James Bond has a double O number which permits him to kill. This is supposed to be a great honor and glorifies killing of other humans. So, are we to understand that killing is fun, especially if the other guy is a foreigner and deemed to be bad? What happens to the killer? Does he dismiss it as trivial, something like swatting a pesky fly, and try to bed the hot babe while sipping a shaken martini? Apparently not. Sgt Dwight L Smith, who is 25 years old, was in Iraq where his Humvee was thrown in the air in an explosion. He was apparently unhurt. nytimes.com, 11 November. In March 2011, in Afghanistan a mortar shell landed near him and shattered a ceramic plate in his body armor. He suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with episodes of rage and once threatened to kill his wife. She left him for a while and he phoned his father to tell him," I just get mad. I can't help myself." During Christmas 2011 he was visiting his family in Delaware when one morning while driving his bright red Hummer he ran down 65 year old Marsha Lee who was out walking her dog. He got out, threw the injured woman in the back seat of the car and drove off in front of several witnesses. Mrs Lee's body was found half a mile away in a wooded area. Her head had been bashed in and she had been raped. Sgt Smith was arrested that evening while driving around in his Hummer, the front of which was spattered with blood. He is in prison awaiting trial. In a heartbreaking letter he writes to his father," I am going to be honest with you dad. I have killed a lot of men and children. Some that didn't even do anything for me to kill them. Also some that begged for mercy. I have problem. I think I got addicted to killing people. I could kill someone go to sleep wake up and forget it that ever happened. It got normal for me to be that way. I never wanted to be this way. I just took job my way too serious. I took things to the extreme. Anyone can tell that I changed. It is like being a completely different person." It is not hard to imagine a man dying of heartbreak after getting such a letter from his boy. When his son went to war he would have been worried sick about his safety and what joy he would have felt when his son came back alive. Only, this was not the boy he had seen off but someone who resembled his son on the outside but had changed to a grotesque killer on the inside. The US army will never admit that killing the enemy changes normal men into monsters because they would have to pay billions in damages. Instead this man will be tried as a common murderer and may even be sentenced to death. Even if sentenced to life in prison a 25 year old man has been destroyed after serving his country. Staff Sgt Robert Bales is presently on trial charged with the murder of 16 Afghan civilians on 11 March, 2012. The prosecutor is asking for the death sentence. A sly cop out for the government. Not that much honor in the army, is there?
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