Trump has spent much of his life displaying a rich boy’s disdain for the law. Many Republicans are eager to do the same. In this case, for a Navy SEAL accused of serious war crimes
Two SEAL snipers told investigators that one day, from his sniper nest, Chief Gallagher shot a girl in a flower-print hijab who was walking with other girls on the riverbank. One of those snipers said he watched through his scope as she dropped, clutching her stomach, and the other girls dragged her away. — www.nytimes.com/...
That’s right, his team-members say Gallagher shot a school age girl while she was walking with her friends. They reported other incidents where Gallagher fired machine guns into neighborhoods and killed other civilians from a sniper position. Then there’s this story:
On the morning of May 4, 2017, Iraqi troops brought in an Islamic State fighter who had been wounded in the leg in battle, SEALs told investigators, and Chief Gallagher responded over the radio with words to the effect of “he’s mine.” The SEALs estimated that the captive was about 15 years old. A video clip shows the youth struggling to speak, but SEAL medics told investigators that his wounds had not appeared life-threatening.A medic was treating the youth on the ground when Chief Gallagher walked up without a word and stabbed the wounded teenager several times in the neck and once in the chest with his hunting knife, killing him, two SEAL witnesses said. — www.nytimes.com/...
Killing a prisoner of war, especially one underage, is among the gravest of war crimes. We should expect all our politicians to take such matters seriously. This will never happen, because the Republican party has openly allied with white supremacists and tacitly endorses violence visited upon brown and black people.
Spurred by the Gallagher family, 40 Republican members of Congress signed a letter in March calling for the Navy to free the chief pending trial, and soon after, President Trump said on Twitter that he would be moved to “less restrictive confinement.” Chief Gallagher was released from the brig and is now restricted to the Navy Medical Center in San Diego, according to a Navy spokeswoman. — www.nytimes.com/...