Reply #29: You're right. You can only follow orders until you reach the point of being a "good German"

[Rozlee]

and putting the babies in ovens. As a retired nurse, I could have been fired for not following a doctor's orders. The exception was if I felt his orders would harm a patient. The Hippocratic Oath of doctors applies to nurses and all medical personnel. As an Army nurse, I wish I'd had Manning's courage in following my conscience. Instead, I had all these visions of being Florence Nightingale and ministering to both Americans and combatants. Those "combatants" were mostly civilians. They sometimes suffered a sort of Stockholm Syndrome that tore me apart with guilt; actually thanking us and being grateful for our care after it was our occupation and aggression that had caused their injuries and the deaths of their loved ones to begin with. As a member of an occupying army, you're never really a benign force in the lives of those whose land you occupy, no matter how much you try and tell yourself you are. Manning saw this and tried to let the world know it. And for the most part, the world didn't care. Even now, ask any man on the street who Pvt. Manning is and they'll probably say "Isn't she the chick that we rescued from that hospital in Iraq?" Hell, even ask most of them who Julian Assange is and they'll probably think he's this year newest brand of perfume. A nation in which only 7% can name the first four presidents of this country isn't a nation that is intelligent enough to form opinions on much of anything. It's a nation that might eventually put babies in ovens. Hell, it was a nation that was conned into invading a country that had never hurt us and slaughtering it's people in waves of "collateral damage." And the guy that told the story was treated as a traitor by those that know, and will never be known by the overwhelming majority.