“If this "War on Terror" is the "War of this Generation" and Washington is not going to change that mission, then … Washington needs to mobilize this nation through national service (conscription). “To have 1 percent of this nation's citizens bear 100 percent of that burden is morally reprehensible. ‘Support the Troops’ needs to be more than words to the other 99 percent of this nation's citizens.”

I do not like to make comparisons to Vietnam as they are totally different in the fact that Oil is a huge part of the current war. However as with Nam how many of the nations elite have served in the "War on Terror"???

Dear Sir or mam

A very good read however with everything in life there is balance. For every Sgt. Hensly there are 10,000 honorable soldiers doing there jobs.

As the quote in the article says

"If you have never been outside the wire, you really have no basis [to judge]," said Hand. "You've never been in a life-or-death situation where you have had to count on the guy to your left and right ... You see stuff out there that no one back here is going to see."

This is a situation that makes good soldiers angry as this just creates more insurgents.

Respectfully

Sgt. Boyd W. Donaldson

U. S. Army

OIF VI-VII

"Hey, you need to go out there and you guys gotta start getting kills"

Just crying after reading the first page only. Stopped reading.

The people who are saying the above, making other soldiers kill people, have gone so far they are lost. -- I only hope our police departments don't hire them; then we are lost; but I think they are hiring them.

As I understand it, soldiers in training are taught to use their heads and not act on illegal, immoral or irrational orders. When they kill someone who is a civilian, who is no threat, yes they should be punished. But let's see, for a change, the people who give the orders, from as high up as necessary, be punished far more.

Seeing that the majority of the American public did nothing constructive let alone concerted to stop the atrocity of the Bush "OIL" War in Iraq,why even philosophize now on the number of innocent Iraqis who were murdered (with complete immunity) by US Military snipers? After all thousands of innocent Iraqis at a time were wiped out in neighbourhoods like in Fallujah (as just one example) by incessant US Military bombing and Americans for the most part just ignored it or even cheered it on!

The only recompense or contrition to be offered up now to Iraqis for their pain and sorrow and the unwarranted destruction of their country is really nothing more than "Sanctimony and Crocodile Tears" because these same Americans displayed no conscience and did nothing and took no strong steps or actions to stop these atrocities in Iraq,that were freely instigated and inflicted by their own government and the US Military.

Are you suggesting that we take young people who are anxious to do some good in the world by becomming doctors, lawyers, electricians, etc. and turn them into killers too? Perhaps ruin their minds and their relationships and their lives forever? For What? Haven't you noticed that the real war, the one we fought in retaliation for 911, in Afganistan, is being completely fudged for the sake of this stupidity in Iraq. Tell me you haven't bought all the crap we've been sold from the Bush wackers. Mission accomplished and all that nonsence. Tell me you don't lose focus every time someone waves the stars and stripes in front of you. We have lost our integrity in the eyes of the whole world. How will sending more innocent young lives into the toilet going to help? The war was unjust to begin with. We've been too stupid to pull out. Pride goeth before the fall. Let's take our fall without sending our best and brightest in to save us. They certainly didn't ask for this.

I know I am innocent because I did everything I knew how to convince everyone I knew that GWB should not be president ever. And I did every thing I could to convince people not to go to war. I called my congressmen too. This may be a democracy, but the people have very little power. Our government has been corrupted. We have no control.

Violence ruins people. From soldiers to police, it is the same. It doesn't matter what the initial intention was, the evil takes over and ruins even the good people. How do we stop it? Like quitting smoking, or losing weight or any other bad habit, we just have to stop. Period. It probably wouldn't hurt to end the violence in the media, but we have about as much chance of doing that as we do of ending smoking or obesity.

"Place blame where it belongs

"The incident was investigated and the soldiers punished as war criminals, as they should have been."

How many of those soldiers were ACTUALLY punished? Go back and read the article.

"What I don't see is the connection to any alleged policy to increase "body counts." Blame the war not on our soldiers, who by and large are doing their jobs and abiding by the rules of engagement the best they can, given that the enemy is not wearing a uniform, . . . .

Tohse to whom you refer as "the enemy" are said by the military itself to be over 90 per cent IRAQI, who are rightfully fighting to liberate their country from illegal occupation by YOUR COUNTRY.

Stop the cowardly blaming of the victims.

And, yes: the "body count" order came from above; it was not decided in the field.

". . . and blame the President and the Congress which initally supported and endorsed the war, which includes John Edwards, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton.

"-- barrister89 Friday, May 9, 2008 04:07 PM"

And blame those who voted for the Bushit criminal enterprise even AFTER they knew we were lied, principally by him, into illegally invading and illegally occupying a non-threatening soveign nation?

It is no small thing that that criminal enterprise vociferously asserts that Bushit alone has the authority to conduct wars, and to do so as he sees fit. That lays the full culpability, therefore, in the laps of that criminal enterprise.

Same goes especially for the war crime of torture, which was authorized and being imposed long before even Congress learned of it. Am I resonsible for a fact when that fact is withheld from me and my knowledge? When my course of conduct is induced by means of lies by those in sole possession of the full information?

There's plenty of blame to go around. But it was the Bushit criminal enterprise, not the Democrats, who lied the country into this illegal war and occupation. To underscore that fact I remind you that Colin Powell is a Republican, not a Democrat.

And remind you that the "Principals" committee which planned the war crime of torture down to the fine details was populated by Republicans -- none of its members being a Democrat.

Torture is a war crime. It cannot be made legal. And any ATTEMPT to make it legal is ALSO illegal. The person who made that illegal attempt, to fraudlently give torture the appearance of legality for the consumption of the dishonest and the uninformed, was John Yoo, a Republican -- not a Democrat.