[Prodigal Son]

There was no bravery involved in dropping a grenade on himself with no enemy troops in sight.

Ann Coulter goes where I would surely not. I would not like to have every aspect of my military career under her microscope. She has a point. I'm not arguing that. But I draw a series of distinctions when criticizing one's service. Once they have passed the release point and are in a combat situation, I'm uncomfortable with how closely civilians should examine each thing that the soldiers do.

Case in point: the CNN video of the US Marine shooting the unarmed wounded Iraqi and his buddies cheering about it. Taken from the civilian perspective, that looks very terrible. But.... I would prefer not to try to judge that Marine too much on that. He's somewhere doing something that the rest of us are not. Hard to judge him rationally.

[Rutabega]

I'm with you--I hate the constant 'tattling' by the media about the things the soldiers do in combat zones. They definitely don't need to be scrutinized by civilians like me (IF they are not things that are considered unreasonable by the majority of soldiers!)

Cleland was rotten for lots of reasons, but it seems sort of obnoxious to kick a guy who had three limbs blown off, for whatever reason.