General Discussion

Should this man be in prison.  Should he have been charged with murder. My opinion for any one who has seen active service things are not clear cut and sometimes emotions take over and the red mist descends and soldiers do things they would not normaly do i say let the man go. He has only done what thousands have done before him and got away with.

I don't think the state had a choice but to prosecute. Apparently there was good video evidence showing that the soldiers appeared fairly calm and unthreatened in the minutes leading up to the killing. This goes against the 'red mist' defence.

After the killing, Blackman admitted that he'd broken the Geneva Convention and asked his comrades to keep quiet.

If there had been no trial and the video had gotten public then there would have been accusations that his behaviour was considered acceptable by the UK and its government. That would have played right into the hands of the Al Qaida recruiting sergeants.

We could argue that because the insurgents don't play by the rules of war then neither should our forces. But we are supposed to be morally superior to them - otherwise how could we justify charging into foreign countries and waging war there?

In my opinion he's guilty - but then so are Bush and Blair and all the other politicians who supported these morally and militarily flawed operations.

 I WONDER Oniscus if you have ever been in combat and seen your best friends blown to bits and then there remains hung in the trees with the sole purpose of bringing in more troops to collect the body parts and putting themselves in the line of fire.  A man loses all sense of humanity all you want to do is kill the enemy it doesnt matter about the wright and wrongs you just have a hatred that eats you alive and all you want to do is kill the enemy.   The problem is the hate stays with you i have met WW2 vets who hate Germans Falklands vets who hate with a passion Argentineans it maybe doesnt make sence but if you havent been there you wouldnt understand.

Marine A has done nothing wrong. If your at war then the name of the game is to kill the enemy, which is exactly what he did. On the other hand if we are not at war then what the hell was he doing there in the first place, Im sure it wasent by choice.

If he had been a government paid mercenary and not a profesional marine then nothing would have been said or done.

In this mornings press the government have responded to calls for a type of military strike action by saying its nothing to do with them and that they legally cannot overturn the court martial outcome.

Looks like the appeal will end up going to the Queen for her decision.

Now that he has been named who is going to protect his family from being murdered , like the extremists that murdered Lee Rigby in Greenwich in cold blood.

Let down badly by total W--k--s.

It has always been my opinion that our armed forces give more 

loyalty than they get in return from our glorious leaders.

Fred you are so right. 

Good old limp politicains hiding their backbones again.