arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Wall-to-wall media coverage of his case and the troubling questions it raises are likely to cause considerable embarrassment to the military establishment, especially at a time when Americans are being asked to throw their support behind the flag for a possible invasion of Iraq.

After all, it wasn't so long ago that another Gulf War veteran, Timothy McVeigh, used his military skills to commit mass murder on a horrific scale with the Oklahoma City bombing. Could Mr Williams, like McVeigh, have been brutalised by his experiences of combat and killing civilians for our government and transformed from a govern-ment-trained killing machine into an anti-government, anti-American radical?

Gleaning details of his army career was difficult yesterday, not least because the military chose to divulge absolutely nothing about him. In the 1980s he served at Fort Lewis, outside Tacoma, Washington, whose sniper assessment programme is used, amongst other things, to select candidates for the Army's élite Sniper School at Fort Benning, Georgia. The Fort Lewis course teaches snipers to work in pairs, with one man acting as the trigger and the other as a look-out - the pattern apparently followed in the Washington-area shootings.

One friend said yesterday he had served in the Green Berets, a branch of the Special Forces which has a group stationed at Fort Lewis. Military officials said, however, that he was not in the Special Forces. They said he had undergone basic firearms training and had expertise in combat support missions. Another Pentagon official said he had served as a combat engineer. They said nothing about the demolition expertise mentioned by his former wife.

From 1994 until earlier this year, he is believed to have lived in Tacoma, with periods of drifting around the country in between. Among other things, he helped to run a karate and martial arts school, where his partner Felix Strozier described him as a "pretty nice person" - at least until they fell out over an unpaid debt of Mr Williams and closed down the school in 1998.

The Pentagon said he also spent eight years in the Army National Guard, attached to stations in Louisiana, where his brother and first former wife live, and Oregon.

Het is nu wel duidelijk dat Amerikaanse 'hulp' meestal wel kan worden gerelateerd aan een economisch of politiek belang dat ermee gepaard gaat. Stellen dat Amerika in conflicten onbaatzuchtig 'te hulp' komt,is dus sterk achterhaald.

Dit samen met het feit dat een militair tot zulk een daden in staat is, roept uiteindelijk toch vragen op bij het feit dat Amerika zich blijft verzetten tegen een Internationaal strafhof? Het bewijs is geleverd dat ook een Amerikaanse soldaat best wel een vijs kan mankeren en zijn boekje kan te buiten gaan.