Camp Pendelton Eight

Let me see if I’ve got this right. In Iraq, we pay Iraqi civilians to bring to our attention incidents of abuse to Iraqi civilians and pay these hired witnesses for the information and for testifying against the accused. The amount of money we pay for this testimony exceeds the income these Iraqi witnesses could otherwise make. They must also get a free trip to the States in order to testify.

It sounds to me as if this ill-fated sting operation is a setup for fraud. Never mind the travesty rendered the legal rights of our soldiers. This misfortune seems to be smoldering under the radar and is of a magnitude, if not greater, than the Dreyfus affaire in France, an 1890s political scandal that divided the nation. Only here we should not divide ourselves.

These young men are innocent until proven guilty, and while we are at it, we need to explore the veracity of these so-called witnesses. Killing their own and then pointing their finger at us and saying look what you have done, seems to me to be the honor bound obsession of the Arab. Call it a lethal triangulation and maybe in this case a very profitable one.