C'mon FK. This is opinion and it is totally out of line to suspect this guys whacked out behavior lends credibly back to his service. Now what I mean by that is separate from some experience which may have caused him to snap there is nothing anyone credibly did in his chain of command that would cause a sane person to do this.
He served 15 months in Iraq. If, as is likely, he didn't participate in anything like torture or abuse of prisoners or civilians, there's still a good chance that he saw and experienced some things - even if he was merely a powerless bystander to them - that might have messed him up, emotionally, mentally, etc. I wouldn't necessarily be so sure to proclaim or diagnose him as insane, however. A very small percentage of criminals ever get officially determined to be insane.
:reads through thread again:
God, if that guy really wanted to torture his daughter, he should've made her read through the posts in this thread. Some of the back and forth in here is just plain painful and stupid.
Waterboarding isn't torture, but reading a discussion thread is. Okay.
after reading and posting on this thread i have come to the conclusion that Facial is right.
the man abused his daughter, specifically by dunking her head in a full sink because of the US military and because os Bush and Cheney and no other reaons.
I might add that I believe before he joined the military and bush/cheney were elected that he was a normal person with no physcological problems and was actually a nicer person than Mr Rogers, Ned Flanders and Andy Griffith combined.
Now I only hope this little girl gets a good lawyer like Ron Kubey or John Edwards and sues the GOV for Billions.
I NEVER said, nor do I think, that his behavior - if he is found guilty - is "because of the US military and because o(f) Bush and Cheney and no other reasons." There probably was a very volatile mix of reasons - obviously.
My overall point is that such kinds of domestic blowback should surprise no one. We live in a culture that makes excuses (and then some) for torture, that glorifies it as an act of heroism. We live in a culture with a strong strain of machismo run amok, that, I think, places special priority and value on punishment and penalties, and encourages a hit/punch/shoot/bomb first and ask questions later approach to get results. Violent acts of will take precedence over anything resembling diplomacy.
It's entirely possible that the guy was f'd up before he joined the military (after all, the branches have become an option of last resort for some people with various anti-social histories and traits - and despite all the bluster about how elite our forces are, we've been lowering our standards for some time now - definitely since we blew into Iraq), and his time in Iraq just wore him down and he lost his grip, his sense of right-and-wrong. Or maybe he already did before before he went to Iraq. We'll see how it plays out.
But I did think it was interesting that the guy who finances the Cheney pro-war, pro-torture group was involved in the youth boot-camp craze, which has largely been an unmitigated disaster (and also represents those macho fixations and fetishes for punishment-uber-alles). It's interesting. That doesn't mean that either Cheney or the guy who pumps money into their lame DC group called Tabor up and said "Dunk your daughter's head in water if she won't tell you what you want to hear!! Now I know my ABC's, next time won't you drown with me? Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!"
Direct causation? No, surely not. Indirect, cultural encouragement (that will prove doubly effective for a guy who's on the edge from the start)? Almost certainly.
If you can give the straw-men a rest for a few seconds, my point is actually nuanced (and I'm getting the impression, much more sympathetic of the soldier than some others here in this thread are).
