Do you not believe he would of done what he did regardless?
If I'm right you are saying that the way the taliban fought such a war is what out Blackman into the mindset to do what he did?
i.e suicide bombs, IED's etc? I'm not sure I believe that simply because Blackman seemed well in control. It's not like this was a man who just snapped. Seemed pretty calculated to me.
I think those questions in a way were what the court case was dealing with. Without having sat through all the evidence I'd be loath to play 'armchair psychologist' and say that I know better.
That said my own opinion based on what I have heard...
1) I've heard nothing to suggest that Blackman had any history of ill-discipline/mis-treatment of prisoners. A lot of the pro-Blackman press has bemoaned him being 'hung out to dry' by the military establishment. That to me suggests that the British Army as an institution does not have a culture of mistreating prisoners and certainly not of killing them out of hand. Given that Blackman was holding a high rank in one of the elite elements of the army then I'd argue that it is unlikely that all along he was some kind of loose cannon/accident waiting to happen. So yes, in a more 'conventional' war-zone I don't think he would have acted in the way that he did. You may have a more dim view of the general moral standards of our armed forces - I guess on that we'll just have to agree to differ.
2) Yes. That follows on from the above and my previous post. The Taliban was fighting a war aimed at destroying the British/US soldiers' morale. In Blackman's case they succeeded and in my view that is how he got to the kind of place where he did what he did.
3) Re the control point I agree with you. For me the body-cam footage is damning - he was in control and knew what he was doing. Under English criminal law you can have control and premeditate and still be only guilty of Manslaughter if your mental health prevents you from exercising those faculties in 'the right direction'. My own point of view is that soldiers are paid and more importantly trained to be able to maintain their mental health in the face of extreme provocation. I'm not sure if that means I disagree with the psychological diagnosis that his mental health was compromised to the extent that it was manslaughter or with the contradiction between English law and International law in how they deal with a situation like this. In passing - this particular point is the only one where you could bring Rigby into it - my understanding is that the mental health one of his killers is so chaotic that he has been returned to Broadmoor for hospital treatment (to predictable outrage from the Daily Mail) and yet the courts had no hesitation in finding that he was of sound enough mind to be guilty of murder.
That is all by the by though. I only became involved with this because of your insistence of drawing equivalence between Blackman's actions and the killing of Rigby. With all due respect I still believe that that particular assertion is pretty grim
