I've been away for a while, but I have to agree with ard mhacha's comment on the status of serving soldiers.

To call trained troops "scum of the earth" is acceptable.
I'm afraid that many people here are unable to accept that military training brutalises. These young men simply become hired killers, doing the bidding of whatever madman weilds power over them.

The Iraq conflict is a very good example of this.
The reasons for war have been changed so often, and nuanced to such an extent that I'm sure most of the soldiers neither know nor care what is right or wrong.
I remember National Service in Britain, and the brutalising of many of my young friends.
On leaving the Army some recovered after a few years....some did not...Ake