Dishonoring the Uniform

Tim over at CPT Patti pretty much gives the people who stand accused of torturing Iraqi POWs the seal of disapproval for dishonoring the American Armed Forces. He pretty much sums up all of the things I've been feeling over the last week as I watched what has developed. To the accused, LTC Tim writes:

You had all the tools you need. You had training. You had 228 years of history and tradition to guide you. You had the Army Values to steer you even through the murkiest of times if you needed them (not that the issues here are murky...not at all.) In my view you failed to live up to each and every one of those values. Hell, even if you couldn't remember them all, just remembering one or two and living by them would have kept you out of all this.

And If all else fails your own humanity and even the Bible could have steered you away from these atrocities.

But you blew it. You failed.

You failed to uphold the standards of humanity...nor the standards of American Soldiers.

The men and women of the American Armed Forces are better than what is being shown on TV. Unfortunately, the rotten apples at the bottom of the barrel make the rest look bad. In conjunction with the lack of media coverage of the good things happening in Iraq and you have the makings of an image disaster.

(Correction: Tim is LTC Tim, not CPT. My apologies, trooper!)