With regards to your first "crime": How was that a murder? The unit on the ground received RPG fire, and the person was holding a large object and pointing at ground forces. What do you think is going to happen? For them to come down out of the helicopter and ask for the press pass? When you say murder you imply that the service men had the intent to kill some journalist. When in reality they thought they had weapons pointed at a previously attacked ground force, and had the helicopter crew asked permission to engage and protect the ground force.

In the first "crime"... No crime was committed nor was anyone ever convicted. It was a tragic result, but not one that the reporters could have mitigated the risk.

It's a difficult case, and I understand why you see it as a tragic mistake, but I don't think the helicopter crew were sufficiently diligent in checking who they were going to kill, particularly in the aftermath of the first shots where people tried to help the wounded, and were then mown down. Just because someone was armed, doesn't make them an enemy (they could be for example a bodyguard for journalists), and just because someone tries to give medical assistance to others in a battle, doesn't mean they also need to be killed. Their callous reaction to the news that children were in the van having just killed their father demonstrates their lack of care.

At the very least Reuters should have been provided with this footage (instead it was covered up), and an independent investigation held.

> but I'd also expect some clemency given that the release was clearly in the public interest and revealed many unlawful orders and coverups.

The chain of command issuing the unlawful orders and participating in the coverups is unlikely to agree that revealing those things is in the "public interest".

Which is kind of the fundamental problems that whistleblowers always face (whether or not formal protections are in place) -- the people deciding whether or not to punish them (or whether or not the protections apply) are often the people on whom they are "blowing the whistle", or at least people with shared interest with the targets of the whistleblowing.

This is mitigated when there is involvement of an independent actor in the process, but in the case of military trials that are completely within the military chain of command within the executive branch, that kind of independence is hard to find.

The military trials of which you speak deal with military penal code as set out by Congress, not by the President. Likewise the trials are overseen in the end by the civilian Supreme Court.

In the actual military the untoward influence (real or perceived) of the convening officer on the outcome of the case is a B.F.D., just witness all the sexual assault/harassment cases that were being upended by Obama's condemnation of servicemembers who engage in them. In fact SECDEF himself had to issue a memo saying, in effect, that the POTUS expects trial members/judges to use their own independent judgment when considering the facts of a case, just as specified in the M.C.M.

You're right that an independent actor is what is needed in general, but Col. Lind does not report to the President on this, she reports to the Commanding General of the Military District of Washington, which is a completely separate chain of command from the one that was issuing orders relating actions in Iraq of Afghanistan.

> The military trials of which you speak deal with military penal code as set out by Congress, not by the President

Passing the laws is not being part of the process of applying them (its also inaccurate to say that the UCMJ is "set out by Congress, not the President", since the current version of the UCMJ wasn't adopted over a Presidential veto.)

> Likewise the trials are overseen in the end by the civilian Supreme Court.

Which, given the length (both procedurally and temporally) of the appeal chain is a far more distant involvement of a non-executive actor than is the case in civilian trials.

> You're right that an independent actor is what is needed in general, but Col. Lind does not report to the President on this, she reports to the Commanding General of the Military District of Washington

The existence of intervening steps on the chain of command does not make a military officer independent of the Commander-in-Chief.