On first glance, it’s hard to see who would support pardons for these men.

Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher was reported to his commanders by seven of the Navy SEALs who served under him in Iraq, where they witnessed him “[s]tabbing a defenseless teenage captive to death. Picking off a school-age girl and an old man from a sniper’s roost. Indiscriminately spraying neighborhoods with rockets and machine-gun fire.” A search of Gallagher’s cell phone found exactly what his SEALs said it would: grisly photos of Gallagher posing with the prone body of a 15-year-old suspected ISIS fighter that Gallagher had stabbed to death, after the boy had been captured and given medical aid. Gallagher’s superiors warned those reporting him that they would be endangering their careers, but they pressed on. His court-martial is set to begin on May 28.



Nicholas Slatten, a former Blackwater security contractor, was convicted of murder—twice—for his leading role in the private security company’s 2007 fatal shooting of 10 women, two children, and two men in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. The massacre, which injured more than a dozen other bystanders, endangered U.S. efforts to build trust with the nascent Iraqi government, and highlighted private security contractors’ impunity and lack of accountability in U.S. war zones.



Matthew Golsteyn, a decorated Green Beret, narrowly avoided being charged when he admitted in a 2011 CIA job interview that he’d killed a captured man in Afghanistan whom he suspected of being a Taliban bombmaker. Five years later, Golsteyn got on Fox News and told Bret Baier that he had shot the man. The Army reopened an investigation, recalled Golsteyn to active duty, and charged Golsteyn with premeditated murder.



In 2012, a video went viral on YouTube showing a group of Marines gleefully urinating on the corpses of suspected enemy fighters in Afghanistan. “Have a great day, buddy,” one Marine could be heard saying as the desecration went on. The video inflamed international opinion against the United States. Eight Marines were ultimately reprimanded; three pleaded guilty in a special court-martial and were demoted.

