I'm with you there, brucie. I'm sure happy isn't the word you'd use, or a feeling most people who become soldiers would associate with killing other people. And I think psychos should be the very last people who should be allowed in any army.

The trouble is that in the circumstances of war people who aren't like that at all sometimes seem to get into a way of thinking which means they do the most awful things. All part of cracking up maybe, but it can happen to whole units. TV interviews with soldiers who took part in My Lai for instance, show them as perfectly ordfinary people. I suspect that the same would apply to the killers of Srebrenica. Or the (then) young Israelis who were involved in one horrific incident that has now come to light after being covered up for many years..

And my impression from what I've heard about army training methods is that some of them could be designed to dehumanise soldiers, which is another way of saying, turn them at least temporarily, into psychos.