Was soldier jailed to appease Iraqi ‘allies’?

By Diana West

Recently, I opened an e-mail and read: "I am Sgt. Evan Vela's father. I do no not know if you have followed my son's case but some people have drawn similarities between the Luttrell situation and Evan's."

The father was referring to Marcus Luttrell, whose best-seller "Lone Survivor" tells of four Navy SEALS, Luttrell among them, whose secret mission in Afghanistan was compromised when two Afghan goatherds discovered them hiding deep in Taliban territory. I've written before about the perverse but likely prospect of legal prosecution back home that weighed heavily on the Americans' decision not to save their own lives and their mission by killing the two unarmed Afghans — a "crime" in PC la-la-land, even when "unarmed" still means deadly. After releasing the Afghans, the SEALS were overwhelmed by the Taliban, and in the ensuing carnage, not only were three of the four Americans killed, but so were 16 more U.S. special forces, shot down in their helicopter by the Taliban during a rescue attempt. In his book, Luttrell has immortalized the battle, which I think of as Death by Rules of Engagement.

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