[Snark off]

Recently at Esquire’s Politics blog, frequent guest contributor, Lt. Col. Robert Bateman posted a story of the name behind a star in the CIA headquarters.

For clarification, the stars, which adorn a wall inside the lobby, represent a fallen individual, in the service of the organization. Normally, I would read this story without comment, however, having a great deal of knowledge about the man this star represents, Maj.  Douglas A. Zembiec, USMC (KIA), and having watched former V.P. Dick Cheney be interviewed three times in the past three weeks, on TV, I am, by my temperment, bound to comment.

Lt. Col. Bateman provides an anecdote from an enlisted combat veteran who served under Maj.  Zembiec. It is as poignant as it is telling of Zembiec’s leadership.

“He was the sort of guy who, when a Marine met his father sometime after the battle (and after that Marine had been posted to another unit) asked, him if he was (then) Capt. Zembiec’s father. When told that he was, the Marine responded, “I was with him in Fallujah, and if we had to go back in there, I’d follow him in with a spoon.”

 

Major Zembiec’s actions during the Battle of Fallujah, in 2004, earned him the moniker, “The Lion of Fallujah”, as well as the Silver Star, Bronze Star w/ Combat V and two Purple Hearts. His actions are detailed in Bing West’s book, No True Glory: A Front-Line Account of the Battle of Fallujah, as well as a Wall Street Journal article following Maj. Zembiec’s death.

Major Zemiec was one to the highest caliber citizen-soldiers this country can produce and a tragic example of the price our country paid, in blood, for having been lied into an illegal war.

It is here at the confluence of lies, dead warriors, and the continuing parade of unindicted war criminals, put forward by the media, that compel me to comment, or, if you like, vent.

To start, I will give what limited credit, where such credit is due, and note that former President G.W. Bush has remained silent on matters of foreign wars during his post-presidential years, (I would like to think, under the advise of legal counsel). However, former VP Dick Cheney and former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld have chosen a different course.

Cheney has been provided a venue, afforded by the major media outlets, to regale the viewing public with his total lack of irony, and self-reflection as he blames the current president for the state of affairs in Iraq. All the while deflecting any attempts to hold him accountable for his roll in the folly and tragedy that became the Iraq War. That he is not in shackles making these statements from a cell in the Hague, is a question that I would like to see addressed in his lifetime.

Rumsfeld, featured in Errol Morris’ 2013 documentary, “Uncovered: The War in Iraq,” continues to display such towering arrogance and unrepentant smugness as to beggar the imagination.

With the blood of more than 4,000 U.S. troops killed and 100,000 plus Iraqis dead on his hands, how Rumsfeld remains free to move among us, in open society, is a question well deserving an answer.

As Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire.com is wont to muse ”…at the very least, he should spend the rest of his days cleaning the bed pans of the permanently disabled veterans in Walter Reed.”

Were it only so. There are, of course, others whom I have not addressed, whose culpability is no less egregious. I’m looking at you Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Marc Thiessen, et al., ad nauseam.

That the misadventure in Iraq was predicated on a bed of lies and misinformation is widely accepted by most objective consumers of information as fact.

The perpetrators of the misadventure have not, and in all likelihood, will never be held accountable for the damage done to our military forces, international reputation, and treasury, is fairly well accepted.

Our national media, whose role should have been to find the truth and drag it kicking and screaming to light, chose to be cheerleaders for the plan to boost Haliburtions profit/loss ratios, as well as, generating a sharp decline in available plots in Arlington National Cemetery and others across the country, stands as their crowning disgrace.

In all, a sad tale, one not worthy of the sacrifice endured by Maj. Zembiec’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Don Zembiec, his brother, and his wife and daughter, Pamela and Fallyn.

Maj. Zembiec would likely disagree on the grounds that the mission and the welfare of his men overrode all other considerations, that anything else was “noise on the net.”

By all accounts, especially those of his men, Maj. Zembiec was a warrior in the spirit of which all Marines are trained to perform, and so few excel beyond their time and place, as he did.

I am unsure we, as a country, deserve such people.