Reasons for incidents like Haditha
...They should do a better job of getting this message out. Brig. Gen Campbell's statements comes several newscycles after I raised similar points here, but he can command a much larger audience than this blog. Whether the media will report may be another question, but repetition should help.Q This is Will Dunham with Reuters. What is causing these small number of incidents of misconduct that you're seeing by the troops? Is it the stress of the situation? Is it -- well, actually, I'm asking you what is causing it.
GEN. CAMPBELL: Well, actually, it's difficult to pin down specifically. But, obviously, when you're in the combat theater dealing with enemy combatants who don't abide by the law of war, who do acts of indecency, servers become stressed, they become fearful. It's very difficult to determine in some cases on this battlefield who is a combatant and who is a civilian. It doesn't excuse the acts that have occurred, and we're going to look into them. But I would say it's stress, fear, isolation, and in some cases they're just upset. They see their buddies getting blown up on occasion and they could snap.
But let me just say that 99.9 percent of the soldiers in the field are doing tremendous work every day and we're very, very proud of them.
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Q Phil Dine, St. Louis Post-Dispatch. American public support for the war in Iraq is steadily declining. Most people now think it was a mistake to go into Iraq. Can you win this war without public support? And are you concerned that these kinds of incidents will further erode support?
GEN. CAMPBELL: Sir, you're asking me a question that's probably outside my lane. I could tell you that we can win this war in -- the war that we're fighting right now, because we have a tremendous group of service members, over 150,000 coalition members, on the -- in theater right now.
What is going on back home -- I will tell you many of the soldiers don't focus on that. They focus on the mission at hand, in theater, and really go at that very hard. So that's our focus, and that's where we stay with it. And we believe that the support is high for us from the States.
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GEN. CAMPBELL: Yes, sir. Thank you. I'd like to make just a short statement.
Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are facing a hostile and terrorist threat that refuses to abide by the established rules of decency and laws of armed conflict. Their mission is difficult, and they daily place their lives at risk to protect the people of Iraq. We should take great pride in the hundreds and thousands of service members who honor us daily with their courage, their competence and their sacrifice.
Thank you.
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