[No Truce With Kings]

Long Cut, you have stated what I feel about this better than I could.

We ARE better than this behavior. That is what makes us different from people that use loaded jetliners to knock down office buildings. I am ashamed that these morons have allowed themselves to become the face of the U.S. Military. I am ashamed that they gave the press the type of story the press has been having orgasms over -- the type of story the press has been praying for.

I want their officers OUT of the military and I want those that perpetrated these actions turning large rocks into small rocks at Leavenworth.

"'They' do it" does not cut it as an excuse to behave in this manner.

"I didn't know any better" is the first lie told by the guilty.

"My husband is just a scapegoat" comes a pretty close second.

I, along with you, am heartsick over this, and disgusted at those who would excuse these barbarities.

[Long Cut]

""'They' do it" does not cut it as an excuse to behave in this manner."

Those who use that logic must believe that we should have set up crematoriums for Japanese and German Americans in WWII, after all, "they did it".

[mathurine]

A much higher percentage of people will engage in maltreatment and maybe even commit atrocities under certain circumstances than most of us believe. Many studies after WWII by Stanley Milgram and others have concluded this, and their experiments have been replicated over three decades and always come to essentially the same conclusions. Now that's just good scientific data, and useless if nobody converts it into plain talk which organizations can use. The plain talk is that ambivalence about personal responsibility, peer pressure, and inadequate guidance and supervision from superiors is likely to lead to incidents such as is currently being decried about a third of the time. Almost anyone who has been to a War College and many who have done graduate work in management would have studied Milgram, and practically anyone who has taken even Psychology or Sociology 101 would be somewhat familiar with Milgram's work--the Obedience to Authority Experiments; the Stanford Prison Experiment, etc.

The perpetrators can not be excused for what they have done, and will be prosecuted, to be sure, and if found guilty, punished. On the other hand, either officers and policy makers were ignorant or inept or both not to have put better procedures and policies into place. Anyone who has ever run anything-- military or civilian--knows the word supervision, and the basic fact that if you don't supervise, policies, procedures, etc. mean little, and accomplish less. Training helps, too, but hanging a bunch of snuffies without the officers-in-charge being punished even more severely for inadequate supervision would be a travesty of justice, IMHO.

If anyone's interested in Stanley Milgram's research, just go to Google or any other major search engine and enter his name. His research has held up amazingly, especially since it implies that many who criticize maltreatment very likely might do the same thing under similar circumstances.

On the other hand, there are plenty who wouldn't, and the whistle-blower apparently came from the same unit as the perpetrators.

Conclusion: when there is a situation where some people are given great power over others, some will abuse their power if not closely supervised. Be wise, supervise.