On the evening of Jan. 21, 2012, attorney Neal Puckett stood on a balcony in Oceanside, California, and delivered an ultimatum to the United States Marine Corps. A few days earlier, Puckett had reached a deal with military prosecutors that would have let his client — a Marine staff sergeant facing nine counts of manslaughter — walk free. Now, the two-star general presiding over the court-martial was nixing the deal and sending the case back to a jury for verdict.
On Sunday night, a full house turned up at the Tribeca Film Festival in Manhattan for the premiere of“House Two,” an investigative documentary more than decade in the making that makes troubling allegations regarding the Marine Corps’ handling of one of the most brutalwar crimes cases of the Iraq War. It also raises questions about the involvement of the current Secretary of Defense in a serious miscarriage of justice.
As a kid, I always loved playing guns with my friends all throughout the neighborhood. Our setting for these battles was almost always Vietnam. I used to read books about the long-range reconnaissance patrols and recon teams and battles there. Growing up, I knew that someday I needed to visit.
