{"id":870,"date":"2005-04-30T08:02:22","date_gmt":"2005-04-30T12:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=870"},"modified":"2005-04-30T08:02:22","modified_gmt":"2005-04-30T12:02:22","slug":"sign-of-the-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=870","title":{"rendered":"Sign of the Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Times<\/em> considers hanging a “death card” on executed Iraqis more troubling than taking off their handcuffs and shooting them in the back.<\/p>\n

Marine hung ‘death sign’ by bodies, witnesses testify<\/a><\/p>\n

Fellow Marines testified yesterday that an officer who is accused of murder shot two Iraqis in the back and put a sign near the bodies bearing a Marine slogan: “No better friend, no worse enemy.”<\/p>\n

The testimony came on the first day of a preliminary hearing for 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano, 33. He has admitted shooting the two men during a search last April for a terrorist hide-out. <\/p>\n

Lt. Pantano has said the shooting was in self-defense.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

In the April 2004 incident, Lt. Pantano’s unit was ordered to search a house in Mahmudiyah, and stopped Hamaady Kareem and Tahah Ahmead Hanjil as they tried to leave the residence.<\/p>\n

According to written charges, Lt. Pantano ordered other troops to remove the suspects’ handcuffs and look away, then shot the pair in the back, vandalized their vehicle and hung the sign.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a different courtroom this week<\/a>, Sgt. Hasan Akbar, described by officers during his trial as “unfit for duty<\/a>,” has been sentenced to death for ambushing sleeping members of his unit, an attack that left 14 wounded and 2 officers dead.<\/p>\n

Assuming Akbar is not a paranoid schizophrenic or suffering another form of mental illness and this attack<\/a> on an MP in a Fort Bragg restroom establishes a pattern of behaviour consistent with a Muslim waging jihad as opposed to yet another sign he is a man battling the voices in his head; in both the Akbar and Pantano cases the victims posed no imminent threat and the actions were premeditated. Should Pantano be sentenced to death?<\/p>\n

If not, the message is clear<\/a> and it has been sent before<\/a>; American life is more valuable than Iraqi, and if justice must be perverted<\/a> to establish that, so be it.<\/p>\n

Military Reporters & Editors<\/a> (MRE) have sent a letter to Rumsfeld protesting the restrictions he imposed on reporters covering Akbar’s trial and asking they not be applied elsewhere<\/a>. Trista Tallton, a military affairs reporter, detects a familiar pattern<\/a> as she experienced these restrictions when “covering the court martial of a Marine accused of accidentally killing several people when his plane clipped the wires of a cable car in Italy.” <\/p>\n

“I think some of it is they want to keep the media under control,” she says.<\/p>\n

Hence, they want to placate Americans running out of patience with the occupation<\/a>, even though it dispells the dumbassery we are freeing Iraqis from tryanny, not creating a new, untenable one. <\/p>\n

In Iraq ?Uptick,? Superpower Downtick?<\/em><\/a>, Tom Engelhardt relates Vietnam rhetoric to recurring verbalisations and the addicts who slur them as they contrive to convince a dissipating audience of believers their goals are based in reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Times considers hanging a “death card” on executed Iraqis more troubling than taking off their handcuffs and shooting them in the back. Marine hung ‘death sign’ by bodies, witnesses testify Fellow Marines testified yesterday that an officer who … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-e2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}