http://www.truthera.com/2007/05/04/us-iraq-troops-condone-torture/

“A US survey of battlefield ethics among troops in Iraq has found widespread tolerance for torture in certain circumstances and problems with morale.”

“The Pentagon survey found that less than half the troops in Iraq thought Iraqi civilians should be treated with dignity and respect.”

“More than a third believed that torture was acceptable if it helped save the life of a fellow soldier or if it helped get information about the insurgents.”

“About 10% of those surveyed said they had actually mistreated Iraqi civilians by hitting or kicking them, or had damaged their property when it was not necessary to do so.”

What we really need in this election is a politician that will call on the American people to sacrifice for our future. We’ve got to make some major reforms to Medicare and Social Security or these programs will bankrupt the nation. It’s time for Americans to Cowboy Up!

And to those who believe a coup by the US military would somehow be qualitatively different from those perpetrated by other militaries throughout the world, I suggest you study very carefully all the armed forces involved, dispassionately and objectively.

The US military, like all armed forces, is dictatorial. As it absolutely must be. This is tolerable (and, again, necessary) in a military force in order for it to operate. But to think that a dictatorial culture will somehow miraculously tranform into a democratic one upon involving itself in civil affairs and political power in the pinnacle of naivete. The US military’s culture is diametrically opposed to liberty, as it must be.

Furthermore, I posit that the culture of honor that reigned in the US armed forces during WWII, for example, has largely been abandoned. No honorable man will torture, and yet US soldiers have been caught doing so repeatedly. No honorable man will obey an illegal order, and yet invading a country that has not attacked your country is clearly illegal, violating treaties that the US has signed (and which have therefore become binding US law). And yet the US military has done so on numerous occasions: Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Grenada, Iraq, and many others. There is no honor in such actions.

Those who advocate some sort of military coup in the US have an axiomatic belief that Americans will not be subject to the types of actions the US military routinely performs abroad. These actions are predicated on the dehumanization of “the enemy”, whoever he may be, and coup proponents believe that US citizens will never become “the enemy”.

But dehumanization of a declared enemy is a very, very slippery slope. We’ve seen it in the US, happening to Americans, on more than one occasion. The repression of labor activists and “agitators in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the red scare, are clear cases of this.

To dehumanize anyone –American or not– who is accused of being a friend of the wrong group, of not being a sufficiently vehement enemy of the wrong ideology, or of simply holding the wrong beliefs, is terrifyingly easy.

The biggest problem you can ever have, in either the public or the private sector, is the accumulation of unmoderated power. This is because ALL power structures, even those created in the spirit of altruism. intrinsically become corrupted by the desire to preserve themselves. Only multiple, external checks and balances can moderate this intrinsic preoccupation with self-preservation.

The problem with a military coup is that however honorable or even useful the impetus for it was, unless subject to some external controls it will become preoccupied with its own survival. Moreover, military coups are especially difficult to moderate because the military quickly gains a virtual monopoly over lethal force…

But, like Chris said, it’s not really the traditional definition of a military coup.

That would not be a military coup; so long as the military did not itself attempt to rule (excepting the maintenance of civil peace).