Lynddie England’s plea agreement has been tossed by the military judge because he has concerns about whether she can be guilty if she didn’t know what she was doing was wrong or if she was following orders.

I thought that Nuremburg established following orders was not a defense in a war crimes trial.

Now we are making a lack of a moral sense a defense?

Germany, 1947:

Defendent: When I organized the mass slaying of the Polish peasantry, I was just following orders.

Judge: That is not an acceptable defense.

Defendent: When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they changed the curriculum to teach us that the Slavs were subhuman who were squatting on our lebensraum. So, indoctrinated throughout my high school career, I did not believing that murdering Poles was wrong.

Judge: Well, okay then. You are free to go.

Regular readers know that your Smallholder, unlike the Minister of Propaganda, is not a man given to profanity, but:

Judge Pohl, I call bullshit.

UPDATE FROM YOUR MAXIMUM LEADER: Your Maximum Leader may be misreading this statement from the Smallholder, but he thinks that his good friend’s reading of yesterday’s events is incorrect. It is your Maximum Leader’s understanding that Pvt. England’s plea agreement was tossed by the Judge because in her statement to the court Pvt. England made comments inconsistent with an acknowledgement of guilt. Not because the Judge thought she might not be found guilty in a trial if she “believed” she was not guilty. England stated that she believed that the photos were for a legitimate purpose (training?) and thus she didn’t believe her actions were wrong. You cannot plead guilty to a charge, then say you weren’t really guilty when addressing the court. So as a consequence, the Judge threw out the plea agreement and is moving to an Article 32. Which your Maximum Leader understands to be the equivilent of a grand jury proceeding to indict England and move her towards a full blown trial. A trial which the plea deal was to avoid.

UPDATE: Thanks, Mike. You are right. Please disregard this post. Hopefully ol’ Lynndie is still in for some hefty jail time.