Maybe you don't want to reconcile

From CNN:

[Joshua Milton Blahyi], has returned to [the Liberia] his troops [formerly] terrorized to confess, saying he is responsible for 20,000 deaths.

"I could be electrocuted. I could be hanged. I could be given any other punishment," the 37-year-old Blahyi said in a weekend interview following his truth commission appearance last week. "But I think forgiveness and reconciliation is the right way to go.

"I have been looking for an opportunity to tell the true story about my life -- and every time I tell people my story, I feel relieved."

Even the bloodiest of bleeding hearts would find it hard to be impressed with this kind of 11th hour change of heart.

However there is a side note to this story that is impressive in its own way:

Joshua Milton Blahyi… [is] known as Gen. Butt Naked…His nom de guerre is derived from his platoon's practice of charging naked into battle, a technique meant to terrify the enemy.

Okay, that's just over-the-top freaky. Dude's into human sacrifice, cannibalistic ritual and fighting naked.

And he had followers.

Followers who are willing to watch his [bare] back as he repeatedly charged into combat. Even accepting the [all but explicit] implication that drugs were involved – how many like minded-psychopaths did this freakwad manage to recruit?

Makes you question the notion of reconciliation – I mean, without the hope of amnesty, the truth may not be known – but once the truth is known, how do you forget stuff like:

Before he led his fighters into battle, wearing only a pair of lace-up boots, Blahyi said he made a human sacrifice to the devil.

The sacrifice was typically "the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart which was divided into pieces for us to eat," he told The Associated Press Saturday.