Jury acquits Marine of murder

There are many disturbing things about this story. The fact that it will get lost in the news of the day is, of course, too bad, because this is a story that says a lot about this war.

This is the story of the Marines who went out to get an insurgent. Got the neighbor - who they knew wasn't the right guy, put him in a ditch, and shot him, and then planted a weapon on him and lied about it. Another marine was given a discharge, others plead guilty and testified against Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins.

A google news link sent me to the North Carolina Times story.

A separate jury is still deliberating the fate of his squad leader, Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins, who was also accused in the plot to snatch and kill a man suspected as a key insurgent responsible for roadside bombs attacks on U.S. troops in the area of Hamdania, a rural Iraqi village. When their attempt to grab that man fizzled, they kidnapped and killed his neighbor instead, Marines testified.

Odd that there's no mention of the neighbor's name. The Washington Post points out that the Iraqi man these marines murdered was "...Hashim Ibrahim Awad, 52, a father of 11 and grandfather of four."

Back to the NC Times:

Defense attorneys in both Hutchins' and Magincalda's cases did not deny that their clients played a role in the plot. But they argued that violence toward Iraqi detainees was encouraged by the men's superiors.

Funny, the comments are overwhelmingly in support for this soldier. "Send him home" rears it's head a lot. But I wonder how those 11 children and four grandchildren feel right now.

The sentence for Sgt. Hutchins will be very important to them, I would imagine.