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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (647970)	10/19/2004 12:29:38 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Refusing Orders by Matthew Rothschild When a whole platoon of U.S. soldiers starts refusing direct orders, you know that the Iraq War cannot be going much worse. On October 13, soldiers of the 343rd Quartermaster Company refused to deliver a shipment of fuel from an air base in the south near Nasiriya along a dangerous route to a base north of Baghdad. Some of the soldiers report that the fuel they were to deliver was contaminated. The soldiers said their trucks were extremely unsafe and they did not have an adequate armed escort. Their objections have struck a nerve with many soldiers and their loved ones, who've been complaining about the lack of proper equipment for months now. The soldiers of the 343rd were hardly peaceniks. Staff Sergeant Michael Butler is a 24-year veteran who served in the first Gulf War. According to the New York Times, "a wall of Sergeant Butler's living room is covered with certificates and citations from the Army." Others in the unit have been even more demonstrative about their patriotism and love of the military. One had his "bedroom painted the dark blue of the American flag," the Times reported. Another "liked to walk around town in his uniform when he was home on leave." But the conditions on the ground have taken some of the luster off. "When my husband refuses to follow an order, it has to be something major," Jackie Butler told the Clarion Ledger, which broke this story. Another soldier, Amber McClenny, told her mother that the trucks couldn't go faster than 40 mph, the Clarion Ledger reported. According to the paper, McClenny told her mother "there was a 99 percent chance they were going to get ambushed or fired at" and the soldiers "would have had no way to fight back." Bush placed these and 140,000 other U.S. soldiers in harm's way, and he has not done nearly enough to make sure that this harm is minimized. So this particular group of soldiers did what any rational human being would do when faced with a needless suicide mission. They refused the order. If their example spreads, the ability of the U.S. military to continue to wage this war will quickly erode.