[richlevy]

Here is a similar story from the Associated Press.

Military officials say the number of crimes alleged against U.S. military personnel in Iraq is minuscule compared to the mammoth task of trying to bring peace to the country, and many who have opposed prosecuting soldiers argue that top brass is overzealously second-guessing soldiers' actions in the field. But some observers question the punishments, or say the crimes suggest a need for increased efforts to protect soldiers from combat stress.

"There have been some convictions in which the sentences are amazingly light," said Gary D. Solis, a retired Marine who teaches law at the U.S. Military Academy.

Well, war is hell and all that.

A Marine commander at North Carolina's Camp Lejeune cleared 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano of charges in the death of two Iraqi civilians on May 26; hours later, Army jurors at Fort Hood, Texas, acquitted Staff Sgt. Shane Werst of charges he killed an unarmed Iraqi.

In both cases, defense lawyers said the men acted in self-defense. Pantano received extensive support from conservatives and veterans after his mother created a lobbying group to support "the man who puts his life on the line again and again, who makes life-or-death decisions in the blazing heat, exhaustion, fear and confusion of war."

Further complicating that case, Pantano acknowledged shooting his victims more than 60 times and hanging a sign over their corpses as a warning.

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private defense policy group, was among several observers who expressed surprise that Pantano was not punished at all.

"We don't send people out there to mutilate enemy corpses," he said. "I don't think that it's going to play very well in Iraq."

Pantano had plenty of support from fellow veterans, as was evident Friday, when he met with supporters at a fish fry at an American Legion post in Wilmington, N.C. Harold Davis, a 75-year-old Korean War veteran, had tears in his eyes as he told Pantano that the military never would have charged a serviceman during Korea.

Again, under 'future war costs', consider what it is going to take to deprogram some of these kids when they get back here. Add to this that every incident gives fuel to the insurgency. While Fox News may cover the story from the viewpoint of the 'poor soldier', Arab news networks and the rest of the world do not.

A year ago, President Bush said

"We want to get all of the information out so that the American people know what happened ... and so that our friends in the Arab world knows we're a country of law and a country of justice," Powell said. "I would hope this would not cause anybody to hold back any support they might have provided" to the multinational force helping restore Iraq.

From the dialogue we are seeing in some of these cases, I don't know how that really works out in practice. The US military reserves the right to punish soldiers and will not allow prosecutions in any other court in the world. These results show that justice is a matter of viewpoint.

BTW, I agree that in Korea, noone questioned civilian deaths, at least not until it was 50 years too late.

When we went into Iraq, the administration had a vision of a just war, quick victory, and overwhelmingly grateful and complacent populace. In the aftermath, we perhaps find the reason why presidents who have actually experienced war are less likely to declare it. In June 2003 , we can compare Bush's confidence with today's reality.