40-year-old staff sergeant Robert Bales, who shot and killed 16 Afghan civilians, was sentenced to life in prison on Friday with no chance of parole, the Associated Press reported on Friday. Bales had pleaded guilty in June in a deal to avoid the death penalty, and the verdict was announced at Joint Base Lewis-McChord south of Seattle.
"In just a few short hours, Sgt. Bales wiped out generations," Lt. Col. Jay Morse told the jury in his closing argument. "Sgt. Bales dares to ask you for mercy when he has shown none." The prosecutors depicted Bales as a "man of no moral compass." Bales' defense team hoped for a lighter sentence, pointing to his years of good military service and that he may have snapped after four combat deployments. Emma Scanlan read from a letter sent by another soldier: "The darkness that had been tugging at him for the last 10 years swallowed him whole."
The prosecution also hinted that Bales knew all along the damage he had done after returning to the nearby villages in Afghanistan, shooting 22 people, 17 of whom were women and children. He later burned the bodies.
"My count is 20," Bales told another soldier upon returning to the base.
A surveillance video of Bales returning to the base showed him marching with ""the methodical, confident gait of a man who's accomplished his mission," according to LT. Col. Morse.
For his part, Bales expressed great remorse for his actions one day before learning of his sentencing: "I'm truly, truly sorry to those people whose families got taken away," he said in a mostly steady voice during questions from one of his lawyers. "I can't comprehend their loss. I think about it every time I look at my kids," he said. Bales described his actions as "act of cowardice."
His actions hearken back to the Thanh Phong raid carried out during the Vietnam War. In February, 1969, Lt. Bob Kerrey led a Swift Boat raid on the isolated peasant village of Thanh Phong, Vietnam, which was considered part of a free-fire zone by the U.S. military. Kerrey's SEAL team encountered a peasant house, before realizing they were shot at. The ones doing the firing were women and children.
"I was expecting to find Vietcong soldiers with weapons, dead. Instead I found women and children," Kerrey said nearly 30 years later. "You can never, can never get away from it. It darkens your day. I thought dying for your country was the worst thing that could happen to you, and I don't think it is. I think killing for your country can be a lot worse."
