You're also responsible for one of the most courageous posts I've seen anywhere in this forum site : when you spoke out and up in support of the poster who dared to object that US military who have suffered so in Iraq must take their due share of the responsibility for their having accepted--willingly or not--to follow orders which are, even to some, perhaps many of themselves, illegal and immoral.

  This was done in that diary here where the memorial candles are flickering.  Your post pointed out how, by straight-forward analogy, those SS soldiers of the Nazi Reich who are deemed not worthy of memorials and homages and for whose cemetery visits you mentioned having protested Reagan and Kohl (?)--is really no different.  

  It really takes a person of exceptional insight, I think, to draw this astute parallel as you did.  Indeed, it's one or the other; trying to have it both ways is pure hypocrisy.  If this war is an unjust, illegal one, then our pride in those who are executing the executive's illegal orders in furtherance of that war is perverse, is misplaced to say the least.

  If the German people who supported Hitler were blame-worthy for having done so, then we, today, who say, 'I support our troops!' are hardly less so.  We cannot merely 'support our troops'; this is tantamount to saying "I support Bush and this war!", since the troops are there because and only because of his orders.

  We are living in denial and in a double-standard.  And that denial has cost uncounted Iraqis their lives and possessions.  One day, when our history is recounted, we shall have our place of shame right alongside--if not below--those who interned the Japanese-Americans in World War II, and other now recognized outrages of our history.

  You have rare integrity and fairness of mind, Ritter, very rare.  So many people, when the issue strikes close to home for them, prefer one standard for themselves and another for others.  I was hoping to meet you at the lunch.

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge