Barry: we know that American soldiers nowadays typically come from economically vulnerable classes. That was certainly the case with Mike Robillard. But Robillard thinks there are other kinds of vulnerability in addition to economic vulnerability. Young American kids, especially working class males, are particularly vulnerable to appeals to their masculinity, their patriotism, their nationalism, and their civic duty. And they aren't of an age where they know or have the capacity to fully understand what these things mean.

Mike: admittedly I think I was probably swept up in this, personally. But I think that at a young age, especially ages 16, 17, 18, when a lot of these kids are making these decisions to enter into the military, their sense of moral commitment, their sense of patriotism, it's, through no fault of their own, it's not a robust sense of civic duty or of nationalism and I think that the recruitment pitch that the the military has standardly went with and presently goes with really leans into and takes advantage of that idealistic kind of naive senses of duty to one's country. There's the sense that, I think, can be instilled in young people that these people gave so much in the past so that you can have all these things that you take for granted. Suddenly, there's the sense of tremendous almost unpayable debt to the country or to the persons of the past that made the ultimate sacrifice so you can go to college or whatever. Those moral commitments can serve very often as a source of vulnerability towards exploitation.

Barry: of course, there's nothing wrong with a sense of patriotism or civic duty; these can be very good things. A naive sense of duty to country, having no idea about the different ways you can express your patriotism or your duty to past generation or your duty to the rest of society; that's what Mike Robillard thinks makes young people particularly vulnerable to moral exploitation, and the most troubling feature of moral exploitation is that the people most vulnerable to serious moral injury are the people who are likeliest to face it.

Rumsfeld: at Abu Gorab, where Americans were mistreating, abusing in a sadistic, disgusting manner, people that were in our custody and should have been treated properly and the President had said should be treated humanely and I had said should be treated humanely.

Myers: clearly, we don't torture detainees. That's not in anybody's playbook. That's not what we do as Americans. It's not in accordance with the law and conventions that we simply won't condone it, if it's true. And I think we've done a pretty good job of policing ourselves to -date.

Bush: yeah, we certainly wish Abu Gorab hadn't happened, but that should not reflect, you know, America; this is the actions of some soldiers. 'Some soldiers.'

Rumsfeld: they were just doing things they shouldn't have been done and they've been punished for them, as they should be.

Ian: I remember when I went and talked to the jack from 82nd. We talked about the deployment. He talked about how he went to talk to some soldiers of the battalion; they had basically built a little interrogation chair to make detainees really uncomfortable. The most uncharitable way to look at this is as a torture device, really. And the Jag, I said, 'well does that cross the line?' and he said, 'well, I sat in the chair and I didn't think it was that bad, so I'd say…' This is a completely subjective basis and, furthermore, you're sitting in that chair for a short period of time, doesn't necessarily provide a very