http://www.montrealmirror.com/2006/102606/news2.html

The military exists to fullfill orders. When an unethical order comes down the pipe, soldiers end up stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Going after the weary soldiers who have already been grossly abused by the government is cowardice, especially from those that are also unwilling to stand against the same government, or take responsibility for their own thoughts or actions.

There have been so many poor policy descisions, it's too easy to see that vilifying soldiers as a whole is all too blatant a scapegoatism.

Excerpt from Time

Exclusive: A military dog handler convicted for his role in the prisoner abuse scandal has been ordered back to help train the country's police
By ADAM ZAGORIN
Posted Thursday, Nov. 02, 2006

As if the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal weren't bad enough for America's image in the Middle East, now it may appear to much of the world that one of the men implicated in the scandal is returning to the scene of the crime.

The U.S. military tells TIME that one of the soldiers convicted for his role in Abu Ghraib, having served his sentence, has just been sent back to serve in Iraq.

Sgt. Santos Cardona, 32, a military policeman from Fullerton, Calif., served in 2003 and 2004 at Abu Ghraib as a military dog handler. After pictures of Cardona using the animal to threaten Iraqis were made public, he was convicted in May of dereliction of duty and aggravated assault, the equivalent of a felony in the U.S. civilian justice system. The prosecution demanded prison time, but a military judge instead imposed a fine and reduction in rank. Though Cardona was not put behind bars, he was also required to serve 90 days of hard labor at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

Before Cardona boarded a plane at Pope Air Force Base this week for the long flight to his unit's Kuwait staging area, he told close friends and family that he dreaded returning to Iraq. One family member described him as "depressed," though stoic about his fate. According to a close friend with whom Cardona spoke just before his departure, the soldier is fearful that he remains a marked man, forever linked to the horrors of Abu Ghraib — he appears in at least one al-Qaeda propaganda video depicting the abuse — and that he and comrades serving with him in Iraq could become targets for terrorists. To make matters worse, his 23rd MP Company has been selected to train Iraqi police, which have been the target of frequent assassination attempts and, according to US intelligence are heavily infiltrated by insurgents. Attempts to reach Cardona directly were unsuccessful.

But Cardona’s physical well-being is not the only issue of concern connected to his transfer. According to former senior U.S. military officers and others interviewed by TIME, sending a convicted abuser back to Iraq to train local police sends the wrong signal at a time when the U.S. is trying to bolster the beleagured government in Baghdad, where the horrors of Abu Ghraib are far from forgotten. "If news of this deployment is accurate, it represents appallingly bad judgment," says retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who commanded a division in the first Gulf War. "The symbolic message perceived in Iraq will likely be that the U.S. is simply insensitive to the abuse of their prisoners."

Great journalists MUST tell the truth as they see it, however painful it may be. Seymour Hersh is one of our greatest living legends of journalism. Stuff gets through to him that others will never see because people know of his integrity and pursuit of the truth.
Our military men and women are very unfairly caught the insanity of a war where one could argue every American death has been unnecessary. When an IED goes off and blows up a vehicle, everyone is transformed into a state of savage compulsion to retaliate and annihilate every possible enemy, anyone not wearing a US uniform, in a frenzy of retaliatory fire. The smoke clears and a soccer team and spectators lay dead, slaughtered, massacred.
That picture of insanity has been brought to us by Cheney, Rummy, and a few others with GW sitting as if on the front of MAD magazine explaining that he has a classified mission for some Democrats. What must we do to stop the insanity and restrain such incompetence from ever coming into power in the US again?

Channing
Ventura CA USA