Marine jailed for killing
From The Age:
Private First Class John Jodka, 20, the second defendant sentenced in the April 26 death of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, pleaded guilty last month to charges of assault and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Under a plea deal with government prosecutors, Jodka will serve an 18-month sentence in the military brig — getting credit for about six months spent in confinement — if he agrees to testify against his squad mates. That was a better deal than the sentence issued by the military judge, Marine Lieutenant-Colonel David Jones, who sentenced him to a five-year prison term.
Lieutenant-Colonel Jones handed down his sentence just before seeing the Marine Corps' plea deal. Under military rules, Jodka will serve the lesser of the punishments. "You have a very fortuitous pretrial agreement," the judge said in court.
The agreement includes numerous conditions that Jodka must follow or the longer sentence, harsher punishment and a punitive discharge would instead be imposed.
In closing arguments,lead prosecutor Lieutenant-Colonel John Baker said of Jodka's squad's actions that day: "They killed a 52-year-old crippled man in cold blood. (Jodka) had the opportunity to stop the madness — but he failed to do it."
Jodka had said he thought the man the squad killed that night was Saleh Gowad, a local Iraqi insurgent who was on the battalion's "high value individual" list, not Awad, a retired Iraqi policeman.
Another victim of the fog of war.
I wonder how many "Awads" there were in WWI and WWII. We'd probably still be prosecuting them. This is how things have changed in our country since the "Greatest Generation". We have forgotten how to fight and the cost of doing so.
No credt to the rapists and murderers here, but I think just being in a squad doesn't justify being tried for it's crimes.
Labels: Insurgents, Iraq, Marines
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