Setting bad examples

Evidence of torture in Israeli prisons. More faults in Israeli PR; or, how to annoy your already peeved neighbors.

Also, American troops condone torture, blamed in part on the long serving periods for US soldiers in Iraq. Vice President Cheney, touring the Middle East — which won't really help anything diplomatically — spoke in defense of these extended deployments.

Neither case of abuse by the militaries of two countries so despised in the Mid-East are all that new news, but both will inflame, and continue to inflame, those effected or who feel violated in the Middle East, thus perception plays more into extremism. Extremists will no doubt use the despicable actions by Israel and the US's armed forces to try to gain public support and recruit against two forces seen as evil.