Bush's mentality is bleeding down to the troops on the ground

Read this very carefully from the Washington Post: (all emphasis mine)

The Marine officer who commanded the battalion involved in the Haditha killings last November did not consider the deaths of 24 Iraqis, many of them women and children, unusual and did not initiate an inquiry, according to a sworn statement he gave to military investigators in March.

"I thought it was very sad, very unfortunate, but at the time, I did not suspect any wrongdoing from my Marines," Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Marines, said in the statement.

"I did not have any reason to believe that this was anything other than combat action," he added.

A marine Lt. Col. doesn't think 24 dead after any action is worth an inquiry. Later in the article, this appears:

At one point, Col. John Ewers, the Marine lawyer who took the statement, seemed almost exasperated with Chessani's passive approach to the incident. Using a profanity, he told Chessani his own reaction was "15 civilians dead, 23 or 24 total dead, with no real indication of how it was that we arrived at the enemy KIA number."

Ewers asked: "Did it occur to you that you needed to do an investigation simply so you could go to the locals and say, 'This was righteous'? . . . And be confident that you were speaking with certainty?"

Chessani responded: "Sir, I did not think about it like that. . . . Enemy has picked the place, he had picked the time, and the location for a reason. . . . [H]e wanted to make us look bad."

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

The leader of a marine battalion can't be bothered to find out what the hell happened when his troops killed 24 people.

Go back and read that first paragraph again.

Now tell me it's just 24 people who have been killed this way. If it's not unusual, it's happening regularly.

Iraq isn't Viet Nam - it's hotter and drier.

The problem was we didn't know who the enemy was. We were told the Vietcong wore black pyjamas and coolie hats, but everyone wore black pyjamas and coolie hats.

2nd Lt. Graeme Cusack, Royal Australian Regiment, 1966