Amerikaanse Oorlogsmisdaden 33

We kunnen later niet zeggen 'wir haben es nicht gewusst.' We zijn er getuige van, we worden gewaarschuwd door de militairen die erbij zijn. En toch steunt Nederland de Amerikaanse politiek van oorlogsmisdaden. We zullen hier ooit een hoge prijs voor betalen.

De New York Times bericht:

'A Soldier Hoped to Do Good, But Was Changed by War
Fort Bragg, N.C., - Sgt. Ricky Clousing went to war in Iraq because, he said, he believed he would simultaneously be serving his nation and serving God.
Sgt. Ricky Clousing after his court-martial Thursday at Fort Bragg, N.C. Sergeant Clousing, 24, was sentenced to 11 months in confinement for going AWOL after becoming disilllusioned with the war in Iraq.
But after more than four months on the streets of Baghdad and Mosul interrogating Iraqis rounded up by American troops, Sergeant Clousing said, he began to believe that he was serving neither.
He said he saw American soldiers shoot and kill an unarmed Iraqi teenager, and rode in an Army Humvee that sideswiped Iraqi cars and shot an old man's sheep for fun - both incidents Sergeant Clousing reported to superiors. He said his work as an interrogator led him to conclude that the occupation was creating a cycle of anti-American resentment and violence. After months of soul-searching on his return to Fort Bragg, Sergeant Clousing, 24, failed to report for duty one day.
In a court-martial here on Thursday, an Army judge sentenced Sergeant Clousing to 11 months in confinement for going AWOL, absent without leave. He will serve three months because of a pretrial agreement in which he pleaded guilty.
"My experiences in Iraq forced me to re-evaluate my beliefs and my ethics," Sergeant Clousing said, sitting stiff-backed in the witness chair. "I ultimately felt I could not serve."
The case against Sergeant Clousing, a born-again Christian from Washington State, is a small one in a war that has produced sensational courts-martial. The same stark courtroom where Sergeant Clousing testified on Thursday was the site of the courts-martial of Pfc. Lynndie England, who mistreated and posed with naked Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, and Sgt. Hasan K. Akbar, who rolled grenades into tents of American troops.
Yet the military prosecutors made it clear on Thursday that the stakes were high. Although they did not challenge his motives, they said if one young soldier disillusioned by the reality of war could give up the uniform without punishment, what of others?'
Lees verder:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/13/us/13awol.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all Of:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101306P.shtml

De logica is: als we toelaten dat er 1 weigert oorlosmisdaden te plegen dan zullen vele anderen dat straks ook weigeren.