What do the authors think that soldiers do? Where do they think all that ammunition goes? Do they imagine that a vast population of dead just up and died?

The journalistic tactic of personalized micro-narrative is ineradicable, but how naive can you be -- and remain? It is deeply misleading, a form of disguise, to focus on the occasional documented good-boys-gone-wrong tale, while the real story swirls obviously about us everywhere.

Virtually every unit on the eastern front committed atrocities, as a kind of filigree on the basic thrust of policy. It took 50 years for the perpetrating nation to grasp this. Will we ever have such a reckoning?

WHOOPS, SORRY! I gather, on reading other letters from "imho", that the person in question is a "she", not a "he" as mis-stated in my message a short time ago. My sincere apologies to you, imho...

-- GSC

"imho" is largely correct on the issue in his letter "Let us not mince words", except in his characterization of the Bush Gang as mere "murderers".

THEY ARE WAR CRIMINALS!

And people (whether US citizens or not) who do not raise their voices against these war criminals should surely be judged to be complicit in the war crimes.

-- GSC

There are no moral standards for this war because this is an immoral engagement. From the President down, everyone in command is a murderer. The President is a murderer. The Vice President is a murderer. Gates, Rice, Mukasey, Rumsfield, Petraeus, Armitage, Barber, Wolfowitz, Mullen, Leahy, you name them all, they're murderers. They hired and armed their hit men, aimed them at an innocent nation, and their corporate capitalist buddies reap the benefits of Defense contracts by the billions. They are killing humans for financial gain.

Every Senator and Congressperson who voted for this war, and every one who continues to vote to fund these murders, is culpable. Every single American and Iraqi death is on their hands. They are cowards who hide behind the flag and forswear themselves to safety and reelection.

If we are serious about fighting terrorists, we should begin with the Executive Branch, and work through the Legislative and Judicial.

The Bush oligarchy has sent this whole country to hell. But I'm not bitter...

Oh, wait. Yes I am. Link below to why.

With young soldiers clueless about the past, and older commanders trying to relive in their minds the era of Vietnam that ripped the nation apart, this is a shocking example again of how the Bush people refused to prepare anyone for what was to come in Iraq.

I'm sickened and disgusted by this, not just the crime, but the punishment.

The conquest of Iraq isn't a cakewalk but the road to Hell....

Why is the American memory so short? A book has been written by an American sociologist professor which cannot be published in the US presently because it is supposed to be demoralising considering what is going on in Irak. It is published however in France where this brave and honourable professor reminds his readers of findings in the US Army archives on rape and murder among civilians after invasion in Normandy l944.

Reading the book it seems nothing has changed: gangs of drunken drug-using soldiers spread fear among the civilians. First rape was reported 6 hours after the invasion of Normandy had taken place. Eisenhower was very severe about troop relations with civilians and rapists were after being judged in US military courts executed.

However there was much else taking place showing the liberators were a pretty dangerous bunch elite or not.

Eissenhower had his HQ in the city of Reims where the German capitulation was signed May 7 1945. During a recent luncheon in Reims with some top figures there I was given additional

reasons for why the Americans were genuinely hated by the liberated. However I fear the worst victims was German women, their story remains untold. Enough that Eisenhower executed rapists in France, in Germany there was no punishment at all for such abonimable crimes.

And the Americans were not alone in this primitive attitude of course. The Russians took rape just as natural a freedom for its armies let alone the British and the French (among the cruellest).

I myself am not German, not American, not British, not French however I live in France and am a trained historian.

And I am by the way a woman.

Hillary Clinton!

The soldiers who shot unarmed non-combatants are the ones who bear the full brunt of law.

I always thought the chain of command starts from top. So if the local screws up, the top guy gets the sack. That was how the Wehrmacht and Soviet Army operated. So the top guys were disciplined enough not to let their subordinates run loose.

Here it seems to the opposite. The subordinates take the flak for the top command's failure. The refusal of the soldier to implicate his boss shows his discipline and obedience.

And instead of letting him go and punishing his superiors, the Army punished this poor guy who was just a tool.

The Army was based on the teaching that you watch your friend's back more than watching your own.

The Army in Iraq seems to be more like: The Top Brass watches its own back, while the soldiers watch their Top Brass back.

Unless the top brass comes clean and resigns enmasse, this system will not go.

Supporting troops does not mean instant rescues, or more coffee. It means the superiors taking the flak for the stupid orders they give.

Ideally the commander should resign and court-martialled.

But then we never indicted Rumsfeld, so there's no question of indicting the top brass.

Since when is there anything moral about war, or any other form of killing other humans?

The whole point of this article is that the technology and tactics employed did *not* destroy with no risk to the soldiers involved. The point is that the nature of fighting a counterinsurgency of this kind requires going out in small numbers and exposing soldiers to extreme amounts of risk in an extremely tense and dangerous environment. This kind of stress and fear results in the bad decision-making that led to the killings described. Nevertheless a major function of the NCO corps and, especially, the officer corps is to maintain a morally proper environment in the face of bad situations and difficult decisions, which the officers in the battalion clearly failed to do--indeed, they apparently actively contributed to the degradation of moral decision-making in the sniper section.

Individual responsibility is important; the snipers on the ground made the wrong decisions and should have been punished, but it is disgraceful that the only guy to face jail time, out of everybody involved, was the lowest-ranking enlisted soldier.

Among the greatest tragedies of this occupation is the way it has degraded the moral fabric of the armed forces.