A report surveying 1320 US soldiers and 447 US marines deployed in Iraq has yielded the following results:

• Percentage of troops that believe torture is justified if used to obtain information: 39 percent of marines and 36 percent of soldiers
• Percentage of troops that believe torture is justified if employed to save the life of a fellow soldier or marine: 44 percent of marines and 41 percent of soldiers
• Percentage of troops that admit to unnecessarily damaging or destroying the property of civilians: 12 percent of marines and 9 percent of soldiers
• Percentage of troops that admit to physically attacking a civilian when it was unnecessary: 7 percent of marines and 4 percent of soldiers
• Percentage of troops which say they’d put themselves at risk to help a civilian in danger: 25 percent of both marines and soldiers
• Percentage of troops that believe all civilians should be “treated with dignity and respect”: 38 percent of marines and 47 percent of soldiers
• Percentage of troops that believe all civilians should be “treated as insurgents”: 17 percent of marines and soldiers
• Percentage of troops which say they would report a fellow member of their unit for injuring or killing a civilian: 40 percent of marines and 55 percent of soldiers

No doubt, this kind of activity is all part of the administration’s strategy to “win hearts and minds”. Major General Gale Pollock, the army’s acting surgeon-general, practiced some damage control by insisting at a Pentagon news conference that the disturbing thoughts of soldiers were entirely separate from their actions. “These men and women have been seeing their friends injured and I think that having that thought is normal.” She then was even able to spin the survey into a positive assessment of the military by saying, “But what it speaks to is the leadership that the military is providing, because they’re not acting on those thoughts. They’re not torturing the people.”

Sorry major general, but not only are our troops terrorizing and killing civilians, but they’re torturing them as well. We’ve got the genital-pointing pictures to prove it. With reports like this and the CIA running torture duty in secret prisons throughout the Middle East, no one really believes that Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident anymore.

The study by an army mental health advisory team also found continuing problems with morale and said acute mental health issues were more prevalent among troops with extended tours or on their second and third deployment to Iraq.

“They looked under every rock, and what they found was not always easy to look at,” said Ward Casscells, the Pentagon’s health affairs chief.

For the first time ever, soldiers and marines in combat units were questioned on issues of character and ethics, and their answers suggested hardened attitudes toward civilians among front line troops.

The survey, which suggests that unethical behavior and murder is normal, was completed in November. It was highly confidential and only released this month in a censored version after some of its findings were beginning to be leaked to the press anyway. It’s unlikely that everyone surveyed was completely honest, logically leading us to conclude that the reality of the situation is even worse than the censored survey suggests.

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