Put Yourself in Their Boots

From the article:

Given the attention that the allegations of a massacre at Haditha have been receiving, it's worth taking a moment to consider the extraordinary stresses that American service members are under as they fight the unconventional war against insurgents in Iraq.

Those stresses, of course, are not an excuse for committing atrocities--if indeed any atrocities were committed. But if you take a moment to think about the conditions there, you get an idea of the way in which individual soldiers' moral strength can be tested by the circumstances of combat in Iraq.