Not to mention every contract worker for Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater and all the rest:
Under the theories being advanced in the current war crimes trial of Salim Hamdan, if it is ever contested that George W. Bush or members of his administration committed war crimes, you may be properly charged and tried with those crimes.
''Without people willing to do logistics and more menial tasks,'' [FBI agent George Crouch Jr. ] replied, "al Qaida as we know it couldn't exist. Without people like Mr. Hamdan, Bin Laden would enjoy no support. He would not enjoy protection, and he would probably not have been able to elude capture to this point.''
It's even broader than that. Under that argument, every member of the Bush and Cheney Secret Service details is culpable, as is every police officer who has ever provided security to those ambulatory lumps of steaming offal. "No support" could conceivably apply to every member of the White Hose staff, right down to the junior cooks and maids.
Hell, you could even argue that everyone who voted for Bush in 2004 was complicit in his crimes.
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The guys over there already worry about this. I spend New Years 2007 with a bunch of marines in between Iraq tours. One of the guys got really drunk and I heard yelling in the garage. They didn't know that I was outside in front of the house smoking a cigarette and over heard one of them say, "Dude, that's a fucking war crime. You can't be talking about his shit when we're around civilians. Now shut the fuck up before I beat your head in. I'm not going to prison because you're shooting off your fucking mouth." (Sorry for all the f-bombs, but that's what they said). Then these same guys had to go back again just few months later.
And truthfully, as their friend, I worry about this stuff too. I worry that they have committed war crimes and I wonder if I'm a bad person for continuing to know them. I wonder how they can sleep at night. Then I find out that they don't. I wonder if their parents know. I wonder if they should refuse to go on their next tour, but isn't that leaving their platoon with one less guy to watch their backs? What's right? What's wrong?
The only concrete conclusion I can come to is that President Bush should burn in hell for putting all of us in these positions.
I don't know what the answer is, but I do know this: The "I vas chust followink orders" defense doesn't work. Under the Bush Administration's idea of justice, those Marines are just the sort of guys who would get thrown into the stockade so that higher-ups can skate free.
It was no accident that the only officer punished as a result of abu Ghraib was a reservist, imo.
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