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Post by marchesarosa on Dec 15, 2013 10:56:26 GMT
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Post by cleefarqhuar on Dec 15, 2013 12:57:04 GMT
Well, his case certainly deserves special consideration, but a civilised nation cannot alow its troops to murder anyone they wish, no matter what the mitigating circumstances
I will not sign
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Post by marchesarosa on Dec 15, 2013 14:05:53 GMT
I agree. But the penalty is disproportionate. The man has lost his career and his reputation and there must be discretion in the judgement of what happens in the heat of the battlefield, don't you agree? It's not as if the incident was premeditated murder in a busy South London street, is it?
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Post by jean on Dec 15, 2013 14:29:46 GMT
...It's not as if the incident was premeditated murder in a busy South London street, is it? No, but it wasn't exactly in the heat of the battlefield either. (Why South London, I wonder?)
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Post by marchesarosa on Dec 15, 2013 16:59:04 GMT
Last time I looked Woolwich was in South London.
In a guerrilla war like Afghanistan, anywhere troops come under attack is a "battlefield", jean.
Do you have to work at being dim or does it come naturally?
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Post by jean on Dec 15, 2013 17:35:32 GMT
Last time I looked Woolwich was in South London. I see - so you're arguing that Pte Rigby's murder was quite a different case. You claim the whole of Afghanistan is a battlefield. That's exactly what Pte. Rigby's murderers claim in respect of the UK. You are both wrong.
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Post by marchesarosa on Dec 15, 2013 22:39:10 GMT
Dead right.
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Post by marchesarosa on Dec 15, 2013 22:40:52 GMT
It takes a particular type of mentality, jean, to be able to construe that from anything I have said.
I simply said that wherever troops come under attack is correctly described as "a battlefield" to rebut your claim that the time and location of the incident for which Sgt Blackman was tried was not properly described as "the heat of the battlefield".
Has anyone argued that the wounded man who was unlawfully killed was NOT an enemy combatant? If he were simply an innocent, unarmed passerby who was just murdered by a gung-ho soldier the case would be more clearcut. However he was taken to be a wounded enemy combatant by the British soldiers and no-one has denied that to my knowledge.
The killing was contrary to rules, certainly. Nevertheless, the sentence was too heavy, IMHO. It pandered to the PC tendency. Sgt Blackman deserved more leniency. He was acting on his country's behalf in a hellhole in which he had already served on several previous postings and he deserved to be cut some slack.
(Incidentally, he did not try to justify his action on the grounds he was acting on God's instructions. I guess you would not have swallowed that sort of guff, jean.)
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pippop
pc
I love everyone here.
Posts: 1,110
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Post by pippop on Dec 15, 2013 23:11:04 GMT
It takes a particular type of mentality, jean, to be able to construe that from anything have said. I simply said that wherever troops come under attack is correctly described as "a battlefield" to rebut your claim that the time and location of the incident for which Sgt Blackman was tried was not properly described as "the heat of the battlefield". Has anyone argued that the wounded man who was unlawfully killed was NOT an enemy combatant? If he were simply an innocent, unarmed passerby who was just murdered by a gung-ho soldier the case would be more clearcut. However he was taken to be a wounded enemy combatant by the British soldiers and no-one has denied that to my knowledge. The killing was contrary to rules, certainly. Nevertheless, the sentence was too heavy, IMHO. It pandered to the PC tendency. Sgt Blackman deserved more leniency. He was acting on his country's behalf in a hellhole in which he had already served on several previous postings and he deserved to be cut some slack. (Incidentally, he did not try to justify his action on the grounds he was acting on God's instructions. I guess you would not have swallowed that sort of guff, jean.) Fancy you thinking that; there's a shock!
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Post by ncsonde on Dec 16, 2013 8:25:17 GMT
I agree. But the penalty is disproportionate. The man has lost his career and his reputation and there must be discretion in the judgement of what happens in the heat of the battlefield, don't you agree? The penalty for murder is mandatory: life sentence. No doubt mitigating circumstances will be taken into account in deciding the actual tariff served before parole - using excessive force in self-defence would seem to fit the bill.
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Post by ncsonde on Dec 16, 2013 8:34:40 GMT
Last time I looked Woolwich was in South London. I see - so you're arguing that Pte Rigby's murder was quite a different case. You claim the whole of Afghanistan is a battlefield. That's exactly what Pte. Rigby's murderers claim in respect of the UK. You are both wrong. It is a completely different case, under law - and the international conventions that have determined that killing a wounded prisoner is murder. There is no such convention, and no national legal code, that would allow Rigby's murderers to argue that they were on a battlefield, or not completely subject to English law. Legally, the whole of Afghanistan is a battlefield. Though this has no relevance to the case in question. Practically, it does, or might have done, of course. Soldiers in battle have often chosen to kill prisoners, wounded or not - it happened on D-Day a lot, and was a common practice, with unexpressed official sanction, on the Pacific island landings in WWII - for very sound defensive reasons. In both cases care would have been taken for it not to be filmed, though; official sanction or not.
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pippop
pc
I love everyone here.
Posts: 1,110
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Post by pippop on Dec 16, 2013 13:38:16 GMT
I see - so you're arguing that Pte Rigby's murder was quite a different case. You claim the whole of Afghanistan is a battlefield. That's exactly what Pte. Rigby's murderers claim in respect of the UK. You are both wrong. It is a completely different case, under law - and the international conventions that have determined that killing a wounded prisoner is murder. There is no such convention, and no national legal code, that would allow Rigby's murderers to argue that they were on a battlefield, or not completely subject to English law. Legally, the whole of Afghanistan is a battlefield. Though this has no relevance to the case in question. Practically, it does, or might have done, of course. Soldiers in battle have often chosen to kill prisoners, wounded or not - it happened on D-Day a lot, and was a common practice, with unexpressed official sanction, on the Pacific island landings in WWII - for very sound defensive reasons. In both cases care would have been taken for it not to be filmed, though; official sanction or not. Yikes! I had no idea that was the case. Do you know of any other countries that this currently applies to?
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Post by visitor on Dec 16, 2013 16:05:22 GMT
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Post by ncsonde on Dec 16, 2013 16:30:48 GMT
Legally, the whole of Afghanistan is a battlefield. Yikes! I had no idea that was the case. It is technically an "insurgency". This country's armed forces, along with other countries in a UN coalition force, have a legal mandate to enter combat with the Taliban - or any other insurgents that resist their legal authority, their "monopoly of force" within Afghanistan. As for the insurgents, they prosecute that combat wherever they choose, throughout the whole country. For this country? No. For the French, a couple of countries in Africa at the moment. For the Indians, Kashmir. For the Turks, their part of Kurdistan. For the Russians, Chechnya. I think ETA are currently under a ceasefire with Spain. Otherwise, the world is surprisingly peaceful at the moment - almost unprecedentedly so; more so than in my lifetime, at any rate. Something to celebrate.
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Post by ncsonde on Dec 16, 2013 16:58:37 GMT
I'll add a personal note, if I may. As someone who passed the course to be a Royal Marines officer, but decided at the last moment not to take the commission, I find this whole case absolutely appalling. It is emphatically not the case that any Royal Marine does not have it drummed into them over and over exactly what the law is in combat conditions, and why it's of paramount importance that they follow it to the letter, and how they will be treated if they don't (not with lily-livered sympathy, but with the full weight of the wrathful condemnation of the law). This guy was an NCO - which believe it or not is, from the point of view of the RM, and how they see the essential role of NCOs, and their role in upholding the honour of their unit, and the country, immeasurably worse.
He has brought great disgrace and dishonour on his whole regiment, on his whole branch of the armed forces, on his whole country, and done immeasurable damage to every soldier's ability to survive in future combat. I believe every soldier - certainly every Marine - understands this, and he won't be finding much sympathy from any military person, I assure you.
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