It may be over-reach but I am wondering if the war-criminal pardons are not somehow related to an effort to further legitimize the privatization of our military missions. Mercenary kingpin Erik Prince has proposed an elaborate plan for privatizing operations in Afghanistan, for example. The greatly increased use of contractors, including in combat roles, was a striking feature of DoD policy under Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld and an obvious long term objective of conservative security policy.