This is not unusual with armies in wartime. You are in a confrontational situation which you deal with by dehumanizing the "enemy". There is little energy or inclination for sorting the good from the bad, to separate the innocent from those who would actually harm you. The only thing that's unusual is how hard a time most people have understanding this, and continuing to claim that our military can do no wrong. If 10% of the troops admit to "they had actually mistreated Iraqi civilians by hitting or kicking them, or had damaged their property when it was not necessary to do so", you can safely guess that the actual number is 2-3 times as high. No one wants to admit to this stuff after Abu Ghraib.

This is a good story, though I would like to see a lot more information about the people they mentioned. They make a good case that the anti-immigration movement is funded and promoted by people whose goal is not to limit immigration as such, but to thin out the brown-skinned population in the country. This is no secret, it is openly talked about in the mainstream with thinly veiled references to the Mexican culture and Spanish language, but the article provides concrete details.

Heh. It doesn't take a scholarly analysis to recognize O'Reilly as one of today's premiere purveyors of hate/fear porn. You just have to watch one of his shows while nourishing any few neurons you have left that are capable of understanding the concept of "objectivity". But I doubt that this analysis will change a thing. There is a large class of people in the population that will tolerate the most blatant nonsense so long as he keeps pushing their buttons on issues dear to them.

Good analysis, but could have been much more effectively done. He left out the most significant thing Scheuer said (if you're trying to explain Scheuer's moral philosophy): in response to a question about innocents being killed, maimed, tortured by mistake -- "They're not Americans. I really don't care." That statement summarizes Scheuer's views better than anything else actually quoted from the interview.

Get over it. Are these people new to the Internet? Where were they in the days of Usenet flame wars? The Internet is an anonymous medium, it is relatively free, people say all kinds of stuff. It's not pretty. It never has been. That can be a flaw or its strength, depending upon how you look at it. Sounds like a bunch of people got nervous when their internet blatherings didn't receive the decorous response they were used to on their school newspaper or debating team. My advise: if you receive serious threats, report them to the police. Better yet, if you have a nervous temperament, confine yourself to print media, use a moderated mailing list, or just blog under an assumed name.

It's an opinion piece, a comment, not strictly journalism as in "an impartial reporting of the news". Keith Olbermann has some valid things to say about Giuliani, but I can't help but think he would have made his case even stronger if he had toned down his anger and outrage.

It's not surprising. The problem is not so much what the US does as what it says. Statements the Neocons here and their counterparts in Europe and Australia make, which sound uncomfortable even to much of the US population, come across as much worse when shown on Al-Jazeera, interspersed with Arab commentary and war footage that our own news sources routinely censor.

"Physicians with high levels of belief were more than seven times as likely as those with low levels to believe that religion is a large influence on health." "Fewer than 10 percent of doctors interviewed had no religious affiliation." That about sums it up. 90% of the doctors were religious to some degree, and those who were deeply religious were 7x as likely to believe that religion has a large influence on health. Big surprise. This is shoddy journalism.