Gang Sex is one thing... but having an audience... that's just creepy.

Americas sweetheart isn't she?

Wonder if you will hear anymore out of all the friends and family. You know the ones, each one were singing the same chorus: She's a good girl," "not the girl I know," etc.

And the ultimate punsihment? A DNA test shows her baby's Papa is an Iraqi. A lifetime reminder of what kind of bitch she is.

When out-of-controll hillbillys in the US army stack a few Arab scumbags up into an unatractive naked pyramid, we all feel bad, we all feel responsible. Quite rightly.

But when Jihadis cut throats on video, detonate trucks full of TNT in crowded marketplaces and throw acid in the faces of unveiled women in Bangladesh, no one on the Muslim side feels bad, no one feels responsible, God forbid anyone should blame Islam or the culture that routinely produces this barbarism, not even the terrorists themselves should be held responsible, since they are merely poor opressed people who don't know any better.

I'm tired beyond belief of the double standard. The US personel who commited these acts should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But the prisoners themselves should be shot. My hope is, that once Iraqis are in control of Iraq, the mass executions will begin.

It's the only way that desperate country can hope to get a handle on the mass criminality and madness that is the legacy of Saddam.

The problem is not mass graves, the problem is that, under Saddam, the wrong people got put into them.

I haven't heard anybody raise the point yet. I think that there are probably others thinking about it too, not just me. So I'll be the one who farts in the elevator here.

Isn't there an argument to be made that women don't belong in the military?

Now, before I get my name put on a NOW watchlist or something, let me be clear: I'm not making such an argument. I'm just pointing out that such an argument exists, and that it's not entirely specious, and that this whole situation feeds into it.

It's one thing to talk about prejudice and its effect on the unit. Fifty years ago, black soldiers and white soldiers were forced to serve alongside one another for the first time, and by executive order no less. It was hard on the unit, but the unit got over it. Attitudes changed.

Sex is different. Race prejudice, in my opinion, is not an innate thing. Xenophobia is, but race prejudice has to be learned. As such, it can be un-learned, or not taught at all. We can change old attitudes with respect to race prejudice. But we can't change attitudes with respect to sex.

I think that there's an argument to be made that at least some of what we've seen out of Abu Ghraib would not have happened if the unit staffing the prison had been made up entirely of men.

There. I've been the bad guy. I've raised the question. Now everybody can disavow me publicly. :-)

After spending a minute in quiet reflection, I've revised and extended my remarks above over here. If y'all want to burn me in effigy or whatever, please feel free to do it on my site, rather than derailing this one. Whatever you feel is more appropriate.

Anyway, as I said above, I just wanted to raise the question.

Jeff, don't be a wuss, ;-) such questions are of course legitimate. Problem is our military doesn't have enough PEOPLE right now - we're going to have to make due with the discipline problems caused by integration. It's possible.

Problem is our military doesn't have enough PEOPLE right now

I hadn't heard that; actually I'd heard the opposite. I'm sure that was my misunderstanding.

Maybe one solution would be to keep mixed-gender units out of forward-deployed areas where discipline is iffy enough to begin with.

Hell, from my point of view, most of the enlisted personnel in our Army, as well as most of our reservists, are just kids. If I were in charge, I wouldn't let them go on a camping trip without separate tents and a chaperone, preferably a sexless old crone with a penchant for cackling and smacking people on the wrists with rulers when they're not looking.

Then again, I have well-known issues with my first-grade teacher, so maybe that's just me.