Their alleged tactics sound an awful lot like stuff I've seen in a vast number of Hollywood action movies. Is it surprising that young men in uniform will act out the popular macho fantasies of their culture when given the opportunity and the authority to? They always think they are the "good guys" and the people they're doing it to are the "bad guys"...and it's supposedly quite all right to mistreat "bad guys", isn't it? "I mean, hey...they do it in all the movies... What would Clint Eastwood do? What would Steven Segal do? What would Rambo do?"

So, it's not surprising. Neither, however, is it excusable or tolerable.