talk about selective objection!

      Jason Naser Abdo has said he intended to kill other soldiers, which makes his claim to conscientious objection suspect.  My first thought (this should go without saying) was, good, one potential atrocity averted, but I confess that my second thought was, uh oh for CO.  I've long held that there are much easier ways to get out of the army, which is as it's supposed to be.  Conscientious objection should be a deeply held and hard-won belief and it should be predicated on valuing human life, even when the objection is to a specific war.  It usually is all that; I don't know of any other CO who followed up his or her discharge with murder, state-sanctioned or otherwise.  So that leaves me wondering about the process which approved Abdo's CO, when many other applicants I know of were forced to jump through hoops for months, only to be denied. And when, according to a WashPo story, some GI rights counselors found him fishy. 
       Which brings me to my third thought: I hoped like hell he wasn't a member of IVAW.  Turns out, he wasn't, per a statement from IVAW, but also turns out that they were as credulous as the chain of command who granted his CO.  Not something they'd like to have in common with the army, I'd guess.  I never came across this guy or his case, but, depending on what I knew about him, I might have been credulous too, given my sympathy for soldiers who oppose the wars, refuse to fight, advocate resistance, or are "anti-army."
       IVAW is staunchly committed to nonviolence -- a critical difference here -- but this isn't the first time they've backed the wrong horse. That may be a price of grassroots organizing -- you can't vet everyone who agrees with your cause -- but IVAW is hardly alone in its willingness to believe.  I'm always surprised, naively, probably, at pols, profs and Joe Schmos who lie about military experience for years wihout being called on it.  It's a credential everyone is loathe to challenge.  Well, almost everyone.  It's usually the real vets who smell a rat.  The cliche is that people who have been to war tell true about it -- which is kind of like the cliche that no one who has been to war is in favor of it.  which can't be true because someone keeps starting wars and sending other someones to fight them, and those someones aren't all civilians.
     As for Abdo, I circle back to: good, they got him.  I don't want any more additions to my list of bad apples.

Does 10% constitute a few?

       Going through old clippings, I came across a story in the WashPo from May 2007, reporting the findings of the military's 4th mental health study, the first and, apparently, only one to ask questions about ethics.  The study found that about 10% of the 1,767 soldiers and marines in Iraq who were surveyed reported having mistreated civilians there.  The greatest portion of that abuse involved insults and swearing (a small portion confessed to physical abuse) and nearly 2/3 said they wouldn't report a violation by a battle buddy.  Over a third condoned torture under certain circumstances --  like if it got important info or would save lives, which are pretty much the same hypotheticals civilians buy into, even though torture isn't usually that efficient or effective. 
       There were approximately 125,000 U.S. troops in Iraq in August & September 2006, when the survey was done.  If the findings are representative, that would come to 12,500 soldiers who did stuff like kicking Iraqi civilians or damaging their possessions when it wasn't warranted -- or worse.  (I don't believe, btw, that such a small proportion swore at Iraqis or used epithets against them.  Do you?) The survey didn't seem to count if these were single or multiple incidents, but we can guess.  And guess that, if 176 soldiers in the survey admitted to such actions, there were at least that many who didn't fess up.
      Probably not coincidentally, over 40% of those surveyed and/or interviewed reported low morale in their units. The Pentagon completed the study in Nov. 2006, but didn't release it for about 5 months.  They didn't say why.