Reply #12: I understand your point, but I think you're wrong. Here's why...

[Bucky]

When you put on that uniform you know you're putting your life on the line. That in and of itself means you're serving your country and risking your very existence for a higher calling. I have nothing but respect for the troops who were sent to Iraq.

Certainly the mission is fundamentally flawed--they shouldn't have been sent. They're not there for the reason they were told they were going there. But the fault is with the president for lying to them. A measure of their honest service is that the president HAD to lie to them in order to convince the country that the war was necessary.

That doesn't erase the troops' sacrifice; that doesn't change the fact that they said "if the country sends me, I'll serve and follow orders". A democracy needs a military that follows rather than gives the orders. Hell, if the military feels like it can pick and choose the orders it'll follow, you won't really have a democracy. The war is not the troops' fault. The fault belongs first with the lying president and secondarily with the citizenry who failed to question the bogus claims used to justify the war.

(That's just the domestic responsibility; a big share of hte blame falls on Saddam Hussein too who could have prevented it all by being less of a bastard).

I want to offer this analogy. Let's say there's a fire company who respond to a fire someplace. That's their mission: to respond to fires when called upon to do so. On the way to the site the dumbass monkey at the wheel drives the firetruck off a bridge and kills the whole crew. Then it turns out the fire was a false alarm anyway. Are the firefighters heroes? Hell yes, responding to fires is dangerous, low paying, necessary work. But who do you blame? I blame the monkey driver and I blame the citizens who let the city hire a monkey as a driver. It's a tragedy, but the valor of the firefighters is never in question.