Camp Pendelton 8 to Be Charged With Murder, Civil Liberties For Terrorists But Not For Troops

Crossposted from Stop the ACLU:

Via FOX

The Marine Corps on Wednesday planned to charge seven Marines and one sailor with murder in connection with the April death of an Iraqi civilian, a defense official said.

At Camp Pendleton, Calif., where the eight accused service members have been held in a military brig since late May, officials announced that a news conference would be held later Wednesday concerning the alleged killing of the Iraqi in the village of Hamdania. The announcement did not mention murder or other charges.

The official who disclosed the Marine plans asked not to be identified publicly because the official announcement was still pending.

The allegation is that Marines pulled an unarmed Iraqi man from his home on April 26 and shot him to death without provocation. Seven Marines and one Navy corpsman from the Pendleton-based 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment were taken out of Iraq and put in the brig pending the filing of any charges against them.

Jane Siegel, an attorney representing one of the accused Marines, Pfc. John Jodka, 20, said she had not yet been given a copy of the charges.”It’s just amazing and a little bit horrifying that they have decided to play this to the media before they have talked to counsel,”she said.

Also see NY Times, hat tip Michelle Malkin.

California Conservative points us to this excerpt from Front Page Magazine to put things in perspective.

Civil Liberties for Terrorists But Not for American Troops

In recent years the ranks of alleged victims championed by civil libertarians on the political Left have swollen to include everyone from the terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay, to anti-American radicals, to environmentalist ultras and illegal immigrants. But there’s at least one group ineligible for victim status under the legal Left’s guidelines: American troops.

This seems to be the lesson of the “Camp Pendleton Eight.” A group of seven Marines and one Navy corpsman, they are currently being held–reportedly under excessively harsh conditions–at the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base in southern California on suspicion of kidnapping and killing an innocent Iraqi man in the town of Hamdania, west of Baghdad, on April 26. Charges have not yet been filed, but investigators in the case have reportedly used a variety of coercive methods–including threatening the soldiers with the death penalty, interrogating them for upward of eight hours without water or toilet breaks, and keeping them shackled at the hands, waist and ankles–that, one might assume, would stir furor among those groups, such as the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Lawyers Guild, who relentlessly profess themselves guardians of American civil liberties and constitutional standards. Instead, as inquiries to these organizations by FrontPageMag.com revealed, these groups have responded to the soldiers’ plight with collective indifference.

As far as the ACLU seems to be concerned, the case does not exist. This is not because the ACLU is reluctant to take a stand on the war on terror. In the past few years, the organization has taken several stands. When not cheerleading for illegal immigration under the guise of promoting “civil liberties,” the ACLU has sided with convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami al-Arian. In court briefs, the ACLU even attempted to undermine the government’s case against al-Arian by declaring inadmissible evidence collected in an FBI investigation, on the dubious grounds that the search warrants used by investigators were too broad. Taking a different tack, Howard Simon, the executive director of the Florida ACLU, cited unconfirmed allegations that al-Arian was allowed to change his underwear only once a week and his prison jumpsuit every two weeks and portrayed al-Arian as the victim of “the disgusting raw exercise of power by John Ashcroft.” (Prison officials dismissed the claims.)

No such sympathy seems forthcoming for the troops. Neither Simon nor his ACLU colleagues have had anything to say about the fact that U.S. soldiers, who, as noted, have not yet been charged with a crime, are kept in shackles and were, until recently, held under maximum pretrial confinement. Apathy to prison conditions cannot explain the ACLU’s silence. This May, the organization filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of women prisoners in Wisconsin, charging that the state’s prison system provides “far inferior mental health treatment” to women as opposed to men. To date, however, the ACLU has issued not a single statement on the far more prominent case of the Camp Pendleton Eight.

Now that they have been charged, who thinks the ACLU will be defending them? Maybe if they convert to Islam, and become conscientious objectors the ACLU might get interested. Tell me again why they are called “American” Civil Liberties Union.