Actually, it was just the New York Times article that was misleading. The actual Gallup press release is more accurate.

Some soldiers have said that U.S. military intelligence officers ordered the soldiers to "soften up" prisoners for interrogation. About 7 in 10 Americans also blame these officers.

Bingo. Why did the Times neglect to mention that aspect when reporting that the majority of Americans feel the soldiers were not acting under orders?

A recent gallup poll came to a predictable conclusion:

In the Gallup poll, 8 in 10 respondents said they believed the actions of the soldiers violated United States military policy, while fewer than 2 in 10 said it was accepted policy. More than half, 56 percent of those polled, said the soldiers involved in the abusive acts were acting on their own rather than complying with orders. Thirty-four percent said the soldiers were following orders.

Gallup was obviously not asking the right questions. I would count myself amoung the majority of people who say the actions violated official military policy. I also think the soldiers were not following any direct orders. So according to Gallup, I think the soldiers charged must be the only ones to blame, right?

No. The soldiers were not following direct orders, but they were acting with explicit encouragement from their bosses at the prison and military intelligence. “It would be good if this guy had a rough night, ok?” is not a direct order, it's a hint. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

The soldiers being charged have also reported being told, “You did a good job with this guy last night. He broke down right away this morning.“ If that's not explicit encouragement, I don't know what is.

Do I think torture is against official military policy? Of course it is. The fact that these six or eight U.S. soldiers are being charged with crimes under the uniform code of justice proves that. But that doesn't mean torture wasn't tolerated by high-level military officials at the prison or elsewhere. It's just like speedng, everybody does it but it's still illegal if you get caught.

It's the job of pollsters to ask questions, I know. But then they (and the media) jump to conclusions as if there could be no other explanation. The most likely explanation of this case (the people in care of the interrogations directed the soldiers to make things rough for the prisoners) is still supported by the poll. It wasn't just an isolated case, or a few bad apples.

Donald Rumsfeld recently gave the most straightforward apology to the Iraqi people for the prison abuses. Do you think he reads this blog? His apology is almost exactly like what I suggested George Bush should say:

Me: “To the Iraqi people, I am sorry for what my country has done to you.”

Rumsfeld: “To those Iraqis who were mistreated by US forces, I offer my deepest apology.”

Way to go, Rummy. The Christian Science Monitor had this to say:

Friday's hearing gave something that the world has been waiting for, which is a straightforward, flat-out apology. What Donald Rumsfeld said was, "I feel terrible by what happened to Iraqi detainees. They're human beings. They were in US custody. Our country has an obligation to treat them right. We didn't do that. That was wrong. To those Iraqis who were mistreated by US forces, I offer my deepest apology."

I made a few changes to the code this morning. All related to improved cosmetics and error handling. Same links still apply.

Here's a simple VB.NET program I wrote to look at all of the log files for my dasBlog blog, and report all of the search terms people used in Google to get here.

Most Popular Search Terms, v0.1 - Source Code

Most Popular Search Terms, v0.1 - .NET Binary

Here's how the program looks at startup:

Here's how it looks after searching:

Suggestions/comments appreciated.

In the spirit of Eric Lippert's post, I wrote a small VB .NET program to search my own dasBlog web logs for Google's search terms. I found 767 references from Google. I will post the source code shortly.

Here are some of my favourites:

“What is a marriage license?”

I am number 12 on Google for this term.

Hmm. That's a tough one. Some would say that it is a license, issued by the government, to allow two people to get married. There may be a joke in there about marriage licenses and prison sentences, but I'm not going to go there.

Average 40 year old single woman in toronto has in savings

I'm number 52 on Google for this term.

That's a pretty specific request. I don't know that many 40-year-old women. Maybe one or two. And I don't have the nerve to ask them how much they have in savings, so you're going to have to do that yourself.

Donald Trump's toupee

Apparently, Donald does not wear one. He does his natural hair that way (although I am sure he colours it). Hey, it works for him, so who are we to even mention it?

Is Bill O'Reiley married?

Well, I believe the gentleman you are talking about spells his name O'Reilly. I tried to find out that information on the web, but Mr. O'Reilly keeps his private life very secret. However, I would not be surprised to learn that he has been married and divorced several times. From watching his successful television show a few times, one can see that he never lets anyone else win an argument, which from my experience, is the opposite what is required for a successful marriage.

This whole post is hilarious. Eric Lippert responds to some of the strange Google search terms that have led people to his blog. I sometimes see odd Google search terms in my web log as well. Someday I'll have to post some of them.