Media Gets It Wrong Again: SGT Lawrence Hutchins Did Not Kill An Iraqi

By now it’s fairly well-known news that the final sentence for Marine SGT Lawrence Hutchins III is in. He received 11 years–four less than the original sentence of 15. Over the last 24 hours, I’ve watched the same tired AP story from Thomas Watkins get regurgitated all over the internet by “news” organizations too lazy to do the objective research required of their profession. “Marine who killed Iraqi gets sentence cut, rank reduction” reads one misleading headline. One bloviating idiot (who happens to be chief editor of the Atlantic Free Press) had the nerve to call his article “Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America’s New Moral Universe.” Chris Floyd complains at the idea that Hutchins’ sentence be reduced at all, and makes it blindingly obvious that he has no idea what the facts of the case even are.

“When even the scapegoats escape justice,” pontificates Floyd, “what possible hope can there be that the perpetrators and abettors of the Nazi-like war crime in Iraq will ever pay the price — or even suffer the slightest trouble — for their monstrous outrage?”

Allow me to use this article to educate both Mr. Floyd and Mr. Watkins–the first of whom is just clueless. Mr. Watkins, however, is something far worse: informed and uncaring.

You see, Mr. Watkins has had many, many documents made available to him. He has been given enough information about this case to make it perfectly clear that the government’s case is fraudulent. He of all people knows full well that Sgt Hutchins was never purported to be the shooter in this case that killed the unidentified man the government “believes” is Mohammed Awad. Hutchins performed a dead check. The Marines who actually shot the insurgent (and yes, he was an insurgent, Mr. Watkins, do your research–I know you have the documents) were Shumate, Thomas, Magincalda, and Jodka. Not Sgt Lawrence Hutchins, who was on the roof until after the shooting occurred.

Watkins, like many of the other reporters consistently writing on this case (and who will be named soon in another story exposing their willful incompetence and dangerous disregard for ethics and truth), ignored the evidence that the government prosecuted Marines for the sake of political expediency. He ignored the hard-copy proof that the commanders of Hutchins’ unit demanded, taught, and engaged in tactics that they now claim never happened. He dismisses what even Slate knows: that military leadership is literally training men to do a job and then prosecuting and jailing them for doing it exactly as they were trained.

Do I sound frustrated? It’s because I am. It’s bad enough to see an innocent Marine shackled, imprisoned, and denied all rights of due process, who sat in the brig at Camp Pendleton for two years before his case was finally trumped up enough to ram past a judge and convening authority looking the other way. It is anathema to see the media and their leftist lapdogs spew their twisted opinions all over the internet disguised as “news.” This isn’t news. It’s typical anti-war bias, evidenced by Floyd’s coy and repeated mention of the boring old Nazi comparison yet again. And yet again, I will say the boring old answer that it’s not the same thing.

Maybe Watkins and Floyd should go cover celebrities. At least the fruits in Hollywood have a chance of being guilty of something.

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