Oh, could it be that those are part of what got him hung?

 

Hanged.

Only Saddam's mistresses and/or wife know if he was hung or not.

 

No, I meant Hung. You know, 15 minutes of fame after a terrible American Idol appearance?

"I AM NOT THE CRIMINAL! YOU ARE THE CRIMINALS!!1!!"

 

I think his squad leader should have his ***-burned. I've always had empathy for enlisted soldiers just following orders. According to UCMJ you can disregard an illegal order with no negative recourse but I can see how that'd be extremely difficult for a guy who's been in for a short amount of time staring some lance corporal or gunny in the eye.

With that said, psoper, you should shut your mouth. I can't stand people who don't have the ***** to man up and fight for their country but will criticize the actions of those who do. You can gripe all you want about the "illegal war in Iraq" and how you don't feel you need to fight there to show you patriotism but the fact of the matter is, you wouldn't fight for you own back yard let alone the rights of others.

Until you can prove that you've lost on drop of blood or sweat for this great nation in uniform and furthermore, in combat, you have no ground to stand on.

The fact of the matter is that soldiers are often times victims of circumstance. It doesn't make what they do right by any means but it is definitely out of prospective to the large majority of American citizens. Decisions one makes in combat will never be comprehensible to someone who has no idea what it's like. Do you think if this kid had not been in such a situation he'd have made this moral call. I had enlisted joes under me as an infantry lieutenant that would have literally cleared the village had I ask them to. They would have definetly been in the wrong for doing it but would they have actually done it without my direction. Hell no, this kid was a victim of circumstance. The same as the man he killed.

 

If you don't have the ***** to refuse an illegal order, you're a coward. It's one thing if you either have poor judgement or just don't know the difference, but to be bullied into being the tool of a despot is despicable.

Get off the high horse man. Wearing the uniform doesn't make you better than people who don't. If you can't tell the difference between a man who won't fight for a cause he doesn't believe in and a man who won't fight... you might want to seriously ponder the significance of that difference. In fact, if you fight for a cause you don't absolutely believe in, you're nothing but a well-trained thug. The fact that you're willing to kill for what you choose to believe in doesn't validate your cause all by itself. Take a step back and try to realize that the fundamental core of what you swore to defend to the death is not your own set of views, but rather the right, and responsibility, to question the actions of our society and the government that acts for it, not so that we can keep blinders on and pretend everything's okay.

So your highest responsibility is to your chain of command, your unit, your service... and not the nation it is defending? The ideals embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the constitution are no longer the reason we so often put our military in harm's way, in other soverign nations, in order to secure those ideals and liberties for people who would otherwise not be free?

The acts you are defending are not an acceptable means to the ends of liberty, because liberty is not the objective. Liberty is the way.

 

I can totally agree with what 1reguL8NSTi is saying. Short of blatantly illegal act(s) like being ordered to rape an Iraqi woman and child at gunpoint (just an example), I can see just crossing the line like nothing wrong had happened. Mainly because of respect for my superiors and thinking I should be given a little leeway because of the crappy situation i'm faced with. No, i'm not trying to support or tie-in the Marine in the article... i'm just saying in general.

I think that in the the burden of proof should have to be astronomical for a conviction during the hectic, emotional, psych-altering, extremely stressful time of war. Cases in the civilian world often get thrown-out for the smallest errors in procedure. Yet the media demands REMFs/prosecutors throw the book at Soldiers for an otherwise summarized, unclear incident that took place halfway across the world during wartime. It seem ludicrous to me.

I think the idea of some military prosecution border-lines on the idea of sticking it to Bush and subconscious/unexpressed Soldier hate during an unpopular war. For example, think about how often the left will turn a group of individuals into victims just because they're in the minority. This group could be clearly in the wrong and possess ak47s too. Wouldn't you think they'd consider Soldiers the victims of Bush's war? Nope. Not even those that enlisted pre-9/11 or pre-Bush. Instead, they're the catalyst... Warmongers that have no interest defending their country during peacetime. I’m not saying this is the root of all that’s happened but it HAS to be a factor to get a lot of these ***** in motion.

 

Actually the League of Nations(LoN) Failure to enforce the Treaty of Versailles and the general lack of action when Germany began rearming led to the further expansion of the 3rd Reich, additionally several countries in the vacinity had disarmed/ mothballed their militarys(Denmark) thus leaving themselves open for invasion.

When Hitler invaded Austria (what they called Anschluss, the uniting of Germany and Austria) he was violating one of the laws stated in the Treaty of Versailles, but yet the Allies did nothing. When Hitler took the Czech's main defensive wall, along with all of its factories, etc, the Allies still did nothing. For good reason, Hitler believed that France and Britain would not come to the aid of Poland.

Additionally at the time the US maintained a policy of isolationalism they didn't look at any conflict outside of the borders. And hadn't even Joined LoN.
When Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, the LoN did little aside from vote minor sanctions on Italy. By the time the LoN had acted Italy already own Ethiopia.

So you see it was the failure to act (the policy you are advocating) that led to rise of Nazism,(and the death of millions) not an overly bold foreign policy.
And yes, the majority of people in the World share your opinion. Of course they do. The majority of the world lives in countries outside of America (and in many cases those countries are either competing with or hostile to America) and hold agendas that benefit their country, vice the American public. This is simple self interest (the Europeans hated the fact that Lance Armstrong won the Tour D France, because he was American, and it sucks to get beaten. There are reasons that the majority of the world (especially) those with dissimilar interests preferred the Clinton Administration to the Bush Administration. Madeleine Albright had a policy of Appeasement with our enemies. The Bush Administration (with both Powell and Rice at the helm) did not. Third world dictators prefer Michael Jordan Signed Basketballs to Embargos and Sanctions. Terrorists and Rogue Nations prefer UNVIC to USMC.

As far as winning.. In order to win you have to hold land. Winning takes a long time to do right.
The quickest way to end a war is to lose it -George Orwell