What if the commander-in-chief's name was "Bill Clinton"?

You can bet your life that if Bill Clinton was president when this article appeared, the screaming heads would be calling not just for his impeachment, but his immediate execution for "putting our boys in harm's way without adequate protection."

But since the president's name is George W. Bush, he can stiff the troops with impunity, and as long as he dresses in enough spiffy military drag, people will believe he "supports the troops":

On May 29, 2004, a station wagon that Iraqi insurgents had packed with C-4 explosives blew up on a highway in Ramadi, killing four American marines who died for lack of a few inches of steel.

The four were returning to camp in an unarmored Humvee that their unit had rigged with scrap metal, but the makeshift shields rose only as high as their shoulders, photographs of the Humvee show, and the shrapnel from the bomb shot over the top.

"The steel was not high enough," said Staff Sgt. Jose S. Valerio, their motor transport chief, who along with the unit's commanding officers said the men would have lived had their vehicle been properly armored. "Most of the shrapnel wounds were to their heads."

Among those killed were Rafael Reynosa, a 28-year-old lance corporal from Santa Ana, Calif., whose wife was expecting twins, and Cody S. Calavan, a 19-year-old private first class from Lake Stevens, Wash., who had the Marine Corps motto, Semper Fidelis, tattooed across his back.

They were not the only losses for Company E during its six-month stint last year in Ramadi. In all, more than one-third of the unit's 185 troops were killed or wounded, the highest casualty rate of any company in the war, Marine Corps officials say.

In returning home, the leaders and Marine infantrymen have chosen to break an institutional code of silence and tell their story, one they say was punctuated not only by a lack of armor, but also by a shortage of men and planning that further hampered their efforts in battle, destroyed morale and ruined the careers of some of their fiercest warriors.

Of course, Bush-asswiping chickenhawks like John Hinderaker at Powerline think it's a soldier's job to provide his own protection. Like he would know...

It's disgusting how the military has been betrayed by its own commander-in-chief over the last three years, and even more disgusting how the folks back home continue to slap cheap made-in-China ribbon magnets on their cars and think they're more patriotic than the rest of us.