There is so much controversy over the handling of prisoners in Iraq. What makes people act and react the way our soldiers have done? How can people be so cruel? What motivates them and why would someone seem to derive pleasure from harming others?

In the book Science of Survival L. Ron Hubbard described the characterstics people have when they are at varous emotional tone levels.

Before I read this book I would be shocked and bewildered by the kinds of activities we are witnessing in these news stories. But once you understand this information, you also understand why people would act this way. But more importantly, you learn what you can do to bring them up to higher tone levels, where they would never do such things.

We can punish them, and of course we have to immediately take stringent efforts to reform our armed services, their training techniques and their "policies" that would allow such brutality. And the actions of these individuals is barbaric and unconscionable. But that does nothing, really, to prevent these individuals or this institution from acting this way in the future under similar circumstances. What handles that is addressing the underlying causes.