Trump may pardon several servicemen accused of war crimes on Memorial Day
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/18/us/trump-pardons-war-crimes.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
President Trump has indicated that he is considering pardons for several American military members accused or convicted of war crimes, including high-profile cases of murder,
attempted murder and desecration of a corpse, according to two United States officials. The officials said that the Trump administration had made expedited requests this week for paper
work needed to pardon the troops on or around Memorial Day.
One request is for Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher of the Navy SEALs, who is scheduled to stand trial in the coming weeks on charges of shooting unarmed civilians and killing
an enemy captive with a knife while deployed in Iraq. The others are believed to include the case of a former Blackwater security contractor recently found guilty in the deadly 2007
shooting of dozens of unarmed Iraqis; the case of Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, the Army Green Beret accused of killing an unarmed Afghan in 2010; and the case of a group of Marine Corps
snipers charged with urinating on the corpses of dead Taliban fighters.
The official said while assembling pardon files typically takes months, the Justice Department stressed that all files would have to be complete before Memorial Day weekend, because
the President planned to pardon the men then. Earlier this month, the president pardoned former Army First Lt. Michael Behenna, who had been convicted of killing an Iraqi during an
interrogation in 2008.
Pardoning several accused and convicted war criminals at once, including some who have not yet gone to trial, has not been done in recent history, legal experts said. Some worried that it
could erode the legitimacy of military law and undercut good order and discipline in the ranks.
You mean the guy who said we should go after their families doesn't give a single shit about war crimes?
I'm shocked! Shocked, I say!
My Lai was appalling, I'd hardly call it a good precedent to follow. I
Going to be the devil's advocate here and say I don't think it would be against the public interest to pardon Matt Golsteyn (Maj. who killed an unarmed bomb maker) but the rest of them (barring the marine who pissed on some dead fighters) can stow it.
That SEAL Chief was reported by his own men, who spent months trying to find anybody who cared enough, and eventually had to go way over everybody's heads to get anything done. A presidential pardon for Chief Gallagher would be a slap in the face to those brave men, beyond the usual erosion of law and order.
What motivated fellow SEALs to dime out Eddie Gallagher?
Gallagher faces a long line of SEALs prepared to provide damning testimony under oath against him.
One of the members of Gallagher’s unit — Alpha Platoon, SEAL Team 7 — is expected to testify that Gallagher confessed that he “killed four women,” according to Naval Criminal Investigative Service files and legal records provided to Navy Times.
Two other SEAL petty officers told investigators Gallagher bragged about slaying “10-20 people a day or 150-200 people on deployment,” court documents state.
Three other SEALs are slated to say their platoon chief took "random shots, sometimes into buildings, where he claimed to have killed someone,” similar filings allege.
One of the SEALs overhead the chief say he was “OK with shooting women” and another saw him “fire into a crowd of what appeared to be noncombatants multiple times," records state.
And still more SEALs say they’ll tell the panel that Gallagher attempted to cover up these alleged crimes by threatening to murder witnesses and embarking on a campaign to identify other whistleblowers, get them blacklisted in the special warfare community and ruin their careers
The most serious allegation against Gallagher, 39, is a premeditated murder charge in connection with the stabbing death of an unarmed and seriously wounded Islamic State fighter near the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2017.
NCIS reported that a second class petty officer also saw Gallagher stab the prisoner, but later internal messages shared between defense attorneys and Navy officials appear to indicate that he thought the chief sank his knife into the detainee’s torso — and the boy already had died. So he stabbed a corpse
https://www.armytimes.com/resizer/EBpjgSUBmdtYfjisl8MDafL11zQ=/600x0/filters:quality(100)/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-mco.s3.amazonaws.com/public/T77L3GGVVBEP3AH7UVSQ3OJVJE.jpg
Somehow I don't think SEALs of all military branches would blow the whistle on their own without a damn good reason and this guy definitely reads as a fucking animal. If convicted and pardoned this sets a godawful precedent and practically invites terrorist attacks on the Trump administration.
If Trump pardons this guy then he has officially passed the moral event horizon
Anyone who supports Trump after that is an unambiguous piece of fucking shit human garbage.
trump has made it pretty clear he thinks all muslims are subhuman and he still has supporters.
oh hey where have I heard "Shoot the women, shoot the children, shoot the whole family" before.....
right, on the stump from the guy going to pardon this guy.
I think he passed the moral event horizon in the 80s, at this point we're all getting sucked into the black hole.
Trump's just killing two birds with one stone. He's continuing to be an abhorrent human being while also antagonizing the people he hates into doing something that will help him hold on to his power.
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