US soldiers return to their barracks at a military base outside Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004. Photograph: Stefan Zaklin/EPA

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US war veteran who was ordered into Fallujah in 2004 to engage with the ‘enemy’ now questions the semantics of war. In this article US Marine Ross Caputi in the Guardian attempts to explain the moral dilemma facing soldiers who are under the regime of a command structure that does not necessarily tell them whether they are fighting a legitimate war.

See the articlein the Guardian here

Too many times in history fighting men have been misled by Kings, Emperors and Governments who end up facing grave danger for reasons spuriously communicated as being part of the defence of the realm. It is easy to publish the truth that emerges later when generations have long forgotten their dead because it no longer can be used to bring to trial those who waged and conducted war behind a screen of propaganda and lies.

This long history of making out that war is all about heroism and defending democracy, Queen and Commonwealth, was stopped in its tracks when the Iraq Dossier was brought under public scrutiny and found to be wanting as a reliable document for legitimising the initiation of a war theatre in the Middle East in 2003. The dubious reasons for the war in Iraq should have engaged the media in a debate, which should have resulted in questioning the legitimacy of war but instead the British & American public were brain washed with a sublime, discreet, unrelenting war narrative of jingoism and tribal breast beating.

War Journalist Chris Hedges discusses the questionable function of mainstream media which you can watch here