Seeking Clemency from a War Criminal (Will Grigg)

Will Grigg on the case of Sgt. Evan Vela Carnahan, who was offered as a sacrifice to political expediency and jailed, while those who used him to commit a repugnant crime remain free:

Sgt. Evan Vela Carnahan, 25, has served roughly one year of a ten-year sentence at the Ft. Leavenworth Military Prison. In November 2007, he was convicted of murdering an Iraqi civilian named Genei Nasir Khudair al-Janabi, whom he killed with a single shot to the head from a 9mm sidearm.

The killing took place just a few hundred feet from Janabi's home, which is located in a Sunni-dominated neighborhood in Baghdad near Iskandariyah in a region sometimes called the "Triangle of Death." Evan admits that he killed Janabi in compliance with a direct order issued by his squad leader. The squad leader -- who was acquitted of a murder charge -- admits that he gave the order, and stated under oath that he would have killed Janabi himself except for the fact that Evan was the one with the pistol in his hand.

During the past six years, the Bush Regime has followed an inverted Nuremberg formula -- call it the "Abu Ghraib Doctrine" -- under which the legal accountability for war crimes resides only with those at the bottom of the chain of command.

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