to your average rationalization of Iraqi prisoners mistreatment and rationlization of civilian killing:

I agree the soldiers are not the criminals as you imply, rather by no fault of their own are in a particular mindset in a particular system to server particular people. It is with the best intentions and highest regard for "minimization of civilian casualties"/humanitarian effort that solider a goes about his actions in this system.

These attacks on mis-identification of targets as you describe them are accurately not a characterization of the soldiers intentions rather the nature of the system in which they are operating. This system allows us to view the outside intervention and murder of some 10,000 odd civilians as a good thing and a necessary engagement. It caries with it powerful rhetoric of freedom, liberation and protection from the greatest forms of evil, rhetoric that brings tears to the eyes of good intentioned people of the indoctrinated Sate of America.

historical precedent shows the Iraqi's would likely have been capable of ending the tyrannical rain of the murders dictator without the United States imperialist intervention which manifested in installing and supporting Saddam, imposing sanctions and ultimately invading the country:
"As Halliday and von Sponeck had argued
-- that if the vicious sanctions regime had been ended the population of Iraq would have been able to send Saddam Hussein to the same fate as other murderous gangsters supported by the US and UK: Ceausescu, Suharto, Marcos, Duvalier, Chun, Mobutu."(from interesting article here)

The attributes of the system are naturally hidden which allows solders, American citizens to believe they are engaged in some noble mission, rather then a imperialist venture to secure global hegemony. This indoctrination allows people to see our supporting of Saddam as one of convenience and in the past, and not as the same as the genocidal sanctions and bloody invasion.

This system allows us to contextualize the death of thousands of people as tragic unintentional consequences of our good intentions. Likewise it is worth quickly mentioning that its is not exclusive to the US and all almost all imperialist nations have carried with them the powerful forms rhetoric. to justify their imperialism.

Lastly being told this information does very little to deindoctrinated its readers, I have said and supported things for the wrong reasons in the past, ultimately I am open to the idea that this could be a misrepresentation as well. I see the opinions of other as just as valid as mine. That is I am just as “indoctrinated” to some other perspective. I do not want to tell people my argument is more correct then theirs. I am never angered by what I characterize as misrepresentations only saddened.