Who's in charge of training these inexperienced young troops?

My father in law fought in Korea, came home and trained youngsters to ship off to Vietnam as a Sgt. Major, and tried to keep them human and alive. Several years later he left with the troops for Vietnam.

With our over deployed forces I wonder what effect the shortage and absence of good, experienced leaders has had on the training and directing of the young troops, especially with the losses suffered after the first Gulf War.

More than 11,000 Gulf War veterans, whose average age was 36 when the war began, have since died, many from illnesses their families believed were war-related from exposures to chemical weapons that troops found and destroyed, depleted uranium from U.S. armor-piercing munitions, pollution from oil well fires, experimental vaccines, and anti-nerve agent pretreatment pills, among other toxins.
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/newsArticle.asp?id=1127

It looks like Hell over there. I've no doubt that's just what it feels like. It looks very confusing and frustrating with all of the sand and dust, all goggled and suited up. It must be a shock to get dropped into the chaos. I have doubts that there is enough of a structure to orient and shepherd these young, green recruits.

Who's in charge?


Me Book

The cabal is being allowed to shift responsibility downward. We need to pressure the leaders of this mess to take responsibility and resign.

... n/t

this is worse than a training issue though.

The abuse appears to have been orchestrated and overseen by intelligence services. They would love to pin all of the blame on these young soldiers. I think that is the most pernicious aspect of all of this, the prospect that the ones who ordered these abuses could scapegoat the lower ranking soldiers and emerge with their hands clean. We may be able to rout out the minions but the architects of the abuse will try to remain in charge. Most of Rumsfeld's complaints were that the pictures got leaked. I don't believe these acts weren't sanctioned and I believe these soldiers were, in some cases, coerced into these actions, reprehensible as they were. The structure of the investigation puts the abusers in the spotlight, as it should, but we shouldn't underestimate the motive and ability of the White House and Pentagon to shield the policy makers from accountability.

Watch these officials and ask yourself whether they bear ultimate resoponsibility as they try to weasel around the fact that these soldiers were ordered to abuse these detainees, and their leadership was poor, negligent, and in some cases, criminal.

does not excuse the actions of the soldiers, but neither does the culpability of the soldiers insulate the higher ups.