Agreed, the rules are there. There has been punishment, six months of confinement for a poorly made decision seems a bit excessive for a photo. I think the pre trial confinement was excessive to begin with as well. The guy wasn’t a flight hazard or a danger to society imo, which is the general reason for pre trial confinement’s.
As one of the platoon's leaders he was and should be held to a higher standard, and given the charges he was facing his pre-trial confinement did not seem out of the norm.
He has been punished. The original punishment doesn’t fit the crime he was convicted of in my opinion. The chief in question is caught in the middle of political bs outside of his control at this point. I don’t have an issue with him using whatever means necessary to defend his position as he’s dealing with people who have a microphone louder than his.
I think the opposite is true, where the E-7 has been not only vocal but has courted publicity and attention to himself to the point of insubordination and contempt while his superiors have been constrained from making public comment by the law. He is entitled to defending himself but I think he has stepped far over the line with what he has done.
The same way it is a deliberate, conscious choice to put video of bodies being blown to shit in a cruise video. It isn't our duty to do that but every squadron that spends time in 5th fleet does it. They show that actual moments people are dying.
For as long as photos and videos have been made it has usually been fraught with controversy in western countries to show the dead in more graphic detail, it held true in the Crimean War and still holds true today. Even photos that just show dead bodies has been controversial, with the photos of dead soldiers at Buna Beach, New Guinea going up to FDR who cleared their release in
Life magazine.
To use corpses as trophies is even a step further, much more personal and prohibited in the DoD. It is different than showing the impact of a weapon that causes death, as it is much more personal and graphic and yes, still a significant cultural difference to this day.