I suppose the question is do they always get it right (or wrong). There were plenty of psychiatrists who found that Peter Sutcliffe was 'mad' and plenty who found the opposite.

I'm not playing the "Yeah but, what if....?" game. I'd rather just concentrate on the facts of this one if that's okay?

It's OK, but it's obviously convenient from your standpoint not to confront the hypothetical and address it.

It's convenient from yours to try and introduce it.

However, hypothesising on things like this is often pointless.

Well I'm hardly the only one to do so, and they are highly pertinent points, being the converse of the situation you are defending.

But I don't particularly subscribe to the idea that if I have an opinion on one point of view, it must follow that I thus automatically have the same opinion about a hypothetical inverse of that.

I try to take each at its own merit, otherwise you just get dragged into pointless slanging matches and point scoring over things that aren't even real, but just some hypothesis that somebody has constructed to try and win an argument. It is best to try and avoid them and just focus on the case in hand.

Again you're not comprehending the difference between the 2 situations.

and that's fine. I understand where you are coming from, but nonetheless, still feel they are highly pertinent comparisons, not set up by the way, for points scoring.

Anyway, I'm going to leave it there. I think we've all made some good points in a passionate and excellent debate, held in a good spirit. Not much more to be said without repeating ourselves. Thanks, and no doubt we will re-convene when the appeal verdict is delivered.

That's not to say others won't further contribute now, but I'll leave it there until the verdict.

how was this recorded anyway? do they have to record everything they say...im sure there are loads of these incidents

One of his comrades had a helmet mounted camera that was recording at the time, I'm sure if they'd have known what they captured they'd have switched it off or deleted the footage.


No doubt there are.

Perhaps he could argue dimished responsibility from the mental strains of murdering people.

It's rare. That's why it's such a big thing. Contrary to the commonly held view of the DS snowflakes people don't join up to commit murder, legalised or otherwise.

But we have no way of knowing how rare it is, this was such a big thing because it was caught on camera and the footage ended up in the hands of the police. Whether it would ever have seen the light of day if the military police had discovered it is another question of course.

He was reported by his mates, who were disgusted. That's how it is, that's why it's rare. If you yourself are so inclined, your mates may well not be, so you get caught. Soldiers are humans, they have sympathy for wounded enemy soldiers. They know what the conventions of war say, and adhere to it. Apart from the odd one gone rogue. Much like the rest of life. There are future murderers in society now, but doubtless you aren't one of them. So cut the guys some slack here, they are just like you. Not murderers.

No, the footage was found by civilian police according to this report while investigating an unrelated matter


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24870699

As for cutting a murderer some slack.

So why did they look at his laptop, eh? How did they have possession? Not just chance. When did the cops look at your laptop? They've never looked at mine. And I'm not talking about slack for Blackman, but for the other guys, all of them, who you've accused of murders unknown. That includes me, you should know. I've done the job too. Never shot anyone in cold blood though, nor did anyone I saw.

I thought I'd read that they'd seized everyone's laptops because there was a suspicion that someone in the regiment had child porn or something? And it was pure chance that they discovered the murder footage?

Here goes, from an interview with Blackman's wife


http://www.somersetcountygazette.co....lefield_enemy/

Happy now?


That is good to know and I'm sure as a good upstanding citizen you'd have reported them if they had

War is war. After some of the things he has witnessed I wouldn't be surprised if he snapped, and hand on heart here. I honestly do not know how I would react myself if a wounded enemy fighter was at my feet, after watching him kill my friends.

Where does it say that the Blackman had previously witnessed the victim kill Blackman's friends?

I was talking generally, about people he would have lost while at war from within his unit. I'm sure you know that however and are just either baiting for being argumentative for the sake of it.

I think I would feel the same as you but you (as far as I know) and I are not professional soldiers and he was

No I wasn't baiting. I genuinely thought there might have been part of the story I wasn't aware of?

If he LITERALLY HAD just witnessed the same Afghan kill one of his friends then I could kind of understand it. It would still be wrong under the Geneva convention I guess, but as a human being I could empathise with him.

That's not what happened though so people need to stop making stuff up to justify what was a cold-blooded execution by a man who was fully aware of what he was doing.

To repeat the point that's been made before, if it was the other way round - i.e. an Afghan troop executing an unarmed, wounded British soldier - would you honestly be making the same excuses about war being war and us not understanding what its like to be an Afghan fighter in that situation?

Maybe I'm wrong, but I sense that a lot of the support for Sgt Blackman such as we've seen in the Daily Mail and on here is purely down to blind patriotism and if it was the other way round many peoples reaction's would be completely the opposite.

What do you expect? ISIS, Al Qaida and many other islamic terror groups are our enemies. They have declared war on us. Are you not patriotic? Do you not support our soldiers? Why should you care what happens to our sworn enemies at war who would kill our soldiers and us given the chance? It's not a sport where rules have to be obeyed for a fair fight. It's war and war is not pretty. Like I already said unless you've been in the boots of a soldier you don't know what you might do. I support our troops without question and I would love to see the likes of ISIS and Al Qaida wiped off the face of the earth. I say kill as many as we can.

The reason ISIS and Al Qaeda are rightly regarded as sub human scum is because they're the kind that will kill indiscriminately and in cold blood. We're better than that.