Pardoning the unpardonable
Dear Editor:
Ms. Gardner of the local American Legion wrote last week that Memorial Day is a time to remember the soldiers who have died while serving our country honorably. In grotesque contrast, President Trump proposed to dishonor their memory as his celebration of Memorial Day.
Trump recently announced that he was considering pardoning soldiers and civilians who have committed brutal, murderous war crimes. He has already pardoned Matthew Behenna, who had been convicted of stripping naked a prisoner he was responsible for guarding and then shooting him in cold blood.
One of the murderers reportedly on Trump’s current short list for a pardon is Nicholas Slatten. He wasn’t a soldier. He is a former Blackwater security contractor. Slatten was convicted of murder for his leading role in the private security company’s 2007 fatal shooting of 10 women, two children, and two men in Baghdad.
Navy Seal Edward Gallagher is also on the reported short list. He is charged with multiple counts of murder, obstruction of justice, and bringing “discredit upon the armed forces.” In one of those incidents, Gallagher is alleged to have used his sniper rifle to kill an elderly Iraqi man and a school-aged girl, both unarmed and posing no threat to anyone. He is also charged with stabbing a military prisoner to death and then proudly posing with the corpse.
The United States supported the war crimes trials in Nuremberg when the defendants were Germans. Now the president is sending a message to the world that war crimes will not be punished when Americans commit them.
I haven’t seen the Republican party protesting the freeing of these convicted or alleged murderers. Instead of making our country “great,” this president would turn the United States into an outlaw country.
Randy Brook, Twisp
More about sagebrush
Dear Editor:
In regard to the article “Sagebrush under siege” (May 22), there are some issues that need to be clarified. While cheatgrass reduces the diversity and abundance of many plant species that comprise the shrub-steppe plant ecosystem, and its value to ranchers as range-land, cattle do not consume sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata or tripartita). Cattle’s avoidance of sagebrush and their selection of preferred species, has created an overabundance of sagebrush, a reduction of beneficial browse, greatly reduced the value of shrub-steppe rangeland to ranchers and increased the intensity of wildfire.
Along many mile of highways in the arid West it is apparent there is a much greater diversity of native plants between the pavement and the roadside fencing while on the other side of the fence there is often almost nothing except sagebrush. This does not invalidate the problems created by cheatgrass and many other non-native, invasive species of plants from around the world.
Gary Ott, Beaver Creek/Twisp
Pox Americana
Dear Editor:
In case you missed it, last month former president Jimmy Carter observed that “the United States is the most warlike country in the history of the world.” We are currently dropping bombs on seven different countries, all of them very impoverished societies. Are you proud to be an American?
I’m not.
Dana Visalli, Twisp
