If Donald Trump gets his wish, he’ll soon take the three convicted or accused war criminals he spared from consequence on the road as special guests in his reelection campaign, according to two sources who have heard Trump discuss their potential roles for the 2020 effort.

Despite military and international backlash to Trump’s Nov. 15 clemency – fallout from which cost Navy Secretary Richard Spencer his job on Sunday – Trump believes he has rectified major injustices. Two people tell The Daily Beast they’ve heard Trump talk about how he’d like to have the now-cleared Clint Lorance, Matthew Golsteyn, or Edward Gallagher show up at his 2020 rallies, or even have a moment on stage at his renomination convention in Charlotte next year. Right-wing media has portrayed all three as martyrs brought down by “political correctness” within the military.

“He briefly discussed making it a big deal at the convention,” said one of these sources, who requested anonymity to talk about private conversations. “The president made a reference to the 2016 [convention] and where they brought on-stage heroes” like former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, who refused to execute detained civilians ahead of a devastating Taliban attack.

Former Army Lt. Lorance was sentenced to 19 years in prison in 2013 for murder after ordering his soldiers in 2010 to fire on three unarmed Afghan men riding a motorcycle, killing two of them. He walked out of military prison at Fort Leavenworth on Nov. 15. Next month, former Green Beret Maj. Golsteyn was supposed to stand trial for the murder of an unarmed Afghan man whom he told the CIA he killed in the belief the man was a Taliban bombmaker. Golsteyn, who burned the man’s corpse, pleaded not guilty to the murder; the Green Berets stripped Golsteyn of his Special-Forces tab. Lorance and Golsteyn were both causes celebre in certain military circles and among their right-wing supporters, as was Navy SEAL Chief Gallagher.

A military jury this summer acquitted Gallagher for the murder of a wounded teenage fighter for the so-called Islamic State. The case, which both featured Trump’s conspicuous intervention boosting Gallagher and serious prosecutorial misconduct, began, like Lorance’s, with Gallagher’s own platoonmates reporting his conduct. Against Gallagher’s denial, two SEALs testified seeing the senior SEAL chief stab the wounded teenager in the neck. Gallagher as well took a photo with the severed head of the corpse and texted it with the caption “good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife.”

We’re no worse than anyone else in war, no better but no worse. We prefer to kill civilians and non-combatants from the video game computerized moral isolation of the stratosphere, or by shelling them from air-conditioned ships offshore, or by launching Tomahawks from submarines or Hellfires from drones. And we send our farm kids and street toughs, led by frat boys and Junior Achievement ROTCs, out there where they are brutalized and acclimated to violence and aggression. Its not their fault either, but it happens because its war and it always happens in war. Ever since Pharaoh’s time.

Remember LT Calley? Did he or his platoon ever actually kill any enemy combatants? Or did they just lavish their vengeance on the innocent because the Victor Charlie they were fighting always melted into the forest when they heard the choppers coming. We march in straight lines and wear red coats, they hide behind rocks and trees and won’t stand up to us in a “fair fight”. Of course, we’re the ones with the helicopters and the napalm, the Willy Peter and the depleted uranium. Did you know the Shrike missile has fiberglass shrapnel that won’t show up on X-rays?

No, I’m not a pacifist. Some wars have to be fought, and some have to be won. And you can’t win without somebody getting killed and a whole lot more getting hurt. And I have no illusions about innocents dying in combat, either from malicious psychopaths trained to kill unleashed on children or just by plain chaos and accident and bad luck, which is never in short supply in the battle zone. Sometimes it has to be that way, and its always unfortunate, and there is probably very little we can do to stop it except occasionally bringing justice to one of our own when he’s caught red-handed.

And back home we make excuses for these accidental killers, not because they are actually innocent (although sometimes they actually are!), but because it makes us feel better, it justifies our side, it assuages our guilt. It doesn’t matter whether its tormenting prisoners at Abu Ghraib, or slaughtering nuns in El Salvador, or gang-raping female Viet Cong in the back of a helicopter.

Did you get a load of Chief Gallagher? The rugged Hollywood good looks, the starched whites, the drop-dead gorgeous wife? That’s what war looks like, baby. Its all in the eye of the beholder.

That’s the Congressional Medal of Honor the President is putting on Conan. They say a room full of generals will jump to attention and salute if a private wearing one wanders in the room.