A review of military legal proceedings obtained by Salon shows that in the months prior to an unarmed Iraqi farmer's death, the three Army snipers accused of his killing were pressed to their physical limits and pushed by officers to stretch the bounds of the laws of war in order to increase the enemy body count. The pressure from above for more bodies was also toxic in Iraq, where the isolated, outnumbered and outgunned snipers of the 1st Battalion had to make split-second life-or-death decisions. When those decisions landed them in a military court, it was the lowest-ranking soldiers, not the brass, who paid the price, and a sergeant who said he was pushed into taking a fatal shot who wound up with a long prison sentence. It was battalion commander Lt. Col Robert Balcavage, who pushed for a higher body count, who initiated the prosecution of three of the battalion's snipers. "Yes, the chain of command deserves to burn in hell," one sniper who served with the unit wrote Salon in an e-mail. "But I am not going on record saying that, well, cause I am still in the fucking Army."
