Recently, for the second time since the U.S. invaded Iraq, we heard much about a group of soldiers serving there. These real people, mostly from the South, some teenagers, others with twenty-plus years of military service, are in a unit based in Rock Hill, SC. We heard about them because they refused an order in a combat zone.

When the photos from Abu Ghraib prison surfaced earlier this year, defenders of U.S. policy in Iraq were quick to point out that the soldiers shown were not ordered to commit the acts depicted. Even if they were ordered to soften up prisoners, however, those soldiers were entitled to refuse to obey such orders, since, obviously committing atrocities is against the Geneva convention. The problems at that hellish prison were the fault of poorly trained reservists. That was the story we got from generals and Donald Rumsfeld. The bad apples who made bad decisions would be punished we were promised.

On my daily commute through Ft. Bragg, NC, I saw the crowd of TV trucks covering the recent public hearings for Private Lindy England. We can all watch her being held to account for her bad decisions. Her court martial convenes in January.

Someone in the chain of command of the 343rd Quartermaster Company recently made some bad decisions as well. Someone decided to ask a platoon of reservists, citizen soldiers, to deliver a load of contaminated helicopter fuel to an aviation unit in an area full of insurgents. A unit flying from a base in a safer area had already rejected this load of fuel.

Someone made a decision to compel the drivers to operate trucks that the Army?s own records and standards judged to be not safely operable under any conditions. Deadlined is the term the military uses to describe such vehicles.

Someone decided that providing armor for cargo transporters in a hostile zone wasn?t a priority, 18 months into a mission that seemingly has no end.

Someone even decided that it was OK to send the 343rd Quartermaster alone into a dangerously hostile area without the accompanying firepower and air support that is customary on such missions.

Will anyone be punished for the decisions that created the circumstances that compelled a group of soldiers, all of whom volunteered for military service, to refuse a lawful order? Will anyone be punished for allowing fuel to become contaminated or for deciding to enter the fuel into the supply chain? Will anyone be punished for failing to provide equipment that's both operable and protected as much as possible from attack?

Although military spokesmen promise to conduct an investigation into the allegations made by the soldiers who refused the mission, they seem more concerned with stressing that this is an isolated incident. One can only assume that the rebellion is what is isolated, not the conditions that caused it.

Recently we learned that Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez wrote to the Pentagon to inform officials there that combat operations could not be sustained with the low rates of supplies he was receiving. This letter was written during the summer fighting in Iraq, when casualties were lower than they have been the past two months. Things are getting worse, not better in Iraq and the cracks are showing in the attitudes of the soldiers serving there.