Administrative contrition

Hearing Donald Rumsfelt oozing contrition about the mistreatment of Iraqi POWs is nothing more than irritating. It is all too late. It is after the fact.
The culture was already established. First an administration which outsources POW guarding. Outsources!!!!! Employs contractors. Civilians. And who adopts such contracts? Rednecks, of course
But the redneck culture is entrenched in the military anyway. Never clearer when I met the marines on R&R in Darwin and hearing their savage attacks on war veterans. How Vietnam Vets and Gulf War Vets were cowardly and soft. Unlike the services of today who know how to "kick butt".
Somewhere these young people are being drilled in this attitude. It is part of the culture of toughness. It is the attitude of the government of the day.

I hear people on IRC saying how tough is this country and how it will show the other countries. It needs no friends. The rest of the world is irrelevent.
This attitude, also conditioned by the propaganda of the present administration, is suicidal in terms of world politics let alone Islamic psychology. The loathing of Islam is fuelled by the atrocities in Iraq. One hears the American contractor who escaped from detention with the Iraqis saying that he was given civilized treatment during his imprisonment. What an irony.
The next lot of kidnapped westerners will not fare as well, methinks.

Meanwhile, I realise why so many of the devotees of Nostradamus now are circulating the email with reminders of his prophecies.