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Originally posted by OFKU0
Military personel (and not just Americans) have taken part in hazing type rituals as an initiation of acceptance by their peers for ages. Happens in sports also. Obviously these adolescent engagements still surface regardless of the severity concerning the situation, case in point.
The people who were involved in these actions probably had performed some type of stunts before, in whatever context, and instead of being chastised, were probably cheered on, not only by their peers but also by those in positions of authority. Or for those in a position of authority, maybe a wink,wink, nudge, nudge turn the other cheek attitude prevailed,..you know,..it's just kid's blowing off steam, no harm, no foul.
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BS. There is a huge difference between giving your buddy his "blood wings" and violating the Geneva convention. The issue here was a gross failure of leadership. In a disciplined unit the offending swine would have had their nuts crushed long before this became an issue.
Quote:
Originally posted by Dragonlich
One way the soldiers might have "justified" their actions: They were in a war zone for months, in fact longer than they had hoped for. These Iraqi insurgents were largely to blame for them *still* being there; they were also to blame for the deaths of their fellow soldiers. If it wasn't for those bastards, the soldiers could have been home already... One can see how such a mind-set, combined with the aforementioned prisoner-guard abusiveness, combined with lack of supervision, combined with peer pressure, combined with sheer stress, can lead to extremes. Calling those extremes "un-American" is pretty silly, seeing that those extremes are just plain human - we are not a nice species to begin with.
(Note: I'm not trying to excuse, just trying to understand.)
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I beg to differ. Now that the photos have been shown around the world, they have simply galvanized sentiment against us. What that means, where the rubber meets the road, is that now I have to deal with even more people who will be trying to kill me and my men.
Heads should roll, starting with the CO and the entire chain of command of the prison.