Haditha is a failure of leadership....

[Catchawave]

...which climbs all the way to the top of this immoral Bush War.

Please don't blame the troops. Thank you.

[SpiralHawk]

1. With a commander-in-chief who shamefully went AWOL, and then lied

to our troops to get them into an oil-profits war and an extrememely dubious project of Nation Building (which the repubs like to "claim" they are against)

And with a second-in-command (Shotgun Dick Cheney) who got five frikking fat-cat deferments from the draft because he, in his own words, had "other priorities" and who also lied to our troops about the reaons for the Iraq war

It is unsurprising that our soldiers are in a RAGE amd acting in an UGLY manner -- in a far away land for no reason other than to increase republican oil crony profits...which are already astronomically high.

Why -- when almost all of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabians -- does George AWOL Bush remain so intimate with his Oil Crony Saudi profit partners?

[Virginia Dare]

2. You got it, dude!...n/t

[atreides1]

3. Who pulled the triggers?????

Yes it's a failure of leadership, but Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were not there, only the Marines were there, they had the weapons, they deserve as much of the blame.

No one forced them, according to reports they were on their 3rd rotation, they knew what was coming,
they could have said no, they could have said "it's not right" and made a stand, but they chose to follow orders without question and got on the plane.

So please don't lessen what happened by saying it's not the troops fault, the ones who were involved
are just as much to blame as the administration.

[Virginia Dare]

6. Absolutely...

the triggermen need to be punished to the full extent of the law, but I believe the OP was addressing the failure of leadership, which caused the situation to get to this point.

That was my take on it, anyway.

[One_Life_To_Give]

4. How can their instructors/supervisors not be complicit?

Looks to me like a breakdown in Discipline.

Your buddy just died a gruesome death before your eyes and the environment is terrifying beyond imagination. But they are soldiers and expected/trained to do their job in spite of conditions that would have the rest of us running away with full shorts.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. It's a failure of humanity for all concerned.

I don't subscribe to the "it's not the troops fault". Anymore than I subscribe to the notion that it's the liquor's fault when some drunk runs over a kid.

While I certainly agree that the fault lies all the way up the chain of command, and all should be prosecuted, I'm not letting the triggermen off the hook.

[newscott]

7. Amen.

[Catchawave]

8. Don't ya see guys.....

..who put them in harm's way? Yippee Ki Yay Bushies, and the military leaders' lips firmly attached to his chickenhawk arse !

Show me one President in our history that sent troops to war without moral authority/capital ?

Haditha is Bush's fault, no one else's. The active duty leaders in this war will not speak out like the retired generals are. The troops may, but then they'll be labeled PTSD...or run up for treason.

So who really pulled the trigger? IMHO, Bush did.

[Catchawave]

9. I guess not......

:+

[Blue Belle]

10. I hear you Catch...

We have troops over there who have been redeployed over and over. We have troops over there that wouldn't have even been accepted into service 5 years ago. While they did pull the triggers... their leaders failed them - and if the leaders didn't have the foresight to see the possibility of atrocities like this occurring, they should be relived of their command right now. What are/were they thinking? When they lift the minimum requirements on who serves in uniform... When they send the same people back to combat duty over and over and over again... what do they think is going to happen? Just like Abu Graib, those with low rank will take the fall for the higher ups... and I think it's deplorable.

[Catchawave]

11. Thanks Blue...

:hug: