Well, I'm glad they didn't try him for murder. I'm not exactly happy with the way this has gone down, though. You can take out Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, and starve her to death, but you can't put a very badly injured enemy, that your medic says will not survive, out of his misery. It just doesn't seem right.

When I was young, I used to read a lot. I read stories about severely injured men and women who were awake and aware of things going on around them, but because of their injuries couldn't speak or communicate to let those around them know that they were alive and feeling as they were moved to rooms for extermination (against their will). I read books about people who were arrested and had to defend themselves against parking tickets because otherwise, they were criminals and it was legal to put criminals guilty of the smallest crimes to death in order to harvest their organs for richer upstanding citizens of this country (they were criminals and thus, unsympathetic people). I read stories of folks who chose to kill their pets, parents, friends, or even themselves, who, although they may or may not have wanted to live, had plenty of family around who did want them to live (and whose lives were much the worse after their death).

All these stories I read when I was young were science fiction (Harlan Ellison has made a career out of these themes -- he called them "Dangerous Visions").

No More.

Subsunk

After re reading this, I can see where someone might feel that I disagree with what CPT Maynulet did to Karim Hassan. I would like to correct that impression. My problem is with the way Mrs. Shiavo was treated.

Everything I have read about CPT Maynulet indicates he is a dedicated and honorable officer. My heartache with this process has been how he (and other soldiers) have been treated by the Army. If you read the news articles on this subject, you find that the CPT ordered the medic to render first aid. The medic recognized that the man would not survive and said so. He could not adequately care for the man, and said so. The prosecutor says the CPT was a trained combat lifesaver and should have known better.

On this I MUST disagree. No lawyer has the right to assume that the medic's opinion, and the CPTs opinion are without merit. I have tremendous heartache with the Army insisting that extraordinary measures must be taken on a battlefield to prolong the suffering of a man who had zero chance of survival. In Iraq, no person who has lost half his brain and is undergoing seizures can be expected to survive the hospital, much less the trip to it.

I hope the Army will do the right thing and give the absolute minimum punishment to CPT Maynulet in this case, especially since the wounded man was definitely an enemy combatant who had previously tried to kill American soldiers on his own.

Subsunk