True, some are not worthy of admiration, but most are.

War does strange things to people. Best we can hope for is to be viligant and catch the bad apples as quick as possible. Unfortunatly it looks like in this case the army did not believe their guys could do something this bad so did not respond when they should of.

Brings to mind My Lai, Pinkville and Lt. William Calley during the Vietnamese War, so sad.

A military firing squad for convicted murderers might serve as a deterrent to others considering this type of reprehensible behavior.

There is much that is nauseating in this report, but one stand out is the following:

"Army officials have not disclosed a motive for the killings and macabre behavior. Nor have they explained how the attacks could have persisted without attracting scrutiny."

Perhaps I can clue them here:

"Dear Army Officials: You are members of the world's must brutal death machine, the United Sates armed forces. You kill who you want, when you want, where you want and, huddling like worthless cowards behind the fig leaf of "valor," you justify all of it in the name of God and Country. These worthless sacks of dog vomit are the perfect product of the arrogance, ruthlessness and moral unaccountability that oozes from the Oval Office and permeates the ranks. But DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT. A handful of these worthless punks will serve sentences of less than 10 years and the rest of y'all up the chain of command will skate. So here's to Pinkville and My Lai, one of the most assiduously documented war crimes of the 20th century for which one officer was imprisoned before ultimately being pardoned by a criminal Commander in Chief just like the rest of the liars and killers who perpetrated the crime and then covered it up. And God Bless America and pray for the souls of the tens or hundreds of thousands of people murdered in our name every year. Amen."

There are so many in Iraq and Afghanistan that are doing their jobs and some who are doing outstanding work. But a handful will slip through the testing and bring us shame. What price for this shame should we add to the hundreds of billions of dollars spent over the last 9 year?

Nothing to worry about. Just a few bad apples.

The military does absolutely no psychological screening before entrusting it's members with weapons that have the capacity to kill people by the dozens. They rely on chaplains and the like to counsel troubled soldiers which is waste of time when you are dealing with monsters of this ilk. In my mind they should do away with the chaplains and replace them with shrinks who are embedded in the combat units for the specific purpose of identifying the creeps who pull this kind of garbage.

Shrinks, yes, that's the answer.

Oh yeah, and a stint in Leavenworth is such a great deterrent. One of the things that came out of the Fort Hood massacre was that the Army is so woefully understaffed with mental health support staff that they put up with Maj. Hasan in the face of compelling evidence that he was a complete nut job. The military attracts all sorts of people, mostly good hard working patriots, but it also attracts a certain personality that gets off on killing people just for the sake of killing people. In a war where we are trying to convince a population that we are the good guys, even a small number of creeps like these guys completely destroy everything we are trying to accomplish. Maybe embedding mental health specialists in units is overkill, but there needs to be some kind of screening process before these people enlist, and the chain of command needs to to be trained to identify the warning signs that bad apples always display before things like this happen. The officers and NCO's in the unit where this happened need to be evaluated pretty closely as well, because this was all taking place right under their noses and they failed to pick up on it.

Cozmic Ed,

You sound like an old school propagandist from the U.S.S.R. Either that, or you're blogging from Tehran. Which is it?

If you're a U.S. Citizen. Why hate the U.S. Armed Forces so much if you continue while living under their umbrella of protection? Wouldn't you feel safer in a true democracy, like North Korea, Pakistan, or Cuba? Someplace with a depoliticized and professional Army.

Mister Tee are you condoning outright violations of international law and the Geneva Commission or are you just following orders?

Or are simply an idiot?

The fact these soldiers are being held accountable demonstrates these violations of human rights (and the U.S. Military Code of Conduct) are the exception, and do not represent the conduct/attitude of the overwhelming majority of service men and women.

Cozmic Ed is suggesting the entire U.S. Military is culpable for obscene violations of human rights. They are not. We shouldn't allow wackos to extrapolate from exceptions.

Never in the history of the world has a military superpower behaved less aggressively than the U.S. has behaved since the fall of the U.S.S.R. We haven't enslaved any other nation, we haven't increased our territory, we haven't invaded our neighbors (or any country) unless they meant to cause us harm.

We are the most benign empire to date, and that's why it is unlikely to last.

I should have typed "Uniform Code of Military Justice", not Code of Conduct. Typing too fast.

we haven't invaded our neighbors (or any country) unless they meant to cause us harm.

How is the search for those WMDs going?

"We haven't enslaved any other nation ...,"

Strike 1

www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=2&contentid=5179&page=1
www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2006/010106sexslavescandal.htm

"... we haven't increased our territory ...,"

Strike 2

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Africa_Command
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Southern_Command

"... we haven't invaded our neighbors...."

Strike 3

www.fas.org/asmp/profiles/mexico.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Honduran_constitutional_crisis

http://globalresearch.CA/ [ this website presents:
news from Canada seeing USA fascism imposed worldwide and in America injected into the 'thinking' of TV-numb&TV-dumb Americans, AND
news of seeing Canada invaded by USA-driven make-fear robopolice.
--- Toronto example: showing police car behind police lines torched by police-directed provocateurs in plainclothes but shod in tattletale police-issue boots
... it's always the boots. ]
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19928

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Oh-for-three, you're OUT still standing in the batter's box.

But maybe you qualify for the finals round in the competition of the clueless:
-- Internet for Dummies Who Assume No One Else Reads the Internet:

... Dumbest Man on the Internet?

by Ben Dimiero, Media Matters .ORG
September 21, 2010

MediaMatters.ORG/blog/201009210034

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Reporter: CNN Refused to Air Footage of US War Crime in Iraq,
by Democracy Now!, September 21, 2010

A prominent Australian war correspondent has revealed the news giant CNN refused to air footage of an apparent war crime by US troops in Iraq. In an interview with the Australian network ABC, Michael Ware says he witnessed a US soldier fatally shooting an Iraqi teenager in the back of the head. The boy then lay dying for twenty minutes.

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