Keyanna Spears
2/20/2009
3:42pm
U.S. soldier guilty in 4 deaths
www.nytimes.com
On Friday, Sgt. Michael Leahy Jr. (an Army medic) was charged with murder and conspiracy of murder when he was involved with the killing of four Iraqi detainees in spring 2007, whom were killed execution style. Sgt. Leahy’s job with the detainees was to question them about attacks on the unit. There was no evidence that these detainees performed the attacks therefore, Sgt. Leahy and the other soldiers couldn’t do anything but let them go. Instead they decided to protect themselves from future harm and kill all four of the detainees by shooting them in the back of the head. Sgt. Leahy’s lawyer argued that he only went along with the killings because he was dazed from lack of sleep and numb from being in a war zone for so long. Sgt. Leahy was acquitted from a previous murder trial involving an Iraqi in Jan. 2007. The jury did not allow Sgt. Leahy to walk away from this trial and he received a court-martial along with three other soldiers.
I feel that this sort of behavior may actually occur more than what is reported. The soldiers often do become numb from being in a war-zone and experiencing constant killing however, this is not an excuse to kill detainees. I believe that the soldiers need to have periodic psychiatric counseling to prevent these types of occurrences. Also, when the US soldiers commit these types of crimes it only fuels Iraqis and terrorist to want to hate us more and commit even more horrendous crimes.
2 comments:
This is very true. We are in Iraq to fight the war AGAINST terrorism and these acts made by our soldiers are themselves acts of terrorism. I know I personally could not go over and fight a war but for those who chose that, I have mad respect for them but just hope they make the right decision and know our war is against and not for terrorism.
These kinds of acts are hard to judge. You wonder how much this happens, and how many people are actually being tried for it. We are in a war and are trying to stop terrorism, so killing people happens, but should it be in this manner and for those reasons? It would be very hard to be part of a jury trial seeing that these men are sometimes years over seas and lose sight of what's really going on.
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