Right-wing media defends Navy SEAL accused of killing Iraqi civilians, posing with corpses

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https://thinkprogress.org/conservative-media-defends-navy-seal-edward-eddie-gallagher-accused-war-crimes-51a509b882b7/


Right-wing media defends Navy SEAL accused of killing Iraqi civilians, posing with corpses
Edward Gallagher allegedly shot at unarmed civilians while deployed, but may be pardoned by Trump this week.
Luke Barnes
May 20, 2019, 4:55 pm

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In the immediate aftermath of Gallagher’s arrest last September, Fox News jumped to his defense. Host Sean Hannity has frequently lauded Gallagher on both his radio and TV shows, describing the SEAL in heroic terms, while Gallagher’s family has also repeatedly gone on Fox News to defend his actions. In February, Gallagher’s brother Sean explicitly called for Trump’s help in a Fox News Op-Ed.

On Sunday, after news of Gallagher’s potential pardon broke, Fox & Friends weekend host Pete Hegseth quickly leapt to Gallagher’s aid, describing him as a “war fighter” making “tough calls.”

“These are men who went into the most dangerous place on earth with a job to defend and made tough calls on a moment’s notice,” Hegseth said. “To the people in middle America, who respect the troops and the tough calls they make, they’re going to love this. These are the good guys. These are the war fighters.”

Hegseth neglected to mention some of the “tough calls” Gallagher allegedly made that led to his detention. According to the official charge sheet, these include shooting a teenage girl and unarmed old man from a snipers nest, indiscriminately firing a heavy machine gun into a residential neighborhood, and repeatedly stabbing a teenage ISIS fighter who was wounded and dying. Gallagher is also accused of sharing pictures he took with a deceased ISIS fighter he had killed, along with the phrase, “I got him with my hunting knife.”

Members of SEAL Team Seven, Gallagher’s unit, repeatedly voiced their concerns about him to their commanding officers, but were allegedly ignored.

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Gallagher is one of several military members whom Trump is considering for pardons. According to the Times, the others “are believed to include … a former Blackwater security contractor recently found guilty in the deadly 2007 shooting of dozens of unarmed Iraqis,” “… Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, the Army Green Beret accused of killing an unarmed Afghan in 2010,” and a group of Marine Corps snipers accused of “urinating on the corpses of dead Taliban fighters.”