"besides those of letting some stupid low level soldiers be the escape goats"

I think ex-Brigadier General Janis Karpinski would beg to differ, per Wikipedia she "was reprimanded for dereliction of duty and demoted to the rank of Colonel on May 5, 2005", which of course also ended her Army career that year.

I would argue there's almost as much gross overstatement of how bad G. W. Bush was as there is overstatement of how good Obama is. Certainly a lot of people are coming to that conclusion, perhaps in part as we see so many examples of things that were bad when Bush did them that are somehow good when done by Obama. Bush's biggest crimes were beating Gore and therefore ending the Clinton era, and of course Governing While Republican.