Haditha is only the beginning.

Seven marines and one sailor will be charged with murder in the killing of an Iraqi man April 26 of this year. Apparently they dragged him from his home, shot him and threw his body by the road with a shovel to make it look like he was planting an IED.

Rumors are that this behavior is the rule instead of the exception.

How can this be? How can clean cut young men raised in the land of the free and home of the brave do these things?

It’s easy. Three simple steps:

1) Place them under extreme stress. Put them in a place where they don’t know who the enemy is, don’t tell them what the mission is, don’t give them an end date, separate them from family and normalcy for a year at a time and abuse them with hardship.

2) Dehumanize the local population. Give them funny names like Habib, Haji, rag head, camel jockey and rock farmer.

3)Lather, rinse and repeat. Then explode an IED next to their Hum Vee.

It’s classic conditioning. B.F. Skinner and Pavlov at their best. Unfortunately, unlike the pigeons and dogs of Skinner and Pavlov they will someday come to realize what they have done, seen, heard and smelled. It will not go away. It will wake them in the middle of the night. For the rest of their lives.

I did not serve in Vietnam. I served with the men who returned from Vietnam. I saw men hide under their desk because the door opened unexpectedly. I knew men who slept under their bunk instead of on it. I was punched in the face when I woke a fellow soldier from a sound sleep. I saw men fall to the floor in shopping malls when a camera flash went off. I know what mummified human ears look like.

By all accounts the Iraq experience will be both more intense and longer than ‘Nam where the tour of duty was one year with a break for R&R. Like ‘Nam I expect that most returning troops will return to live normal, happy and productive lives. Human beings, especially the young, are amazingly resilient. We compartmentalize. Hide what is painful to remember. We choose not to recall.

But if the recent increase in cases of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder among Viet Vets is any indication those demons will not sleep forever.

This will be with us for a very, very long time.

they yell at you not to kill the civilians.. the Somalian civilians are always in the way hiding the gunmen and throwing rocks at you..

but in the game if the patrol gets ahead of you they slaughter the civilians..

We've destroyed Iraq and a generation of our own young people. Americans grow up with a huge belief in our own good guy boy scout decency. The Viet Nam generation had that taken away from them, and now this one does, too.

for the pResident to be a swaggering, cocky, arrogant barbarian, who uses phrases like "get 'em dead or alive," and making references to people who, IIRC "let's just say they won't be a problem anymore.", referring, I believe to some people he called terrorists, and giving the impression that they had been killed. I'm sorry I can't cite the exact reference. We have screeching whores like Ann Coulter talking about killing them, and converting them to Christianity, and we have Michelle Malkin, Bill O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and the rest, openly calling for just killing Iraqis, presumably to set an example.

Our troops, mostly young, and many without a great deal of education, have been bombarded with this kind of talk since 9-11 gave Chimp the excuse he needed to do what he had already planned to do, attack Iraq. I do agree that each person should accept responsibility for his/her own actions, but face it, Chimp and his whole administration have not admitted to making mistakes; it's always, always, somebody elses's fault. Usually Bill Clinton's or Ted Kennedy's. We are expecting more discipline from our troops than we seem to be expecting from those in power, who are becoming richer every day we stay in Iraq.

Bush referred to his drinking and drug taking as being "youthful indiscretions", even though he didn't quit drinking until the age of 40. So 18, 19, and 20 year old troops are supposed to be placed in a hostile country, without the proper armor, for tour after tour, and from them we expect much more than we do for the people who sent them there, and support the war as long as they and their families don't have to serve.

I was taught while growing up that higher pay for executives was because they carried higher levels of responsibility. Under Bush, that has turned topsy-turvy. The average citizen is expected to obey laws, and follow certain rules, that the wealthy exempt themselves from. We need to leave Iraq now. We will pay a hideous price for this folly, and the tragedy is that the architects of the war will gain much more wealth from the pain the war is causing on both sides.

makes me weep.

Dam them, dam them all.

Is that we Democrats try to improve veteran benefits, while the Pukes try to take it away. How can you claim to support the troops, when you don't support veterans? It doesn't make sense, does it? It's simple, they support wars fought by other people's children, and when the troops are no longer on the battlefield, they want to just shove them aside, and give another tax break to the wealthy.

Edited to add, listening to Boxer on CSPAN talking about divorces, depression, PTSD are up majorly in the military. How the hell can people NOT expect this sort of stuff will happen in this situation? It is all so wrong.

OH PSHAW! The "beginning" was when the *MIC dumped all their old inventory all over Iraq. Then the ground troops were told, "The way home is through Baghdad." Since March 2003 Ami troops have been making/doing (machen) Mist in Iraq. Severe BULLSHIT. Very.Bad.Karma.