Beiji, Khasir Abyad District, Mahmoudiya, Haditha, Youssifiyah, Fallujah (outskirts), Salahuddin Province, Ramadi (outskirts), Qaim, and Abu Ghraib

Beiji, Khasir Abyad District, Mahmoudiya, Haditha, Youssifiyah, Fallujah (outskirts), Salahuddin Province, Ramadi (outskirts), Qaim, and Abu Ghraib ... And these are only the names of places in Iraq where our military has reason to investigate possible abuse and worse committed by our own sons and daughters ... who left America to "fight for freedom, truth and justice" and to protect America from another 9/11. What must go on in the minds of young Americans who see their closest comrades in arms die horrid deaths and then find themselves bashing in the doors of civilians in places like Fallujah, Ramadi and even Baghdad?

What is it about a protracted war and occupation of a defeated nation (defeated even before "Shock and Awe") that causes the sad, tired and scared-to-death occupiers to do unspeakable things?
Crimes beyond imagination committed by otherwise fine, young men and women?

The most recent investigation that was headlines yesterday and absent from even the back section of most newspapers in America today was of an alleged rape and murder of a young woman and her family (including a very young girl shot in the head, although that was absent in the most recent MSNBC story) by four (maybe five) of our own young soldiers.
Obviously, we are not sending rapists and murderers to Iraq, but what is it about that war there that creates such evil in the minds and actions of our "children" whom we ship off to that land to fight a war and maintain an occupation that makes little sense to them, to us and to the Iraqis?


Who among us can answer this grieving woman's question?