by Frank Friedrich Kling, USA
A U.S. military courts marshal has acquitted an army sniper, Jorge G. Sandoval, in the murder of two Iraqi civilians. Instead the military tribunal found Sandoval guilty of a much lesser offense of planting bomb detonation wires on one of the bodies to make it look as if the men were Iraqi insurgents. The soldier faces just 44 days of confinement for the lessor offense.
A reasonable person must ask how a court could declare the men killed as innocent civilians, yet the army sniper did not commit murder. Does this not appear as a prima facie contradiction?
Sandoval received warm embraces from his military lawyers after the verdicts were announced in a courtroom located on the former grounds of President Saddam Hussein and which is not part of a massive American military base. The base along with eight additional military encampments throughout Iraq are part of a multi-billion dollar construction project in which temporary facilities are being replaced by concrete and steel reinforced permanent structures as part of what the Bush administration states as an, “enduring military presence in Iraq”.
