California representative Duncan Hunter has been very vocal in his defense of Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL accused of stabbing an injured captive to death in Iraq. In a recent interview on a Barstool Sports podcast, Hunter said, "I frankly don’t care if he was killed. I just don’t care. And that’s my personal point of view. And as a congressman, that’s my prerogative to help a guy out like that. If—even if everything that the prosecutors say is true in this case, then, you know, Eddie Gallagher should still be given a break, I think."
Hunter's making an unusual and pretty extreme argument for why Gallagher shouldn't be held responsible for the war crimes charges he's facing—by claiming it's a non-issue because he's done the same. "I was an artillery officer," he said. "And we fired hundreds of rounds into Fallujah, killed probably hundreds of civilians, if not scores, if not hundreds of civilians. Probably killed women and children, if there were any left in the city when we invaded. So do I get judged, too?" Probably yes.
According to CNN, Gallagher also reportedly "shot at noncombatants, posed for a photo and performed his re-enlistment ceremony next to a corpse." The biggest difference between what the two men did, Hunter seems to be arguing, is a technical one: Hunter's artillery unit was following orders while Gallagher wasn't.
Hunter isn't the only high-profile conservative veteran arguing that what Gallagher did isn't remarkable enough to hold him accountable for it. Fox News contributor and veteran Pete Hegseth has been defending Gallagher in private phone calls to Donald Trump, according to the Daily Beast. (Trump reportedly so trusts Hegseth that he nearly appointed him head of Veterans Affairs.) In a Fox & Friends Weekend segment with Hunter, Hegseth said, "If he committed premeditated murder, then Duncan did as well, then I did as well. What do you think you do in war?"
Gallagher is one of several accused U.S. war criminals that Donald Trump is considering giving presidential pardons, along with a Blackwater mercenary who reportedly opened fire on a crowd of Iraqi civilians and Army Ranger Michael Behenna who reportedly murdered a prisoner he was tasked with transporting. The American Civil Liberties Union has called the pardons "an endorsement of murder."
by Luke Darby, GQ | Read more:
Hunter's making an unusual and pretty extreme argument for why Gallagher shouldn't be held responsible for the war crimes charges he's facing—by claiming it's a non-issue because he's done the same. "I was an artillery officer," he said. "And we fired hundreds of rounds into Fallujah, killed probably hundreds of civilians, if not scores, if not hundreds of civilians. Probably killed women and children, if there were any left in the city when we invaded. So do I get judged, too?" Probably yes.According to CNN, Gallagher also reportedly "shot at noncombatants, posed for a photo and performed his re-enlistment ceremony next to a corpse." The biggest difference between what the two men did, Hunter seems to be arguing, is a technical one: Hunter's artillery unit was following orders while Gallagher wasn't.
Hunter isn't the only high-profile conservative veteran arguing that what Gallagher did isn't remarkable enough to hold him accountable for it. Fox News contributor and veteran Pete Hegseth has been defending Gallagher in private phone calls to Donald Trump, according to the Daily Beast. (Trump reportedly so trusts Hegseth that he nearly appointed him head of Veterans Affairs.) In a Fox & Friends Weekend segment with Hunter, Hegseth said, "If he committed premeditated murder, then Duncan did as well, then I did as well. What do you think you do in war?"
Gallagher is one of several accused U.S. war criminals that Donald Trump is considering giving presidential pardons, along with a Blackwater mercenary who reportedly opened fire on a crowd of Iraqi civilians and Army Ranger Michael Behenna who reportedly murdered a prisoner he was tasked with transporting. The American Civil Liberties Union has called the pardons "an endorsement of murder."
by Luke Darby, GQ | Read more:
Image: Bill Clark
[ed. Yeah, this guy. What a piece of work. The only conclusion I can come to is it has to be some long-term US strategy to inflame as many Middle-Eastern jihadists as possible to justify our massive military-industrial spending (which at last count, totalled $750 billion/yr. - and that's just for "Defense", not counting Homeland Security, NSA, ICE, CIA, and all the "foreign aid" we bestow on other countries).
