No Doug, I wasn't saying you condoned what that Marine appears to have done. I'm quite sure you are horrified at what appears to have happened, and would have done everything you could to stop that kind of thing happening if you had been in the spot.

We might disagree as to whether to see it as a one-off aberration by a particular individual, which I think you would, or an instance caught on camera of something that is probably a lot more widespread, and reflects a particular style of military training, which is what I would be more likely to suspect. But we'd agree that it is something that shouldn't happen, and that is an important thing to agree about, because there are some people who really think that kind of thing doesn't matter.

And no one is saying that it's just the Americans. Clearly there are some people on the other side who are capable of just about anything. But when a war is proclaimed as "a war on terrorism" that implies a promise that terrorist methods will not be used in waging it.

As for "The inference that the whole country is guilty", John of Hull who started the thread later posted saying that he shouldn't have given it that title, which suggested he was saying all Americans did such things, because he wasn't menaing that.

I doubt that John saw starting the tread as a way of giving news, but rather of wanting to talk about some item of news that had worried him, the way you do with friends.
.....................................................
As to why that dance group decided America was the place to go, or rather, stay, well it's surely the place with the biggest number of Cubans in the world, other than Cuba itself, so where else would they want to go? It does seem more like show business than anything.