Kill 'Em All, Let Allah Sort 'Em Out

MichNews ^ | 11/18/2004 | Chris Davis

[namvetcav]

Finally you've done a little work. #220 contains lots of extraneous crap but at least we can proceed on the first issues.

And how thin you've now become. We'll pretend that the fat, sweaty troll who stumbled onto this thread at #16 is gone and so let's engage your debatin' fantasy. You get to assert something you assert to be important and I have to show the initial assertion is wrong. The importance (relevance) is a priori and you make no case other than the bald assertion of relevance. I'll indulge your "big diet" fantasy.

In civilian criminal law it is problematic that the preclusion of a defense as "impermissible" would have a grave impact on the the chances of conviction. How does one show that gravity in the absence of a display of analytical acumen? Has actual preclusion saved the jury from contamination? Could sharp lawyering get around preclusion? There's the stuff of endless legal stories, TV and literature. In courts-martial, the officer judges are in the jury and are contaminated by ruling against the impermissible defense but we simply assume the unringing of the bell, as well we should. However, whether a specific court-martial expressly convicts because a specifically proposed, speculatively posited defense is problematically thought impermissible is absurdly overreaching for any amateur or even a legal nitwit. Even cable news lawyers are seldom stupid enough to say, "He can't use the no-pants defense, now he's toast."

But what is the "might have done" defense? It is a straw man. It is also a calumny on our heroic Marine who should be supported now that the republic is at war and asking so much of him and in the fog of war, we are oblig . . . (true, I somewhat mock the reflexive supporters here but watch your step. If I pinged you up on one of the 98% O'Reilly poll threads, the pajamahadeen would be using your head for polo.)

In any case, "might have done" is straw man stuff. That's all you attribute to him and that's the big caps key thing between him and conviction at #16 and if convicted, Freepers couldn't bellyache about it. That's not even a nice try.

Without your "fatness" or Professor Popgun's flesh, you only say that our Marine can't claim he's King John prior to Runnymede. Before Magna Carta, John could kill anybody on his word alone. You are simply putting the words of a fool in the mouths of his problematically required lawyers. Killing folks for what they "might have done" hasn't been a reasonable defense since 1215 and even then it only worked for the absolute ruler under some interpretation of our legal system. Excluding this "defense" attacks a pathetically constructed straw man.

You need to flesh yourself out here. You need to hammer Tibbets for dropping that A-bomb on Hiroshima, unhanding him for that "might have done" defense. You need to publish "might of done" and your anti-Dreyfus work, although that would be Napoleonic law. But without being the slightest bit fat, it is tough to have weight around here.

So that leaves the nasty personal aspect of this. Who the hell are you? Up until #220, you were so lazy . . . . It's hard to believe. You claim you're a way above average professor. You write notes for a living. This is the best you can communicate?

Your life here depends on your status as a '98 Freeper. This board is not evenhanded. Without your status and posting history, you would have been flamed into oblivion after your insanely presumptuous post at #97.

From the jump, as they say, you had the troll stink all over you without your status. What moron poseur would call the UCMJ the "US Military Code of Justice" and then scream in douche bag caps that it's going to screw over a combat Marine? Anyone living under it or a person of legal standing would never make the blunder. It's "indefensible" to make excuses for him if he's convicted, says DrC Emile Zola, some extreme low poster, NC shallow pub, boastful gambler, naive kill stat interventionist (kinda' you best quality), knows med bureaucracy and econ 101 maybe, etc. Who you are matters. That's why things are set up this way.

You want an "evenhanded" debate when you're an uneducated dummy on this subject and the subject infuriates the main constituency of this board. You've come to the wrong place. But I promised I'd indulge you if you and if you want more, I can supply it.

Your posting over this thread is shameful. I'm only an accountant who took the GI Bill for an MBA after Nam. You write notes for a damn living. You forced me to slug you in the head about 50 times before you actually did any work at all figuring you could weasel yourself out of anything. Well, good luck.

Last, three days/I'm a 24/7 hang-out canard -
I see response time as an optimization problem of punctilio vs. insouciance. I see your view as typically shallow or sloppy. But you did do some work so you can be proud of something.

[DrC]

I'm not a troll. I don't care to have my IP address publicized, but am happy to authorize the moderator to confirm that my posts on this thread came from the identical IP address as all my posts going back to 1998. I don't know how else to "prove" I have not hijacked DrC's screen name. This line of argument is all a red herring since whether I am a troll or not, my argument can be evaluated on its merits.

As for my original post, I really was trying to make a very simple point--one that you mistakenly inflated all out of proportion into an attack on the marines, America, apple pie and motherhood. The professor made 2 assertions that were "news" to me: my deepest apologies for never having served in the military and not knowing this stuff "first hand." Do I get brownie points for my Dad having attended West Point? In any case, what the video shows is no obvious movement by the victim. Hence, the question on the table was under what circumstances could the shooting be justified? The professor pointed out that "mercy killings" are not allowed. I did not raise this point in my post because it wasn't relevant. I was reacting to a specific poster who, in my estimation (notwithstanding your claim that it is a strawman defense) was actually invoking the "might have done it" defense. And to that poster, I merely reported the second thing I'd learned from the WP professor, namely that such defenses are not allowed. The marine in question has to demonstrate that in his judgment this victim posed an actual as opposed to hypothetical threat to him or the other soldiers present. As I indicated earlier, had the victim reached beneath his blanket--even if it later turned out he had no weapon beneath--that action alone would have justified the shooting. But absent that, my understanding of how the code is applied [COMPLETELY derivative from a WP professor!], "he coulda done this" or "he coulda done that" won't be sufficient to convince a fair-minded military panel against conviction.

Again, this may not be "news" to you or anyone with experience in this area, but since not everyone here has had the benefit of your experience, including the poster who was offering up the "might have done" defense to defend this marine's actions, I thought my post was a reasonable contribution to the discussion.

The underlying premise of my argument was that the military justice system was fair and could indeed be counted upon to ignore inappropriate defenses even if the lawyer defending the marine offered them. That may be naive in the extreme from where you sit, but it's a conclusion I drew from observing how Abu Graib was handled--reasonably swift, no-nonsense justice without any effort to "rally round the marines" who admittedly are in a tough fight over there. The military has high standards of conduct that were upheld at Abu Graib and I expect an equally principled decision in the case of this marine.

If I understand your position correctly, it is literally impossible to expect a conviction of this marine. I, on the other hand, believe the odds favor his conviction but acknowledge the possibility of an acquittal based on evidence not visible on the tape. I'll leave it for readers to decide which is the more defensible position. I personally am quite content to let the investigation play and see which one of us is right in our predictions.