Military's Leadership Crisis Begins With Bush and Rumsfeld

[Bob Geiger]

When the Abu Ghraibprisoner abuse scandal broke in 2004, many Veterans, including myself, hoped that would be the only low point in military conduct in the Iraq war. It's one thing to know that the Bush administration cooked the intelligence books to take our nation into an unnecessary war and it's another to see U.S. troops -- who many have viewed as innocent pawns in the Iraq quagmire -- commit acts that shock the world and further humiliate our country.

Such is the case with the confirmed report that U.S. Marines killed up to 24 innocent civilians in Haditha, Iraq on November 19, 2005in response to an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack that killed one of their squad, Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas, who died at age 20.

While the Marine Corps originally claimed that the Iraqi victims were killed in the same roadside blast, it has since been discovered that a coordinated cover-up was launched by the military to hide what Americans do not want to hear: That U.S. troops may have gone on a bloody rampage in the village after Terrazas was killed and murdered the unarmed Iraqis, including 11 women and children, in their homes.

The military unit that arrived to clean up the gruesome scene later that day found that many women, children and even babies were dead and had been shot in the head and chest. According to one report, an old man in a wheelchair had been shot nine times.

All death certificates issued by the military later that day listed the cause of death as gunshot wounds.

Marines involved in the incident have since claimed that the shootings were the result of a house-to-house search gone bad and that the civilian deaths were unintentional. Meanwhile, witnesses in Haditha say that the villagers were executed, including some who died while pleading for their lives.

What seems to support the Iraqis' version of events is the obvious attempt by the military to lie about the incident immediately after it occurred, with a spokesman saying that 15 Iraqis "…were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb in Haditha."

This version of events stood until May 17 when Congressman John Murtha (D-PA), who has long advocated a withdrawal from Iraq, made a startling statementabout the incident, saying it was far worse than anyone had disclosed and that "…our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

While the incident is still under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), there's no way this is going to turn our well and some military observers -- including ex-military lawmakers like Murtha -- say this will end up making Abu Ghraib look like a minor infraction.

This will be and should be a tough one for the American people to swallow.

But unlike Abu Ghraib, where low-level enlisted personnel were allowed to take the fall, it is vital that we understand that what happened in Haditha, while certainly an atrocity for which the troops involved bear responsibility, was an overarching failure of leadership that goes all the way to the Oval Office.

Please go to Democrats.com to read the rest.

[spindrifter]

1. We must replace the people at the top.

These are people for whom the military experience is a 60 second news bit and a novel at the bedside. We are just as guilty as they if we let them stay.

[cliss]

2. As they told us in my management classes:

"A company is only as good as its management". If you have a bad CEO, the company might go belly-up even though you've got the best employees.

Why? Because management makes decisions. Same thing with the government. THEY make tactical decisions. The troops just do what they're told. Bush and Rumsfailed are responsible for this mess.

Welcome to the DU, by the way. A very good thread, well-written:smoke:

[Norquist Nemesis]

3. A fish rots from the head

Credits to an former manager of mine. :)