I probably just should have said nothing

The military finally convicted someone for their role in the Haditha Massacre of 24 innocent Iraqi civilians in 2005. Frank Wuterich’s court-martial ended today with a plea deal. He’ll skate on all the manslaughter charges, but by gum they’ve nailed him for negligent dereliction of duty. Although telling his men, “shoot first and ask questions later,” as Wuterich admitted to having done, doesn’t seem “negligent.” A closer fit for “negligent dereliction of duty” would be the work of the military prosecutors, who somehow failed to get this single pathetic conviction in their prosecutions of eight of the war criminals.

Wuterich will get 3 months.

Max.

Here’s Wuterich, manfully taking responsibility today for the “shoot first and ask questions later” thing: “Honestly, I probably should have said nothing. I think we all understood what we were doing so I probably just should have said nothing.”