[Trigger Warning]Soldier Accused of Rape and Murder of Iraqi Girl Hangs Himself

[DasFapital]

Just a sad story all around (http://allisonkilkenny.com/2014/02/the-poster-boy-for-unending-war/)

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Did he really kill himself? Or was he silenced? That's my question.

I also think its disgusting how the article portrayed this event as 'the most heinous' incident in the Iraq war considering shit like this happened every single day. This just happened to be made public. I think this highlights a very important issue which is the psychological cost of killing. On a personal note though, I hope her face was the last thing going through his head in the last milliseconds before his neck snapped. Sick brutes!

[Lily Briscoe]

I don't know... The article makes some decent points I guess, but I really don't buy the whole sob story narrative that the US military is comprised primarily of the "poor and marginalized" (to quote the article) in American society, who supposedly all enlist because they are desperate and have no other options. My impression has always been that the more common scenario is some middle class kid who enlists either because he's from a 'military family' or because he doesn't know what to do with himself.

I agree with the point that painting people like this guy as "monsters" (and therefore some kind of anomaly) misses the fact that this sort of behavior is a natural extension of 'war'/military occupation. But I also find it pretty difficult to feel a lot of sympathy for people who volunteer to go to another country and brutalize the population there, and I get pretty tired of the constant reverence and coddling of 'the troops' here, as if the worst casualty of American military occupations is the psychological wellbeing of American soldiers..

[Red Commissar]

As best I understand it he was already forming a persecution complex that he got shafted because he was tried in civilian court as opposed to the other killer-rapists who were tried in military court. He got five life sentences for his crime with no possibility of parole where as the other guys while given also lengthy sentences were eligible for parole in 2015.

idk I kind of find it hard to sympathize with his particular case but it does highlight how thoroughly the military in Iraq was able to dehumanize the populace to make them acceptable targets.