Your in charge of a platoon during the Viet Nam war. You get a call on the radio that another platoon a mile away has been caught in an ambush and you have to get their to save them. If you don’t, they will all likely be killed.

The problem is the mindfield between you and them. A local farmer knows the way through but he’s not willing to tell you (he doesn’t like Americans).

You could hold a gun to his head…that would get him to talk (torture). A couple of broken fingers would get him to talk as well (torture). Either of those solutions WOULD save 20 American lives.

As an officer in the Army, you can’t do either. You asked the farmer to help, he said ‘NO’.

What can you do then? Go around, which will cost American lives…or go through, which will cost American lives.

Don’t reduce this problem to an ‘unstable mindset’ amongst cadets. When the popular opinion is that torture is okay at certain times, then everyone will start to believe it, cadets included. From the situation I just described, it’s not a stretch to say that a lot of people would start breaking civilian’s fingers in certain situations.

Now, if you take that situation and put it on one of the most popular TV shows in American…and Jack Bauer starts breaking the fingers of a terrorist, it’s not unreasonable to sway public opinion towards torture.

Cadets don’t believe that 24 is ‘real’, and they certainly don’t have an unstable mindset. But, they are people with opinions that can change.

And by the way, the Army didn’t need to talk to Sly about the Rambo movies. It’s hard to convince a cadet…or anyone, that running through a camp of 100 North Veitnamese with an M-60 at your hip is anything short of suicide.

- Drew
West Point class of ‘97.

Cadets might have gotten the impression that they could shoot two M-16’s simultaneously (one on each arm) while taking on the entire army of a third-world county and carrying a wounded buddy? Do they get a lot of copy-cats for that?

I watch 24 religiously, but much of it stretches credulity so far that I laugh at the army suits for taking it seriously.