- HYNDMAN, Pa. -- Army Spc.
Jeremy Sivits' guilty plea Wednesday to charges of mistreating Iraqi prisoners
was met with anger and disbelief in his hometown, where friends allege
he was accepting blame that truly rests with his superiors.
-
- Yellow ribbons and a poster reading "Jeremy Sivits,
our hometown hero" were put up near Sivits' home in Hyndman, where
more than 200 residents held a candlelight vigil in support of the reservist
Tuesday night.
-
- Sivits took photos of the abuse and humiliation of inmates
at Abu Ghraib prison. He cooperated with Army prosecutors in Baghdad and
pleaded guilty to lesser charges than those lodged against some of his
colleagues at the prison. Sivits received a maximum one year in prison
and a bad conduct discharge.
-
- "I feel he's been bargained with to plead this way.
I feel he was forced to take the brunt of this," said Jamey Ringler,
Sivits' former baseball coach and best man at his wedding. "He's intelligent
enough to know he's in a no-win situation so he went ahead and agreed with
it."
-
-
- Those who know Sivits demanded that President Bush hold
the soldier's superiors accountable in the prison-abuse scandal.
-
- "If Bush is the Christian man that he claims he
is, then (the soldiers implicated) should either be pardoned or he should
take the whole bunch to task," said the Rev. Mark Blair, pastor of
the United Methodist Church in Hyndman, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
-
- Thomas V. Cunningham, the former mayor of Hyndman, had
hoped Sivits wouldn't accept anything other than an honorable discharge.
"Everybody on the street knows he's the sacrificial lamb," Cunningham
said.
-
- Blair said he had hoped Sivits would get a lesser sentence,
contending the soldier wouldn't have taken part in the abuse "unless
he was told."
-
- "He was never a leader. He was a follower,"
Blair said.
-
- Sivits' parents had no comment Wednesday as they left
the house to eat breakfast at a diner. But Sivits' father, Daniel, made
a brief statement Tuesday night.
-
- "I want to make explicitly clear, Jeremy, no matter
what, is still my son. We still love him," the father said. "I
am a veteran of the Vietnam War and I want to say one thing - Jeremy is
always a vet in my heart and in my mind."
-
- In New Jersey, the father of accused Sgt. Javal S. Davis
said his son wants to proceed with a court-martial to clear his name. At
a hearing in Baghdad, Davis deferred a plea on abuse charges and a new
hearing was scheduled next month.
-
- "Shawn is innocent," Jonathan Davis said Wednesday,
using his son's middle name. "The whole thing is kind of hard to swallow.
It's like, 'You pull me to duty, you make me fight and do all this, and
then you say I'm wrong and that I'm an animal when I'm following what you
ordered me to do.'"
-
- Paul Bergrin, Davis' civilian attorney, said Wednesday
he will seek to have the case dismissed, citing "improper command
influence" that extended to President Bush.
-
- Bergrin said military investigators were under such pressure
to assign blame in the case that they could not fairly evaluate Davis'
conduct.
-
- The two soldiers are members of the Army Reserve's 372nd
Military Police Company, based in Cumberland, Md.
-
- - Associated Press writer Wayne Parry in Newark, N.J.,
contributed to this report.
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- http://www.xposed.com/headline_news/55_ds_457288.aspx
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