life is sweet.

mm... breakfast
Originally uploaded by atb20.

i'm a lucky person. i just wanted to be clear. despite my occasional lapses into self-pity or the moral outrage at the bush white house, i've been an incredibly fortunate individual. i've got an amazingly stable family, a supportive (and adorable) husband, and kick-ass friends. that said, the government of this country is crap. i'm not talking about the cuts to the homeland security funds for nyc (honestly, i couldn't tell you what they've been doing with them in the first place). i'm talking about the deplorable way our leader is handling the horrors of haditha and ishaqi.. blaming the troops for ethical deficits, when he has the greatest ethical deficits of all. the way troops behave in war is a direct result of the atrocities that they've seen and the attitudes and behavior that has been modeled by their superiors. these troops were not acting alone... they were acting in a way that reflects the environment they are in and the psychologically traumatizing events to which they have been subjected. that does not excuse their behavior by any stretch, but for bush to make statements about rooting out the individuals who are responsible without taking a moment to look in the mirror and see where they learned it, is like an abusive father wagging his finger at his son who beats his wife. and now they're going to employ ethical training...without taking a moment to understand why in three separate and seemingly unrelated incidents (at least of those that have been reported) several american troops have treated the iraqi people like target practice. this is not a matter of poor ethical training, it's a matter of being put in an environment where ethics no longer exist...