He will be eligible for parole in 10 years.. what a shame. What an embarrassment to the United States. He should have been given no possibility of parole.

thing like this do happen in a war enviroment. I do agree the punishment was low but I think the judge reduced the penalty because it was done in a hostile territory were minds do get distorted.
I could never feel sorry for the punished. I worked in hostile territories with the army in peace time. If some one should be taken in concideration it would be me. In times of peace in hostile enviroment .... heres were I make my point. I never tortured, raped, or ate any human being.

no mission to difficult
no sacrifice to great

if you ask a female for permittion everything comes out better,.
it never fails and by the way,,,,that way you will get along with her family very well

Dr. Q: Abeer Qaseem al-Janabi was 14 years old. She was a child. She was gang raped and she and her sister and parents were shot dead.

Your comment is obscenely out of place.

Whoa Nelly! At first glance, my reaction to Dr Q's comment was similar to your own. Then I re-read what he had to say.

It's tempting to interpret his words as an effort to excuse the heinous behavior of the soldiers who raped the poor girl and murdered her and her family. But I don't think he's doing that. It's a tragic truth, but it's a true statement that "things like this do happen in a war environment". And in his next sentence, Q appears to speculate as to why the judge reduced the penalty. You may disagree with Dr Q's assessment, but your suggestion that his speculative thinking is "obscenely out of place" strikes me as unduly harsh.

Is it so wrong to intellectually explore the grey area that separates the obvious extremes of right and wrong? IOW, I think it's worthwhile to remember that this is a forum for exchanging ideas and perspectives, not a soapbox where we all meekly agree that outrage is the only proper response to the subject matter (even when the subject matter reflects actions or behavior that are truly outrageous, as this one seems to be).

I hope I have not offended you. I only wanted to suggest that we try our best to be thoughtful, even when dealing with emotionally-charged issues such as the evil acts discussed in this blog post.

This appears to be, just another example of our culture of, it's ok to torture, as long as they are muslems. Deacon is right , Dr,Q said it was wrong and I think, maybe the judge thought that a lighter than just sentence was approiate because the idea of torture and murder is ok, came from the Commander in Chief. The statement in the blog, "look who trained them", says a lot. I doubt we will ever get any real accounting of how prevalent this behavior is in Iraq, not with a corporate/government controlled press. It's a real SHAME, we've stooped so LOW in the name of GOD and OIL!