The Redhunter

A quick excerpt in the Rolling Stone story:

...The two soldiers, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes, saw a young farmer who was working by himself among the spiky shoots. Off in the distance, a few other soldiers stood sentry. But the farmer was the only Afghan in sight. With no one around to witness, the timing was right. And just like that, they picked him for execution.

He was a smooth-faced kid, about 15 years old. Not much younger than they were: Morlock was 21, Holmes was 19. His name, they would later learn, was Gul Mudin, a common name in Afghanistan. He was wearing a little cap and a Western-style green jacket. He held nothing in his hand that could be interpreted as a weapon, not even a shovel. The expression on his face was welcoming. "He was not a threat," Morlock later confessed.
...

After the killing, the soldiers involved in Mudin's death were not disciplined or punished in any way. Emboldened, the platoon went on a shooting spree over the next four months that claimed the lives of at least three more innocent civilians. When the killings finally became public last summer, the Army moved aggressively to frame the incidents as the work of a "rogue unit" operating completely on its own, without the knowledge of its superiors. Military prosecutors swiftly charged five low-ranking soldiers with murder, and the Pentagon clamped down on any information about the killings. Soldiers in Bravo Company were barred from giving interviews, and lawyers for the accused say their clients faced harsh treatment if they spoke to the press, including solitary confinement. No officers were charged.

But a review of internal Army records and investigative files obtained by Rolling Stone, including dozens of interviews with members of Bravo Company compiled by military investigators, indicates that the dozen infantrymen being portrayed as members of a secretive "kill team" were operating out in the open, in plain view of the rest of the company. Far from being clandestine, as the Pentagon has implied, the murders of civilians were common knowledge among the unit and understood to be illegal by "pretty much the whole platoon," according to one soldier who complained about them. Staged killings were an open topic of conversation, and at least one soldier from another battalion in the 3,800-man Stryker Brigade participated in attacks on unarmed civilians. "The platoon has a reputation," a whistle-blower named Pfc. Justin Stoner told the Army Criminal Investigation Command. "They have had a lot of practice staging killings and getting away with it."

There's a lot more, but you get the point.

Howard Poitnoy at Hot Air makes the relevant points:

When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in 2003, the mainstream media and liberal blogosphere couldn't find enough column inches to express adequately their shock and revulsion. The New York Times alone published 56 stories on the hideous revelation that members of the U.S. Army Reserve had tortured prisoners of war and posed for "trophy pictures"--inexcusable acts that the Times placed squarely at the feet of then-president George W. Bush.

Nor could left-leaning sources conceal their delight when President-elect Barack Obama boldly proclaimed:

[U]nder my administration the United States does not torture. We will abide by the Geneva Conventions. We will uphold our highest ideals.

What a difference a president makes. Until you flash forward to today's bombshell, dropped by the British newspaper The Guardian, noting that members of a self-styled U.S. Army "kill team" posed for photos not with tortured prisoners but with corpses. Of civilians. Whom they had killed.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is more than a little ticked off. As he told the Washington Times:

TWT: What are your thoughts on the latest kill team photos out of Afghanistan?

DONALD RUMSFELD: If they're the ones that I'm thinking of it's where some... there are some allegations that some soldiers killed some people. You know, I feel such a responsibility as an American that when people are in our custody, we treat them properly. It is always heartbreaking when we see that there are allegations and photographs or suggestions that people have mismanaged that process. And of course the courts will decide in this case. But it is interesting, in the case of Abhu Ghraib, that it was such an important press event and nobody was killed. And in this case, it looks like there are allegations that some people were actually killed.

TWT: How does this stack up against the Abu Ghraib photos, for example?

RUMSFELD: The situation, of course, is much worse if someone dies, but it's a sad thing. It's unfortunate. The overwhelming majority of men and women in uniform are professional. They handle themselves well. They treat people properly in our custody. And no question but that they are punished in the event that the courts and the military commissions under the uniform code of military justice decide that they've done something wrong. They get punished.

I'm not going to say that one scandal is worse than another because they're both bad and that gets into splitting hairs. But Rumsfeld does have a right to be upset at the hypocrisy.

Sure, the scandal isn't President Obama's fault any more than Abu Ghraib was President Bush's but that's the point.

It's all pretty simple, really: Obama is president and they're out to protect him.