There is something we might be forgetting about the Haditha……

[Minnesota Libra]

….massacre. Let me say at the outset – just so that no one gets the wrong idea – that I am not making excuses for any of our troops who may have been involved in the Haditha incident or any others like it.

With that having been said, we need to keep in mind that IED’s cause some of the most horrific injuries. I’ve seen a couple of reports on the aftermath of our returning soldiers who suffered head injuries. Even after some of the surgeries and rehabilitation the lifelong challenges these soldiers will be living with will put a lump in the throat of the most hardened among us.

Why are there so many head injuries? Because that WH effing Idiot and his Handlers had to give the richest of the rich tax breaks and to pay for it he refused to supply our soldiers with the extra helmet padding they needed to protect themselves. So as we are rightfully blaming some soldiers for snapping we also need to scream from the rooftops that Bush should also be held responsible for causing this in the first place. The death penalty would be too good a treatment for Idiot Boy and his handlers in this case.

Second, we all have our breaking point in life. We can take and take and take those traumatic experiences that life throws our way but eventually we reach our limit. That limit, which is different for each of us, is called “the breaking point”. Think of how we would react to seeing buddies who have saved your ass time after time suddenly lying in front of you blown apart by some homemade explosive device. Now multiply that experience by the number of killed and injured soldiers each day in Iraq. Suddenly you realize our young people are seeing things every day of their life that no human being should ever have to witness. All the while you’ve got the “enemy” (the population making the explosive devices) around you wherever you go, you can’t get away from them. You can’t necessarily tell an “enemy” face from a “friendly” face. Most of all you have no place to go to “cool off” you and your buddies are surrounded by this “enemy” and this horror every day and every night of you’re there.

I know all about the fact that we shouldn’t be in Iraq in the first place and I agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly. On the other that issue belongs in a totally different thread because this thread is about the soldiers themselves who have been pushed beyond their breaking point through no choice of their own. They went to do a job that they were falsely told needed to be done and they were pushed far beyond what should have been asked for.

So I just hope that as this story and possibly others like it unfold we keep our focus on two specific things. First, we need to focus on the lies that got our troops to Iraq in the first place and who told those lies. What level of responsibility do those liars hold in all this? Second, that no human being can be expected to witness the continued horrors that are a daily part of life for our military in Iraq without cracking. When a military member cracks that is a form of “momentary insanity”. Now I’m not saying that actions carried out in “momentary insanity” shouldn’t have consequences at all. Rather, what I’m saying is shouldn’t insanity, even momentary insanity, be held to a different standard than someone who was “in their right mind”??

As for the training in “Ethics and Values” now being proposed, I view all that as merely a way to take the focus off those liars truly responsible for all this. Like I said earlier, our focus needs to be on the liars themselves and how much of this is their responsibility. What should their punishment be, if any, be for everything that happens after the lies?

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