Leaving aside vicious propaganda dressed up as plausible “truth” for the gullible …. the sad thing is that incidents such as those reported here are preventable - by good training and by firm disciplined competent leadership by NCOs. Soldiers need to be trained on how to cope usefully with boredom ; what can they do while nothing exciting is happening?

So many stories of purposeless killing, vandalism and the like have boredom underlying them - sometimes numbing boredom that lasts for weeks and weeks at a time; doing something, anything at all, breaks that boredom. Combine that boredom with oversimplistic meathead training that all Enemy are evil and must be killed no matter what and you have a recipe for atrocities and defeat [as Mr Hitler found out the hard way].

Nevertheless, it’s both disturbing and plausible.

Who r u trying to convince, Robert? Nobody’s going to argue with you.

If you don’t join us now, when Saddam’s regime falls and Iraqis cheer the US Marines, you are really going to feel like a jackass. … The liberation of Iraq and the democratic transformation of the Middle East is the most progressive cause in the world today. It is the right side of history, and if you stand in the way or sit on the sidelines, your liberal humanitarian credentials are toast.

Such a person is, of course, welcome to his enthusiasms.

However, a cautious reader would note that Totten has long been invested in his hopes. How much do these hopes colour his perceptions?

As Totten says in his blog, the surge hasn’t gone anywhere near Sadr City.

Totten observes the surge in a Sunni area. The Sunni in Baghdad are an oppressed and dwindling minority. Of course, the US appear to be protectors to this group. In terms of the power relations in Iraq, the US find themselves to be protecting the losing side in a civil war, just like they did in Vietnam.

Winning-Hearts-And-Minds campaigns can work very well indeed as, for instance, Hamas and alQaeda have shown the whole world, but such campaigns do require good training, careful selection of personnel involved, a widespread understanding of the most basic terms in the local language by ALL your troops, thorough planning, commanders and staff who are not merely unscornful of WHAM but fully committed to its implementation, involvement by respected locals, appropriate resourcing, excellent local intelligence [as feedback for quality assurance], etc.

Way back in ancient history, my unit’s WHAM campaign was fairly successful and annoyed the enemy but that was only because we put a lot of time, effort, patience and respect into it.

That is why, by Day 3 of the invasion of Iraq, I was horrified at the almost total lack of any useful civil affairs effort — and things have got worse since. It is not as though the Americans themselves don’t have the expertise but what else can you expect when their King tries to run his war like an arcade shoot-’em game where the scores are made on the number of people killed and not on the number of people won over to supporting your side.

We American soldiers are notorious liars.

How about reporting all the dogs in Iraq that are running around just fine with intact jaws? Eh? I bet there are hundreds but does the liberal media publish stories about them? No way!!!!

“And–I actually get tears from just saying this right now, but–and I had tears then, too–and I’m looking at the kids and they are so scared. So I got the interpreter over with me and, you know, I get my wallet out and I gave them twenty bucks, because that’s what I had. And, you know, I had him give it to them and told them that I’m so sorry that asshole did that.”

Which is small beer in the larger scheme of things but the pattern repeats itself again and again in the story - the sociopaths enabled, the sociopaths created, and the the decent people dragged along for the ride.

As plausible as, well… me?