OpEdNews - Page 4 of Article: Bush's My Lai

The Abu Ghraib scandal led to military convictions against nine reservists who were sentenced and marched off in shackles. Lynndie England, a 22-year-old single mother who had been photographed holding an Iraqi on a leash and pointing at a detainee 's penis, was sentenced to three years in prison.

Bush has continued to cite the Abu Ghraib case as one of a handful of mistakes that he will concede occurred during the Iraq War. At a joint press conference with Tony Blair on May 25, 2006, Bush said, "We 've been paying for that for a long period of time. "

Haditha Atrocity

Now comes the Haditha atrocity in which several Marines are alleged to have gone on a killing spree in the insurgent-dominated town on Nov. 19, 2005, after one Marine died from an improvised explosive device.

According to published accounts of U.S. military investigations, the Marines retaliated for the bombing by pulling five men from a cab and shooting them, and entering two homes where civilians, including women and children, were executed. Some of the victims reportedly were praying or begging for mercy when they were shot.

The Marines then tried to cover up the killings by claiming that the civilian deaths were caused by the original explosion or a subsequent firefight, according to investigations by the U.S. military and human rights groups. One senior Defense Department official told the New York Times that of the 24 dead Iraqis, the number killed by the bomb was "zero. " [NYT, May 26, 2006]

The Haditha killings are likely to draw comparisons with the Vietnam War 's My Lai massacre on March 16, 1968, when a bloodied unit of the U.S. Army 's Americal Division stormed into a village known as My Lai 4 and slaughtered 347 Vietnamese civilians including babies.

Though the number of dead at Haditha is less than one-tenth the victims at My Lai, the scenarios are eerily similar: U.S. troops fighting a confusing conflict against a shadowy enemy lash out at a civilian population, killing unarmed men, women and children.

If the Marines at Haditha are found guilty of committing the atrocity, they can be expected to receive severe punishment for murder, which under military statutes could include their own executions.

Yet, while these Marines may face severe punishment for violating the laws of war, the political leadership back home up to and including George W. Bush remains immune from any meaningful accountability.

President Bush even won sympathy from some commentators for joining Blair at the May 25 news conference at the White House where the two leaders took turns admitting a few errors in the Iraq War. Bush focused his self-criticism on a couple of tough-talking comments, including his taunt to Iraqi insurgents in 2003 to "bring 'em on. "

The New York Times noted that when Bush mentioned the Abu Ghraib scandal, "his voice was heavy with regret. " [NYT, May 26, 2006]

But the scales of justice may demand more from Bush and Blair than a few limited apologies that ignore the original crime of launching a war in violation of international law against a country that was not threatening their nations.

As the war 's chief instigator, Bush would seem to bear the heaviest blame. To justify the war, he also stoked up the emotions of Americans both civilian and military with false claims about Iraq 's weapons of mass destruction, Hussein 's links to 9/11 and connections between Hussein 's secular regime and al-Qaeda 's Islamic fundamentalists.

Bush 's lies also didn 't stop after Hussein 's regime fell. On June 18, 2005, more than two years into the war, Bush used a radio address to tell the American people that "we went to war because we were attacked, " continuing the subliminal connections: Saddam/Osama, Iraq/Sept. 11.

False Rhetoric

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