Apropos of the British sailors and marines’ release and their humiliation at the hands of Iran, an American officer in Iraq sent me this link to the DoD’s code of conduct for US soldiers:

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I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.

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My Army friend writes that the release of the British servicemen “was no coincidence, and was Iran’s response to the escalation of measures against its nuclear program.” He urges that we open our eyes:

The world was distracted by the captured sailors incident, when it should have been focused on Iran’s nuclear intransigence. Instead Britain lost face and Iran became the benevolent captor. In my view, the incident on the border on September between US forces and border-violating Iranian forces was an earlier attempt by Iran to achieve a similar IO effect by
capturing US forces, staging video in Iranian territory, parading them around on TV, and acting magnanimous in their release.

This would, of course, forced us to deal with them face to face immediately before the GWB spoke to the UN (as well as Ahmadinejad). The problem is, of course, that US forces fight back and we don’t allow ourselves to be paraded like fools for the world to see (see below).

Britain’s shame is Iran’s gain. Iran failed in September, but not this time, yet no news source has come to the conclusion that Iran had perhaps tried this before (even though they’ve been doing it for 30 years).

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Reader A. e-mails about the code of conduct:

“We had to memorize it in basic. When I got to my unit, we had to recite it whenever we saw the Battalion Commander and he asked us to. I can still recite it to this day and I got out in 1992.”