Shame! Shame! Shame!

(My apologies for quickly reverting to serious threads, but this just rankled my nerves. Warning: this is a rant.)

A second American soldier has been convicted for the now infamous rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the murder of her family (parents and 5-year-old sister) in Mahmoudiya, Iraq. In case you weren't aware of the details, the rape victim, Abeer Qasim Hamza, was made aware that her parents and sister have been mudrered while she was being raped. And after being raped, her head was bashed in with a concrete block and her body set ablaze.

This soldier, Sgt. Paul Cortez from the 101st Airborne, gets 100 years for the heinous crime, but is eligible for parole in just 10 years. So he can get a measly 10 years in jail for his dastardly crime if his parole is granted, which is likely if he stays a good boy in jail (no little girls to rape there, after all). And 10 years from now the Iraq War and all its atrocities would be distant history, unless of course it's still raging.

Shame on American justice for giving this soldier an easy escape. It's fine to spare him from the death penalty for his cooperation, but allowing him a chance for parole in 10 years? If this were a white girl and her family, American media would be saturated with coverage and this soldier would be dead by now. Or at the minimum have a 100-year sentence without the chance for parole. But this sentence for the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and her family is just so light. The US justice system has denied eligibility for parole for much lighter offenses, so why not now? In this case, justice has been denied from the most innocent of victims.

It'll be justice if he and his four co-rapists/murderers serve those first 10 years in an Iraqi prison. Hopefully they'll be spending most of their time sitting on broomsticks, and not like fairy-tale witches.

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Now, don't give me that crap that 99.99% of American soldiers in Iraq are doing their jobs honourably. This is not a case of how many good vs. how many bad; the Defense Department's (and American public's) attitude must be one atrocity is one too many. Besides, Mahmoudiya is not an isolated incident. BBC has a list of American atrocities in Iraq, and these are just the ones that made headlines in Western media. And if Robert Koehler is to be believed, the racism against Arabs is deep-seated in the US Armed Forces.

And don't give me crap about 3,000+ American soldiers dying in Iraq and the stress they face there (that's the excuse of the five Mahmoudiya soldeirs, btw-- an IED just killed a few of their mates so they wanted revenge). They have guns, for crying out loud. They are legitimate targets in a war. They can defend themselves from attackers. It's not an excuse or even an explanation for killing civilians. The Brits and Aussies are also in Iraq; so far they haven't done anything that approaches American atrocities.

Shame on Cheney-head Bush for starting this war. Shame on the American justice system for treating war criminals with kid-gloves. Shame on the American public for not demanding justice for Iraqi victims.