…will be on the cover of this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine:
“Ask them, ‘Do they understand why we shot this dude?’ ” the lieutenant told his interpreter. During their last patrol to Qualaday, soldiers in the platoon had attacked Mullah Allah Dad with rifles and a fragmentation grenade that blew off the lower halves of his legs and badly disfigured his face. The soldiers claimed that Allah Dad was trying to throw a grenade at them. Two days after the killing, however, a company commander attended a council during which the district leader announced that people believed the incident had been staged and that the Americans had planted the grenade in order to justify a murder.
It’s a deeper look into what went wrong inside the Fifth Stryker Brigade out of Fort Lewis, Wash., which ended in a confessional court martial last month. Read it here (registration may be required).
