With most of the focus on last weekend’s Kandahar massacre centering around US leaders promising absolutely no changes to their occupation strategy, an undercurrent of sympathetic revelations have been cropping up about the alleged attacker, who was finally named this evening as Staff Sgt. Robert Bales.
His lawyer, of course, has been keen to praise Bales record, insisting the sergeant has “received almost every away you can get as a combat veteran” and is being described as mild-mannered. His sole past media appearance came in 2007, when he proudly cheered a 2007 battle in Iraq, saying that the troops had done a good job of not killing civilians.
The accounts of the all-around “good guy” Bales that have reached the public are in all ways incongruous with what happened early Sunday morning in Kandahar, when the attacker wandered off base, apparently drunk, and massacred 16 civilians.
The why of all this looms large, and a number of sympathetic excuses seem to be trickling out. Past injuries in his previous three tours of duty (all in Iraq), including a concussion, have been brought up. A reported injury of another soldier at his base the night before the massacre is likewise suggested to have driven Bales to slaughter civilians.
How any of this would lead to a massacre is never described of course, because any number of other soldiers who had multiple tours or head injuries have managed to not massacre anyone. The leaks seem in stark contrast with official US promises to see Bales charged with serious crimes for the killings.
"All around good guy…"
Hmmm, somebody missed the part where the Sgt. goes postal.
Sounds like he's got a bright future in law enforcement when all this blows over. Future police officer of the year!
You gotta wonder how many of these guys are gonna "go postal" after they get back home.
Sickening how Americans are not distancing themselves from this demonic murderer.
Wait a minute- I thought he was the "upset at arguments with his wife the day before/ upset over multiple deployments/ watched his friend's leg get blown off the day before/ alcohol-fueled/ brain-damaged/ PTSD suffering/ angry at the lies and hypocrisy/ etc., etc., ad nauseum" soldier we've been told all about for the past few days.
Methinks there be skullduggery afoot in the Public Relations offices of the Pentagon. The spin is making me violently ill.
An employee of the U.S. military that is trained to kill, slaughters innocent kids and we hear "the lone gun man is the only one to blame" defense. 19 guys fly planes into buildings and a billion Muslims are to blame. No double standard there, by golly.
Is it just me or is this killer getting better treatment than the heroic Bradley Manning. Within a few days he is on his way home with a lawyer waiting for him. I guess our country has reached a point that telling the truth of lethal events is a bigger crime than causing them.
He didn't go "Postal". He went "Haditha". Very similar circumstances. The only difference may be that he is a copycat. In any case it is the way to send a message to the local populace, "Don't mess with us or we will mess with you."
Every war is an atrocity. War crimes are an ugly component to every war; Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan. It is interesting that following the conclusion of WWII we tried and hung Nazi and Japanese accused of war crimes such as these. But is seems that in Washington our guys war crimes are excused as PTSD or a result of to many combat deployments or tours etc., etc. This war, with all the side issues is an abomination. We had no justification to attack Afghanistan. The Taliban negotiated in good faith with the Bush Administration to rid themselves of Osama bin Laden. But the Bushies wanted war and regime change to facilitate the negotiations for the Trans-Afghan-Pipeline.
History will not look kindly on this war.
He'll get off with a 3 month suspended sentence while Bradley Manning who exposed American war crimes will spend the rest of his life in prison. Afghan lives are not valued here. Lt. Calley got off scot-free. Not even a fine.
Propaganda isn't supposed to make sense. The propaganda machine is doing what its told to do, which is to defend the image of these wars by trying to paint this mass murderer as a sympathetic good guy. The best thing to do is to just turn off all the propaganda and ignore it. Then you can concentrate on the fact that this 'all around good guy' is a mass murderer who killed 16 people. Unless of course the now ignored reports from the Afghanis that there was more than one soldier involved were accurate.
Just like the mercenaries who slaughtered 19 civilians in Baghdad or the ones who urinated on corpses or the ones who slaughtered 18 women at a baby shower in Afghanistan, most of them pregnant or the ones who cut up corpses so they could keep body parts as souvenir, this murderer will get away scotts free. I can only hope that they let him loose on the streets of the USA so he can do his bidding right here next time.