WEIRD story - how will this one play out?

I just came across this story, originally from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, about a group of ex-Rangers who have committed a bank robbery.

One of them lives in Canada, and the US has applied for his extradition. He plans to use the extradition hearing to make public what he knows about war crimes in Iraq. Now I'm sure your first thought, as mine, is that he was just trying to deflect attention from his crime. But on a closer reading of the article, I'm not so sure.

It's interesting that, from reading the article, it seems that the gang involved in the robbery was composed entirely of Rangers. That, in itself, is odd, it seems to me:

Spc. Elliott Sommer is allegedly part of a four-member Ranger crew from Fort Lewis involved in the armed robbery Aug. 7 of a Bank of America branch, court documents show.

Sommer mentions certain specific details that ring true for someone who has watched quite closely what has been going on in Iraq:

"We are looking to be able to prosecute 30 to 40 members of Task Force 626 for war crimes, including rape, murder, et cetera," Sommer said in a telephone interview this week.

Task Force 626 is a classified military unit that includes elite Delta Force and CIA operatives whose mission is to capture or kill "high-value" targets in Iraq and Afghanistan.

.....

"I have seen people issue orders to cover up the deaths of as many as 16 innocent people," Sommer said. He spoke of one incident in which he alleges a commanding general in Afghanistan ordered the cover-up of such an execution.

"That is a bad policy. Those policies are what I'm standing up against."

Sommer recalled one instance in which he helped a CIA officer and a Delta Force sergeant load two 105 mm howitzer shells into a vehicle in Baghdad's Green Zone. He learned later that they detonated the shells, killing four men -- one of whom was a radical Islamic politician who was the front-runner for elective office.

Sommer also spoke of U.S. forces sending captives "to hell -- the Battlefield Interrogation Facility."

"There are people in the BIF who have been there since the beginning of the war who are probably innocent. The place is worse than Abu Ghraib (prison)."

The accusations confirm independently other reports of US involvement in terrorist bombing of the Iraqi population in order to split the Sunni/Shia alliance which was developing in the summer of 2003, the purpose being to get the two sides fighting each other rather than uniting to kick out the invaders. This of course (coupled with the introduction and funding of Shia death squads) was the beginning of the hideous sectarian conflagration that has reduced Iraq to an anarchic bloodbath.

I have no doubt that many of the usual posters here will simply write the guy off as a criminal seeking to deflect from his actions... and I'm not sure he isn't. On the other hand, what he's saying about what's going on out there is entirely congruent with much of the information coming out of Iraq.

It will be interesting to see how this story develops.