AWOL Bush again asks other soldiers to pay the price for his own cowardice

The NY Times is reporting today that eleven U.S. soldiers are being charged with assaulting Iraqi prisoners.

How U.S. troops behave in the field of war can be a vexing issue. On one hand, they deserve the best training, equipment, and support that can be provided to ensure that, when they put their lives on the line, they know what they need to know, they know the rules of engagement, and they aren't endangered any more than is necessary. What is often forgotten, however, is that troops can be harmed in less visible ways, when, for example, they are given orders that put them in situations that challenge their moral and ethical values. In a command organization, the individual soldier places himself at great risk if he chooses not to execute orders, to disobey orders, or to interpret orders differently than they were intended.

On the other hand, there's certainly a percentage of people who enlist because they are sadists, who enjoy the business of killing. Other people learn to enjoy killing as a result of their training and indoctrination. These are not the noble warriors. They would be criminals in civil society. They are the ones who need to be kept under very close supervision, and for whom the rules of engagement need to be very clearly enunciated, so that their actions don't cross the line into the criminal realm of behavior - so they comply with the basic tenets of U.S. military code and the Geneva Convention.

Both to protect innocent soldiers from engaging in criminal behavior, and to protect innocents from becoming targets of psychopathic soldiers, the rules of engagement should be clearly defined and enforced. That's precisely why it is so troubling that, from the very top of the Bush administration, from the mouth of George W. Bush himself, in pronouncements and executive orders, down through the military command structure to the foot soldier, the message conveyed has been that the global "war on terrah" is a new type of war which, with a wink and a nod, requires a bending of the rules.

Here's the thing that irks me so much: George W. Bush has, throughout his entire life, never stood up for anything that required personal sacrifice or risk, or even real political courage, yet he's cavalier with the lives of other people, putting them in harm's way for a project built on a pack of lies to make his friends rich and get a little personal revenge. When all signs point to his own culpability in authorizing torture, what does he do? Why, of course, he makes other people stand for his own crimes.

What a pathetic piece of sh*t George W. Bush is!!!