stupidity visage. I wonder if anyone even bothered to tell him the latest about the kidnappings in Basra, or the even more glaring fact that a state visit of the kind he's making in Vietnam is an impossibility in Mesopotamia...and of course plenty of others have noted the irony of this being his first trip to Vietnam, as opposed to a return journey, given his political connections some four decades ago.
Oh, and maybe this is what he meant by "succeed or quit:"
Barker had earlier described how he was approached by a fellow soldier with the plan to carry out the rape and killings.
Barker told the military judge he was drinking whiskey purchased from Iraqi soldiers with 21-year-old Army Pvt. Steve Green, who has since been discharged, when Green proposed attacking the family.
"He brought it up to me and asked me what I thought about it," Barker said. "By the time we started changing clothes, it was more or less a nonverbal agreement that we were going to go along with what we were discussing."
'I hated Iraqis'
At one point, the judge asked Barker why he had decided with the other soldiers to commit the rape and murders.
"I hated Iraqis, your honor," Barker said. "They can smile at you, then shoot you in your face without even thinking about it."
Barker described changing clothes, then climbing through backyards as the five soldiers left the checkpoint they had been manning to carry out the attack.
"We went through a chain link fence on the back of the property that had been cut on a previous patrol," he said.
The killings in Mahmoudiya, a village about 20 miles south of Baghdad, were among the worst in a series of alleged attacks on civilians and other abuses by military personnel in Iraq.
Cortez and Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, 22, members of the 101st Airborne Division along with Barker, have also been charged in the case.
Cortez has deferred entering a plea and Spielman will be arraigned in December. Pfc. Bryan L. Howard, 19, also deferred entering a plea at his arraignment in October.
Green pleaded not guilty last week to civilian charges that included murder and sexual assault.
He was discharged from the Army for a "personality disorder" before the allegations became known, and prosecutors have yet to say if they will pursue the death penalty against him.
Barker described in vivid detail how he raped the 14-year-old girl with Cortez and Green. Green killed the girl, her younger sister and parents, Barker testified.
"Cortez pushed her to the ground. I went towards the top of her and kind of held her hands down while Cortez proceeded to lift her dress up," he said. "Around that time I heard shots coming from a room next door."
The defendants are accused of burning the girl's body to conceal the crime.
Howard, Cortez and Spielman could face the death penalty if convicted. Cortez and Spielman are both being held in confinement and Howard is restricted to post.
Attorney: It could happen again
Barker did not name Spielman and Howard as participants in the rape and murders, but said they were at the house when the assault took place and had come knowing what the others intended to do.
The soldiers were stationed in a violent area known as the "Triangle of Death" because of frequent attacks on soldiers patrolling the roads.
Soldiers in Barker's unit were often asked to spend weeks manning remote checkpoints, where several from the unit died.
Barker's attorney, David Sheldon, told reporters during a news conference following the hearing that Barker took responsibility for his actions, but he also said the U.S. Army was to blame for the way the war in Iraq was being fought.
"The United States Army did not ... put enough soldiers on the checkpoints," Sheldon said. "It's very important that the public knows that this type of thing can happen again if the Army doesn't take measures to put enough troops on the front line in the war against terrorism, the war in Iraq."
No comments:
Post a Comment