Combat Fatality = Homicide?

It never ceases to amaze me how The Left is able to so cavalierly proclaim their ideas about the conduct of war with little or no practical experience and a reflexively Anti-American tone. Describing the career ending Non Judicial Punishment meted out to a Navy SEAL Lieutenant for “dereliction of duty and conduct unbecoming an officer” relating to the death of detainee Manadel al Jamadi…

“Yet again, we're concerned that nonjudicial punishment has been used in a case which was very serious," said John Sifton, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch. "It was a homicide, somebody died. Everybody's pointing the finger at everybody. Nobody's serving jailtime and this is becoming a pattern."

Wow John, that’s very astute of you to make the very compelling connection between somebody dying as a result of combat operations and the “fact” that a homicide has occurred. Maybe you can get some work as an advisor to the producers at Law & Order.

But frankly that is a matter of semantics. The real issue with respect to this SEAL’s case is that the military pathologist who investigated the case, Jerry Hodge said…

“the prisoner's broken ribs and bruised lungs most likely were not caused by the alleged beating he received from the SEALs, according to a summary of his interview last year with the CIA Inspector General's office, which was obtained by the AP. No external bruises were found that would indicate such a beating, he said.”

Meaning that not only is there no consensus that a “beating” even occurred while Jamadi was in the SEAL’s custody, stipulating that it did occur does not account for the condition that led to his death. And yet, apparently some “jailtime” is in order. Thank you Detective Sipowicz.

Essentially Human Rights Watch’s position is that if you are a member of a SEAL Platoon ordered to assault a terrorist safehouse in Iraq, your best concept of operations is to call for an airstrike on the building because, hey, don’t nobody deserve no beatin’. Right? Wait a minute, that could cause innocent Iraqi children to be murdered. OK, I know. You enter the building and shoot everybody (except the children, of course). Well, that could be a war crime because, what if the guy didn’t die from the first shot and then somebody shot him again? That could be considered shooting a wounded enemy. We already know that entering the building and forcibly taking a terrorist into custody is wrong because that is what happened here. Perhaps the Platoon could surround the house FBI style, and use a megaphone to call the guy out… with his hands up! That could actually be considered humiliating though. Probably the best thing to do is send him a Notice to Appear at the local detention facility. Give that a week; then somebody could go and post the Notice on his door and really scare the guy.

Obviously, Human Rights Watch does not consider any action in Iraq to be a worthwhile exercise and probably most things are construed as oppressive or cruel. Whatever. They are entitled to their bias which is the reason they are subsidized by The Left and hailed by moonbats everywhere. But they are not entitled to inject themselves into a legal proceeding in which they have no standing. Arrogant admonitions of punishment against innocent combat veterans may pay the bills, but it doesn’t make you right. Why don’t you take a nice little jaunt up to North Korea and see if anyone around there could use some “jailtime”... bitch.