I am not a criminal

A military jury on Monday ordered a reprimand but no jail time for an Army interrogator convicted of killing an Iraqi general by stuffing him headfirst into a sleeping bag and sitting on his chest.

Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. also was ordered to forfeit $6,000 salary and was largely restricted to his barracks and workplace for 60 days. This certainly sends a message out to any potential insurgents, or indeed previously non-political foreign-types about the nature of justice and fair-play, and exactly how much their life is worth.

After hearing the sentence reached by the jury of six Army officers, Welshofer hugged his wife. Soldiers in the gallery broke into applause.

Prosecutors said Welshofer put a sleeping bag over the head of Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, sat on his chest and used his hand to cover the general's mouth while questioning him at a detention camp in Iraq in 2003. Prosecutors said the general suffocated.

Welshofer was obviously at the vanguard of a whole new interrorgation technique whereby you cover someone's mouth and then angrily ask them questions. I think he used to be my dentist.

Spinner said he was gratified by Monday's verdict but said his client should never have been charged. "When you send our men and women over there to fight, and to put their lives on the line, you've got to back them up, you've got to give them clear rules, and you've got to give them enough room to make mistakes without treating them like criminals," he said.

His wife, Barbara she said she was proud of him for contesting the case. "I love him more for fighting this," she said, tears welling up in her eyes. "He's always said that you need to do the right thing, and sometimes the right thing is the hardest thing to do."

Perhaps it's sometimes so hard to the right thing that it takes the skin off your knuckles, and you need help from a colleague with a rubber hose.