His primary topic is the Marines under investigation in the Haditha killings.
But those few Marines in Haditha are not solely responsible for this abomination, and they must not be left to absorb all of the blame alone. Such misconduct bespeaks a systemic problem, a scandalous failure of leadership, and the killers' superiors share responsibility with the men who actually pulled the triggers. And this time, unlike the farcical Abu Ghraib cover-up, prosecutors must methodically work their way up the chain of command until they have identified every superior officer who, through neglect, indifference or incompetence has contributed to this catastrophe.
He concludes with:
....since they no longer can scrape up enough new recruits and because a military draft would be political suicide, they've issued "stop-loss" orders and consigned our Marines and soldiers to endless, exhausting cycles of deployment after deployment. Given all this, is it any wonder our troops are at their wits' end? Given all this, is it a little easier to understand the collapse of Marine Corps discipline in Haditha and the murder of 24 civilians?.
Because of their deceit and incompetence, our civilian leaders have managed to make the United States a global pariah, they have caused the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people and they are breaking the back of our military. It's hard to believe, but we have now been in Iraq for as almost as long as we fought World War II. At this point, however, instead of being on the verge of victory, our soldiers are exhausted and their families are disintegrating. And nobody is able to say what victory is or how it can be attained.
As citizens of this democracy, we cannot permit this debacle to continue. When the ghost of President Kennedy rises up to ask us what we can do for our country, the answer is stone simple. What we can do for our country is accept the reality that we cannot win this war and end it now. What we can do for our country is bring our soldiers and Marines home to their families, make amends and start healing our wounds.
What we can do for our country is take it back from the radicals who've stolen it away and start the process of restoring our integrity and our honor and our hope.
