Yes, the Bush administration is again making the enlisted men the fall guys.
Pentagon investigations into the shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians are focused on about a dozen enlisted Marines and do not target their commanding officers, the lawyer for one of the officers said Tuesday.Forget about the fact that Rep. Murtha said this past weekend that there was definitely a cover up of this seeming war crime, a cover up that goes far beyond the men involved:
"This investigation should have been over two or three weeks after the incident."...But funny, the DOD apparently isn't interested in investigating anybody above the grade of staff sargeant. After all, in the Bush administration, we don't hold bosses responsible for their mistakes, we simply blame their employees. And preferably the lowest employees on the totem pole.
Murtha, a Marine veteran who six months ago called for the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, added, "There's has to have been a cover-up. ... There's no question about it..."
"There's no question about what happened. ... The problem is: Who covered it up, why did they cover it up and why did it take so long?"
Ah yes, one step closer to creating that banana republic military that Bush and Rummy and General Pace seem so fond of. Speaking of General Pace, how did he suddenly get out of this investigation? According to Murtha, the cover-up could go as high as Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So why aren't any officers at all being investigated, let alone Pace himself? Again, per Murtha quoted by ABC, a network that didn't censor the Murtha quote to protect Pace:
"It goes right up the chain of command right up to General Pace. ... Did he know about it? Did he cover it up? I'm sure he didn't, but we need to find out."Yes we do need to find out, but we won't. Because General Pace and all of his officer flunkies won't be touched by this investigation - it's all the enlisted men's fault, per Bush and Pace, it always is. Bush and Pace would have us believe that if it weren't for those bad-apple enlisted men who supposedly also came up with Abu Ghraib all by themselves (even though the same practices were being done at other US military prisons around the world - coincidence, I'm sure) we wouldn't have all of these human rights abuses going on.
And in any case, we can't have an honest investigation of whether General Pace and any officers were involved. That simply is not the way the military works in a banana republic. If our military leaders were actually accountable to international law, we'd be a democracy and a shining beacon around the world. And we just couldn't have that.
What's a war crime between friends, eh General Pace?
