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There is definitely something wrong with a country where primary school pupils are expected to pledge allegiance to flag every day. Is there a fear that, sometime during the night, the kiddies will have taken a liking to Bolivia or Japan?

Incidentally, if the citizenship criteria were applied to people like me, I'd certainly be kicked out of Britain. Swear allegiance to the Queen---why? I never voted for her. My bloodline is more British than her's, so how come her and the genetic experimentation that is her family is at the head of our state?

Yes, but the point had already been made that people who are ill-educated and ill-brought-up are unlikely to have the decency, willingness, moral frame of reference, or moral courage, to refuse such an order- and even less so if the prevailing culture is one that tends to dehumanise prisoners.

I'm not sure who you mean by 'we'. I try not to demonise anyone, except unfunny TV comics and Z-list 'celebs'.
For myself, the yahoos you refer to, I loathe- they make life near-intolerable for everyone else, and richly deserve the punishment they (so rarely) receive. I would reintroduce the death-penalty for riding a bike on the pavement, for example, and castrate parallel-parkers. But, then, I'm a moderate..........
But these dickheads didn't start off that way- a particular given set of circumstances turned them into arseholes rather than angels, and I can't help feeling that if we knew what those circs were and could do something to change them or prevent them being repeated, then we'd have a better society.
And returning to Iraq, the same problems exist in US society, and an Army is a microcosm of the society that produces it. So............we get our Lindys and our Rumsfelds, God help us all.

It's interesting that you pick up on the 'empathy', or 'see how YOU like it', aspect with offenders- our system is experimenting along these lines, isn't it?

A Whitewash that is Transparent

Got to give the whitehouse points for trying but just as I saw the real scope of the catastrope(1000+ pictures of the abuse) on the news yesterday
so will the Arabs on Al-Jazeera but without the whitewash

A 1000+ pictures and their still claiming its an isolated incident

cheers
B....OZ

PS For you Trivial Pursuit enthusiasts....a new oxymoron....Intelligent Bush

Especially in an organisation like the police, it takes extraordinary guts to stand up against bad behaviour, and I can't find it in me to condemn those who remain silent- they have obligations to family, etc.
It's really up to our leaders to punish any instance of this sort as severely as possible- which of course, they usually fail to do, thereby tacitly condoning and reinforcing the beahviour, just like a bad parent who fails to discipline their child. Come full-circle, there, I think..........

Think we're all in agreement on this, BC.