I'm totally ashamed that this happened.

[ Not that any die hard war supporter will believe anything in the New York Times, but I'm still glad this stuff is getting reported. Whether it's stupidity or cognative dissonance or just plain cruelty that permits people to be war mongers, I don't know, but the truth is that these sorts of things have happened in wars since prehistory. In my mind, it's a major reason to be antiwar, as if all the collateral deaths from "precision" bomb and missile strikes, and all the killing in general weren't enough. All these people in the world that are shocked *SHOCKED* that Good Americans could be cabaple of this sort of action are either naive or liars. Humans have a tendency to do awful things to each other when they're whipped into a frenzy, given a generic "enemy" to hate, and let loose with little supervision and lots of power. It's a recipe for the lowest sort of ignoble behavior from the kind of people predisposed to such. These days, at least, some of that is coming home.

Obviously, I don't think most of our military either acts this way or condones it -- I have great respect for people willing to risk themselves to protect their country, even if I'm unconvinced that the vehicle chosen was correct. Even good people do terrible things in war, and evil people do worse. Maybe that's why they call it hell. -k]

Account of Torture and Death of Iraqi by Americans