As reported in the New York Times, Staff Sgt, Calvin Gibbs, ringleader of the gallant American team that killed three innocent Afghans for sport and kept their body parts as souvenirs, has been found by the military court guilty of all charges levelled against him and has been given a sentence of life imprisonment, with chances of parole in less than ten years, which means the wild beast will be out of prison within a few years because of 'good behaviour. His team-mates and helping hands of course got much less. Just remember this killing was not an isolated case, when the soldiers flew into a rage over some incident like the killing of one of their comrades. Rather these were well-planned killings, which occurred over months, and the soldiers tried to make these look like encounters. Some soldiers are reported to have said the sport killings followed frustration that the unit had not seen more combat. This means they did not belong to a disciplined army but were just murderers out to kill some one and since they could not find combatants, they just took it out on innocent civilians. According to the report, Sergeant Gibbs appeared stunned, his mouth open, when the verdict was read. Now, I was also stunned, and had my mouth open on reading about the verdict. In a case of an extreme barbarity where all charges were proved beyond any shadow of doubt, at least the ring-leader should have been sent to firing squad, in order to deter others from doing the same but of course the military court had to keep in mind that he was an American and the victims were only Afghans, who dont count for much. I suppose this bias is an inherent part of the American system of justice, whether civilian or military. We all know about the case of Pakistani Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a mother who was separated from her minor children and sent to prison for 86 years, on a fabricated charge of attempting to kill American soldiers in which attempt, no soldier suffered even a minor injury, and the prosecution failed to prove its case. It reflects badly even on our officials who released Raymond Davis in indecent haste but have been unable, unwilling or both, to seek any concession for Dr Aafia, or even to arrange with the Americans for her to serve remaining sentence in Pakistan. And here we have US ambassador Cameron Munter, throwing a dollar here and a dollar there, and on every occasion, making propaganda out of all proportions to the value of the deed, trying to convince us that Americans have nothing but love and affection for us, ignoring the fact that this association has already cost us much more in dollars terms than what we have received by way of economic and military aid in all these years. Death of 30,000 civilians and 5,000 soldiers comes on top of that. If Munter really wants to improve American image here, and elsewhere in the Muslim world, he better tell the clowns back home first of all to make up their mind whether they want to be our enemies or friends and in the latter case, be less unjust with us, preferably with all Muslims, ifthat is at all possible. S.R.H. HASHMI, Karachi, November 12.