Considering the gravity of this, I think we should really hold out for more certainty.

You can ask Sidhe, I'm heavy on the punitive side, but this needs serious corroboration.

All depends on whether the video gets out, my guess is not if the combined efforts of bush and rummy can stamp on it.

Or a serious cover-up. Not to say that I believe it, but if it were true, and I were a member of the Bush administration, I'd be doing some serious misplacing of certain documents right about now.

Well, obviously Hersh is one of those America-hating liberals that the Republicans are so worried about.

One where they hoped to make the current administration and military leadership look ignorant, inept or corrupt.

My sense is, that if this is true, (and I kinda wouldnt be too surprised....unfortunately), that the bipartisan security classification lid will remain heavy because of its severe potential to risk troop lives, and the whole screwed mission at unknown levels. I'm just hoping we handle it as well as possible, and we dont see more damning evidence through Islamic or international media first. Let Hersh bring it first. Sounds like Sanchez will roll.

This could also do the military as a whole a serious amount of harm.

What better way to hurt enlistment and morale than to turn the military into a bunch of homosexual pedophiles?

For what it's worth, I asked a friend of mine who served in the first Gulf War what he thought about this, and he looked very sad and said he wouldn't be surprised if it were discovered to be true... :(

Anything could be true.

The unfortunate fact about a military is that it's full of people. And the snag with a large group full of people is that it's bound to contain a lot of the undesirable elements of society, as well as a bunch of the normal, decent people we "good guys" like to socialise with.

Even in peacetime, the military is loosely regulated, and fuelled by a large amount of testosterone and bravado. It's simply not possible to supervise a large number of people, 24/7.

If you were to assume, hypothetically, that all the officers are "good" people you've still got an almost impossible monitoring task ahead of you. Sadly, you can't make that assumption; there are certainly a number of officers I know personally in the UK military that I think shouldn't be allowed anywhere near firearms. Given that an officer might have sole responsibility for a group of 30 people in the field, it only takes two "bad" officers and you've suddenly got 60-odd people who are entirely unsupervised by "the forces of good".

The sad fact is that none of this can be repudiated on the basis that it can't happen, or that it couldn't happen, or that it wouldn't happen. It can, and would, and almost certainly did - at least on some scale. The scale of it is, perhaps, surprising - in that the implication is certainly that it's institutionalised. But the act itself is entirely forseeable and an unfortunate consequence of having large numbers of people not particularly constrained by ordinary morals (a necessary part of being able to shoot, in the head, the 13-year old kid who's pointing an anti-tank missile at you and your friends, watch bits of him explode all over a wall behind him, and then do the same thing the next day) without adequate supervision and control.

But, it's a tiny, tiny minority. For all the people I know in the military who aren't the kind of people I'd want defending my family, I know dozens and dozens who are exactly the kind of person I'd want doing that job.

The sad thing is that the actions of a tiny, idiotic few tarnish the name of the many, many people who behave impeccably.

Kev

What you say is true evansK7, but in a prison environment unlike field patrols, there should be a more tightly controlled situation. That would lead me to believe that, even though we're talking about a small group, everybody knew and said nothing. :(

"One where they hoped to make the current administration and military leadership look ignorant, inept or corrupt."

The current administration is doing a bang up job on that themselves.