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Those perpetuating that our troops are evil are no better than the enemy. There are always a few bad apples, and at this point we don't know if they were "ordered" to do what they did, whether other Iraqis participated, or what the whole story is. The troops fighting for Iraqi freedom need our full support - nothing less! Whoever released those photos to the world at large should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. All other prosecution in the matter follows thereafter. If "higher ups" are involved, they should not be exempt from the same measure of discipline as the lowest ranking person involved.

I remember back from my college days, some psych studies by a fellow named Stanley Schacter (sp.) He put subjects into a situation where they believed that they were administering electric shocks to another person- who was trying to learn a new task.

Anyway, the "subjects" in the experiment were encouraged to shock the learner if he made mistakes. (Actually- there were no shocks really being given to the learner at all.)

The subjects had a dial in front of them and could turn the strength of the shock up to almost a "lethal" range (or so they were led to believe.) To make it seem even more realistic, there were sound effects of the learner screaming in agony whenever shocked by the subject.

In the end, they found that while a few people would refuse to shock the learner, most people would cave in. Not only that, but if they were encouraged by the experimenter to shock in the highest/painful ranges,most people would go ahead and do it.

People in groups will do things that they never would do on their own. People can be easily influenced. That includes most of us, unfortunately.

I think that most of the soldiers involved probably never intended for things to get so out of control. However, a group mentality emerged where it was encouraged to humiliate the prisoners.

For all my fellow TM Groupies,

I'm reading a book right now, "Memorial Day" by Vince Flynn. It keys in on the terrorist threat that we study and speculate on here. All about an al Qaeda nuclear attack on Wash. D.C. on Memorial Day during the unveiling of the WWII memorial.

I've read all of his books and really enjoyed them. This one is so prescient, it's scary....rather like reading the headlines of the future.

A line from the book which really jumped out at me...

"the Joint Counterterrorism Center. They had too many rules, and they were in a war with an enemy who had none."

How true is that????