Smeared By A Murderer

A great catch by Cole, who notes that a new CNN special should remind us that one of the chief witnesses in the extremely thin and frequently illogical witchhunt against Scott Beauchamp, First Sergeant John Hatleywas convicted of killing Iraqi civilians in cold blood:

1SG Hatley and the other NCOs executed these men in March of 2007. Scott Beauchamp wrote Shock Troops in July 2007. Hatley wrote this letter after July of 2007, insisting that Beauchamp was disturbed because he wrote about making fun of someone in a cafeteria or running over a dog. He wrote that letter attacking Beauchamp, knowing that just a few weeks earlier, he and others had taken it upon themselves to put a gun to the back of several detainee’s heads, pull the trigger, and dump their bodies into a canal.

But they would have you believe that no one in their unit would run over a dog.

Or play with bones.

By the way, Scott Beauchamp is still in uniform serving his country honorably. None of the wingnuts who freaked out about him at the Weekly Standard or elsewhere have gotten around to enlisting.

Call me crazy, but I’m not inclined to put a lot of stock into Hatley’s evalutions of other people’s integrity.