Still outrageous that he's even spent one day inside, his superiors almost to a man have all covered their own useless backs...
If anyone hasn't seen the Panorama documentary 'Marine A; The Inside Story' which was aired a couple of weeks ago, it's well worth a watch. It gives a good insight into a soldiers life on the front-line in Afghanistan and the mitigating circumstances surrounding the incident. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08hwmkg
His act was wrong at law but the mitigating factors were huge. I don't think he should have spent any time in jail. On the same subject, but at the sharp end of the horrendous scale, was My Lai in March 1968, when a US battalion, Charlie Company, carried out a massacre of Vietnamese villagers killing up to 500. The men went over there with an aggressive American/Mexican C.O. who ordered his men to put an Ace of Spades on the body of each Viet Cong they killed to put fear into the enemy. In fact, Charlie were being picked off steadily by IED's, army land mines and snipers. They barely saw the enemy. It had a massive effect on their psychological states. When they were helicopter-dropped into My Lai because VC were believed to be present, they simply killed everyone they saw. The number 2 in command was court martialled (the CO escaped, denying giving orders) and sentenced to life for premeditated murder. There was a massive public outcry in the US against the sentence, and Nixon effectively pardoned him after 3 1/2 years house arrest. No one else was ever prosecuted for any of the deaths.
Should they get hold of a wounded British soldier do they normally nurse them back to full health and send them home
They didn't just kill them, after torturing them, they hung their body parts on trees for their comrades to find. No one should ever judge what this Marine did unless they've been in his position.
The point I was trying to make is we can't complain when they kill our soldiers when captured when we kill theirs, no matter how it's done.