Army tapes reveal motive in Iraq prisoner killings

[proud2BlibKansan]

A CNN investigation reveals why the Army's rules for holding detainees may have led to the murders of four Iraqis by three decorated Army sergeants. Watch Saturday and Sunday at 8 and 11 p.m. ET on CNN.

Vilseck, Germany (CNN) -- U.S. soldiers interrogated by the Army in the 2007 murders of four Iraqi detainees blamed a military policy they said made it too hard to detain suspected insurgents, a CNN investigation has found.

Soldiers questioned in the killings said the sergeant in command of their detachment ordered the suspected insurgents killed because Army rules made it too difficult to hold them.

"They're gonna be right back on the streets," one soldier put it.

CNN obtained an extraordinary 23½ hours of Army interrogation videotapes that detail the March 2007 executions of the prisoners by three sergeants who were attached to Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment.

The tapes show one of the sergeants confessing to the crime, as well as agents from the Army's Criminal Investigations Division telling soldiers involved in the crime that the military's reputation was at stake.

more . . . http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/17/army.tapes.canal.killings/

[SoCalDem]

1. Killing detainees is not a new thing.

It happens in every war, but most of the time, the participants do not confess or even speak of it..

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. I watched this on CNN last night

Sure sounded like murder to me.

[SoCalDem]

3. it is, but most participants dummy up and it goes unpunished

these guys will be punished for it, because they admitted to doing it.

It's certainly wrong, but in a war, things like this happen all the time.

dead is dead, whether a drone takes out the family home at dinnertime, or if a soldier does it face-to-face