Blame for Haditha Lies at Bush's Feet
By Scott Ritter, AlterNet. Posted June 8, 2006.
There is a leadership deficit in the Armed Forces today, and it begins with the commander-in-chief, President George W. Bush. .............
The sad fact is that American service members in Iraq are not fighting a fight they can win. There is no standard for victory. They are deployed for six months, a year, or more, to a theater of operations that President Bush has already acknowledged will only be resolved by the next president. This means that those being dispatched to Iraq have only one mission: to survive. This is not a mission statement conducive to sound decision making and action. It is a mission statement that has all U.S. combatants reverting to a primal state where it is kill or be killed, regardless of the rules. And it is asinine in the extreme to talk about rules in the first place when the leadership of the men and women America sends into harm's way show such a wanton disregard for rules to begin with.
There may have been a crime committed in Haditha. The facts will emerge in due course. But it should be clear to all that there is an ongoing crime taking place in Iraq, and anywhere around the world where American military forces operate according to a mandate given to them by the Bush administration. America has collectively walked away from the rule of law, and in doing so, has become the greatest perpetrator of war crimes in modern times.
The scope and scale of our crimes, as manifested in Iraq and elsewhere, are mind-boggling. The indifference of the American people is mind numbing. And the wrath of history, which will judge all of us harshly, has yet to be felt.
MORE AT:
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/37214/
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