So, the United States military finds it in its most merciful heart to release Laith Al-Khazali, an Iranian-backed killer of many Americans, but consigns a US Marine, Larry Hutchins, to 11 years in prison for killing one Iraqi in order, as Hutchins says, to protect his men. (Read more about Hutchins's case here.)

That was the shameful verdict of Bush administration's Donald Winter and, today, that's the shameful verdict of  the Obama administration's Secretary of Navy Ray Mabus, incidentally -- or not incidentally -- a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and, like his boss Prez Obama, holder of that simply gloriously fabulous and meritorious commendation, the King Abdul Aziz Award. (Yuck.)

Update: Marine Mom writes in to note that the Secretary of the Navy also ordered four of the other seven defendants in the case to be discharged from the military. The Secretary of the Army could have ordered Hasan to be discharged as well, she points out. It is highly likely, however, that not only has Hasan not been discharged -- that might leave diversity a casualty, after all -- but he probably received his pay on payday last week.