Of course I understand that they have faced pressure from the Iraqi government. That simply comes with the job of being President. The problem has always been the manner in which the President and his Administration have chosen to deal with the various pressures they must inevitably encounter, not just with regards to this issue, but on a whole spectrum of issues which they've confronted through the years.
The sad truth is that President Bush and his administration have shown a consistent propensity to avoid, shrink from and shirk their responsibility to fight our domestic enemies in Congress, the Courts, the federal bureaucracies and the mainstream media.
Their obstinate refusal to accept the cold hard fact that our ability to fight and survive the Long War in which we are embroiled requires not only "giving the orders" to our military to go around the world to seek out and destroy the enemies who fight us with guns and bombs, it also requires that their civilian leadership, their Commander-in-Chief, their elected representatives in Congress, and especially their military chain of command stand up and fight the necessary public relations and propaganda war against those domestic enemies who seek to undermine them at home.
Our superb military personnel have performed their duty magnificently overall, but they have been shamefully served at home by both the civilian leadership and the military's own fifth-column wing of political opportunists...
To reiterate, the problem is not that President Bush has been subjected to "pressures" - it's that his choices and decisions in responding to them have been terrible...
One final comment: it was not my intent to hijack this thread into a "Bush bash". I voted for him twice and have always supported him in the things he has done right. However, I felt it necessary to point out that these shameful prosecutions/persecutions of the Haditha marines and other similar politically motivated cases cannot be properly understood solely in terms of the actions of JAG and/or NCIS personnel and officers in the direct military chain of command.
These particular players are not the cause of these travesties - they are simply the symptom and the agents. They too are merely chess pieces in an elaborate political proxy war being waged by those same domestic enemies we have been discussing throughout these threads. And, the responsibility for the failure to fight the necessary political and public relations war to counter these forces goes all the way to that desk where the buck is supposed to stop.
Thanks again to you and to all the other Freepers here who have gone to such effort to post these threads and keep us informed during these tragic ongoing cases. I add my prayers that our brave troops will ultimately be cleared and that God will help them get through the shameful pain and damage their own country has visited upon them...