A Question for Legal Scholars

Here's a legal question:

Suppose a Chief Lifeguard on a beach says
"there's a thousand downing kids in the stormy
ocean right now" and orders a hundred of his
subordinate lifeguards in to the turbulent
riptide to save them.

A few of those lifeguards drown and it turns out
that the Chief Lifeguard knew there wasn't ever
any evidence of any drowning kids but he still
definitively claimed that there were.

Is that chief lifeguard legally responsible for
the drowned lifeguards' deaths?
Is that Chief Lifeguard guilty of a crime?
If so then isn't George W. Bush guilty of an
analogous situation in Iraq?

Check out legendary prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's
book and upcoming documentary "Mad as Hell: The
Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder".