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bd popeye

The Last Jedi
VIP Professional
US Army soildier given 100 years fpr murder and rape.

The counduct of this group of thugs is reprehensible. They deserve much more of a punishment. They were not soilders..they are thugs and murderers.

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FT. CAMPBELL, Kentucky (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier who pleaded guilty to raping and murdering a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killing her family was sentenced to 100 years in a military prison, the U.S. Army said on Thursday.

Sgt. Paul Cortez, 24, was also given a dishonorable discharge under a plea agreement he reached with prosecutors prior to a court-martial that spanned three days, an Army spokesman said.

Cortez, of Barstow, California, was not eligible for the death penalty under his plea agreement, accepted by the court on Wednesday.

Col. Stephen R. Henley, the military judge, found Cortez guilty of conspiracy to commit rape, four counts of felony murder, rape, housebreaking and violating a general order.

Under terms of his plea agreement, Cortez agreed to testify against the three others still facing prosecution in the case.

During the court-martial, a sometimes emotional Cortez recounted how he and his companions drank whiskey, played cards and plotted to attack the family at Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, in March 2006. The group poured kerosene on the girl's body and lit her on fire in an attempt to cover up the crime.

Cortez testified that Spc. James Barker, who also pleaded guilty in the case, and a since-discharged soldier, Pvt. Steven Green, chose the family to attack because there was only one man in the house and it was an "easy target."

Once at the house, Green, the suspected ringleader, took the girl's mother, father and little sister into a bedroom, Cortez said, while he and Barker took the teenager, Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, to the living room, where they took turns raping her.

He said Green, who has been charged as a civilian and awaits trial in a Kentucky jail, shot the girl's family in another room and then raped the teenager.

The deaths of the girl and her family outraged Iraqis and ratcheted up tension in the war zone.

Barker pleaded guilty in November and was sentenced to 90 years in a military prison. Green was discharged from the Army for a "personality disorder."

Two other soldiers are accused in the case, Pvt. Jesse Spielman and Pvt. Bryan Howard
 
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celtic-dragon

New Member
US Army soildier given 100 years fpr murder and rape.

The counduct of this group of thugs is reprehensible. They deserve much more of a punishment. They were not soilders..they are thugs and murderers.

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FT. CAMPBELL, Kentucky (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier who pleaded guilty to raping and murdering a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killing her family was sentenced to 100 years in a military prison, the U.S. Army said on Thursday.

Sgt. Paul Cortez, 24, was also given a dishonorable discharge under a plea agreement he reached with prosecutors prior to a court-martial that spanned three days, an Army spokesman said.

Cortez, of Barstow, California, was not eligible for the death penalty under his plea agreement, accepted by the court on Wednesday.

Col. Stephen R. Henley, the military judge, found Cortez guilty of conspiracy to commit rape, four counts of felony murder, rape, housebreaking and violating a general order.

Under terms of his plea agreement, Cortez agreed to testify against the three others still facing prosecution in the case.

During the court-martial, a sometimes emotional Cortez recounted how he and his companions drank whiskey, played cards and plotted to attack the family at Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, in March 2006. The group poured kerosene on the girl's body and lit her on fire in an attempt to cover up the crime.

Cortez testified that Spc. James Barker, who also pleaded guilty in the case, and a since-discharged soldier, Pvt. Steven Green, chose the family to attack because there was only one man in the house and it was an "easy target."

Once at the house, Green, the suspected ringleader, took the girl's mother, father and little sister into a bedroom, Cortez said, while he and Barker took the teenager, Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, to the living room, where they took turns raping her.

He said Green, who has been charged as a civilian and awaits trial in a Kentucky jail, shot the girl's family in another room and then raped the teenager.

The deaths of the girl and her family outraged Iraqis and ratcheted up tension in the war zone.

Barker pleaded guilty in November and was sentenced to 90 years in a military prison. Green was discharged from the Army for a "personality disorder."

Two other soldiers are accused in the case, Pvt. Jesse Spielman and Pvt. Bryan Howard
My God. What is so broken in these men that they would do such a thing? Cold blooded mass murder and rape.
 

The_Zergling

Junior Member
It appears Lieutenant Watada has been re-charged...

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...

Watada's attorney, Eric Seitz, said he would seek to have the charges dismissed as a violation of the Constitution's protection against double jeopardy.

``When it's not going well for you, you can't just call a mistrial and start over again,'' Seitz said. ``No matter how much lip service they give to wanting to protect my client's rights, that just doesn't exist in the military courts.''

Fort Lewis spokesman Joseph Piek said double jeopardy did not apply in this case because the first trial was never completed.

...

It can be argued that the military is so anxious to get Watada because the implications if he were judged innocent would be devastating... I'm sure there are some who believe that this decision to continue going after him is a good decision, based on a soldier's creed or something like that. That's certainly a stance to take, however I believe the primary reason for this prosecution is that if he is innocent, then the military is guilty... definitely not a comfortable situation.
 

BLUEJACKET

Banned Idiot
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, Caucasian, was afraid of being send to Vietnam, defected to NK-an enemy nation, and, after being punished enough by the NKs themselves, has spent only a short time in US custody.
Mr. Watada, Asian American officer, refused to participate in a war he didn't agree with, and didn't attempt to desert or defect. What punishment does he deserve now, after the 2nd round?
 
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The_Zergling

Junior Member
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, Caucasian, was afraid of being send to Vietnam, defected to NK-an enemy nation, and, after being punished enough by the NKs themselves, has spent only a short time in US custody.
Mr. Watada, Asian American officer, refused to participate in a war he didn't agree with, and didn't attempt to desert or defect. What punishment does he deserve now, after the 2nd round?

