Letters
Robin
My big brother, Robin, passed away on December 19, aged 80. After a fall at home he was taken into hospital, where he caught Coronavirus and died of it three weeks later.
Robin was always six years older than me, and five years older than our brother, Ken. I count myself lucky to have been the youngest, as parents always seem to be stressed about the eldest - and Robin was the eldest son of an eldest son, so I think he got a double dose of parent pressure - and, despite living a long life, I believe he never fully recovered. Right into old age he never stopped complaining about his parents.
Trump’s pardon of Blackwater ‘Four’ highlights deep divisions over Iraq War Published December 24, 2020
Share on Facebook
Print article WASHINGTON - As much as any incident during America’s long war in Iraq, the story of the Blackwater Four - or the Biden Four, depending on one’s perspective - illustrates the different ways in which the conflict came to be seen. To many, the events of Sept. 16, 2007, in Baghdad’s Nisour Square were a microcosm of a mistaken war, an ill-advised invasion that began when a U.S. administration misled its own public; and a lesson on the extent to which Americans, dropped with guns and impunity into an unfamiliar culture in a danger zone, could lose their moral compass.
Editorial: Trump s self-serving Christmas pardons are his clearest concession yet
Chronicle Editorial Board
FacebookTwitterEmail
Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos after his sentencing in Washington in 2018. President Trump pardoned him and other Mueller targets this week.Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images
To paraphrase our first Republican president, our current one has practiced the pardon power with malice toward most and charity for few. His yuletide sack of pardons and commutations might leave the impression of a jailbreak of unprecedented proportions, but President Trump has in fact offered clemency with historic stinginess. Until this week, he had done so less frequently than any chief executive of this century or the last.
There May Be More Military Pardons to Come from Trump, Advocates Say
In this Aug. 23, 2011 Defense Video & Imagery Distribution System photo, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, left, participates in an exercise at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif. (AP Photo/DVIDS, Spc. Ryan Hallock)
23 Dec 2020
President Donald Trump s controversial pardons of former Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and the so-called Blackwater Four were in line with the clemency he has previously afforded to combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to military law experts both for and against his actions.
The pardons for Hunter, a Marine veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the four contractors for the former Blackwater Worldwide security firm were among a total of 15 pardons and five commutations announced by the White House on Tuesday night.