I think you're comparing apples and oranges here. The military is going after Watada so fiercely because he is essentially challenging the legality and morality of the war in Iraq, and if he is innocent then that will mean the entire military is guilty, which is obviously bad for future PR. It's different from deserting or defecting, which is simply an individual act.
 

zachjeli

Banned Idiot
we have so many nukes that russia or china won't even think of starting a war the us, which is a good thing that keeps them in line. we should do the same in iraq so we can get the hell out of there.
 

BLUEJACKET

Banned Idiot
Then you can write off the 2nd biggest oil reserve in the world- noone will be willing & able to work there afterwards!
Al Gore, Global Warming, the Oscars and the Iraq War

That the Al Gore film "An Inconvenient Truth" was legitimized by an Oscar Sunday night for "Best Documentary" has wider implications for the future of the United States than it might seem, though admittedly it is a small step.

We know that Exxon Mobil is a significant funder of the American Enterprise Institute and has used it to attempt to bribe "scientists" to cast doubt on global warming. Lee Raymond, who was CEO of Exxon Mobil until 2005, is the vice-chair of AEI's board of directors.

We also know that the American Enterprise Institute is the most hawkish of the Washington "think tanks," and that its staffers were key to thinking up and promoting the Iraq War with lies and propaganda.

A=B, B=C, therefore A=C. Exxon Mobil is a big behind the scenes player in the Iraq War by virtue of its support for AEI. In fact, I think a boycott of its gas stations is in order until the company cuts off AEI and stops promoting the Iraq War and muddying the waters on global warming. (It pledged to do the latter in the past, but obviously was lying).

So the point is that the American Enterprise Institute symbolizes the intersection of Oil and War, which are the two most menacing threats to the future of America.

Only by a Manhattan Project-scale government effort to develop green energy can we hope to avert the worst consequences of global warming, which is likely to raise sea levels at least a foot, and possibly 7 feet over the next century or century and a half. (That would put a lot of cities on both coasts under water). The arctic and antarctic ice shelfs are already falling into the ocean at rates that have astonished climate scientists. The arctic alone lost perennial ice cover the size of Texas in 2004-2005! Liquid water takes up more space than ice, and the loss of white ice cover is bad because it radiates a lot of sunlight back out to space. So it is a double whammy.

But the other problem with petroleum and gas as sources of energy is that they are getting scarcer. No big new fields have been found for some time. And in one recent year China generated 40% of new demand for petroleum. If a billion Chinese and a billion Indians adopt the American lifestyle and all want 1.5 automobiles and superhighways to crawl along on, the existing stocks of oil will become objects of fierce competition. This process has already begun, and there is a sea change from the mid-1990s, when oil was still cheap and competition for it limited.

Iraq is an Oil War in the mind of politicians like Dick Cheney. It was necessary to deny it to China and other rivals thirty to fifty years in the future. It was necessary to open its vast petroleum fields up for exploration and cast aside anti-American Baath socialism.

Likewise, the religious rigidity of the Pushtun peoples of Helmand province is not the real reason for the US insistence on occupying Afghanistan. It is the vast Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan gas fields that Cheney has his eye on. It was the US hope to use a pipeline from Turkmenistan to supply Pakistan and India, and so forestall a deal by those two countries with Iran. The inability of the Bush administration to calm things down in Afghanistan sufficiently for anyone to dream of putting in such a pipeline and having it avoid routine sabotage has made it likely that Iran will break out of the Bush boycott toward the East.

Hunger for future rights to petroleum and positioning the US to remain a superpower in a world of hydrocarbon scarcity is also driving the campaign to get up a war against Iran. Why can Pakistan have a nuclear weapon, and that is all right, but Iran cannot? Pakistan has very little petroleum. Iran has a lot, and maybe 750 trillion cubic feet of gas in the southwest. If it gets a bomb, regime change becomes impossible, and if Iran wants to tie its supplies up in proprietary contracts with China and India, locking out the United States, it will be able to do so.

Continued heavy dependence on gas and oil therefore not only turns the world into a hothouse, with rising seas, ever more destructive hurricanes, and possibly disastrous shifts in the ocean currents, but it also drives the United States to more and more wars.

And, note that the wars are not even successful in allowing a practical oil grab of the sort Cheney and Lee Raymond dreamed of.

Indeed, you could now, in retrospect, turn their whole argument around on them. US militarism cannot secure petroleum and gas supplies from places such as Iraq, because the pipelines are so easily sabotaged and local nationalisms and religious activism make it impossible for people to accept that kind of US hegemony.

Since the Pentagon cannot practically speaking hope to safeguard US petroleum supplies from the Gulf, national security requires a massive and rapid research and development program of green energy. A lot of green technology, especially solar, would come down in price rapidly if enough government money were thrown at it. We need to press Congress on this, and maybe Californians can craft some of their famous referendum items. That would be one way to promote a new generation of electric cars.

Green energy-- wind, thermal, solar, maybe ultimately fusion, etc.-- is what would allow the US to retain its autonomy and independence into the next century, and what would allow it to avoid losing more cities the way Bush and Cheney lost New Orleans. Oil and War will, in contrast, ruin us all.
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Over 1,000 Active-Duty GIs Petition Congress to End Iraq War
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dannytoro

New Member
....I recall Mary Landrieu , Ray Nagin and Jefferson sinking Naw Orlans....something about floating buses, frozen money cakes and dyke money turned to house renovations and golf courses for the rich......
 

BLUEJACKET

Banned Idiot
Gates sees long-term low-level US presence in Iraq
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US firm on no plan for Iran strikes
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Regime Change Is the Reason, Disarmament the Excuse
An interview with Scott Ritter
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Iran threatens to pursue Kurdish rebels inside Iraq
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McCain Says U.S. Lives 'Wasted' in Iraq
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The Pentagon plays war games with Iran
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Walter Reed patients told to keep quiet
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