The February protests in western countries¹ against the upcoming invasion were much larger than any reaction against Abu Ghraib; they were some of the largest anti-war rallies in known history.

¹I realize they were worldwide, but we're talking about the west

Sure, I was a part of the huge Sydney protest, carrying a poster listing the names of about a dozen chemical weapons the US had sold to Iraq, under the title "Where did Saddam get his weapons?"

I was talking about size of the story. (e.g. If the US kills 3,000 people in a far-off country, no biggie. However, 9/11 was a huge story.) The Australian media was largely, as usual around those times the US is preparing to invade somewhere or mid-doing it, echoing mainstream US TV opinion. Well, a lot of those US shows are shown here too. There was a lot of soul searching in the US about the extremely troubling Abu Ghraib scandal, which went on for some time, and left some kind of permanent mark. The protests were covered when they happened, but I don't think they produced the same moral....pseudo-crisis at all, and quickly disappeared. They could be ignored.

Abu Ghraib and My Lai were, as the parent said, "failure of leadership" - whether the failure involved troops not being disciplined or simply the troops indiscipline becoming known to the public. The invasive and the Vietnam War were policies. Leadership decided on these and if the death and destruction involved had remained entirely under leadership's control, no further problems would have been perceived.

That the excesses of war, rather than war itself, can considered the problem is a success for policy since it allows a wedge to be driven once the public sours on war. "No more Vietnam Wars", a slogan the vast majority embraced after Vietnam, was a slogan that could morph to "no more unsuccessful wars fought with conscripts who discipline breaks down, next time we'll do it right!".

Ok thanks. Note that the subject has moved from the initial questioning of the claim that military leaders "have thought quite long and hard about their moral positions. It is the nature of the business, when sending people to die, to question everything about yourself." Killjoywashere was asked "Do you have any data backing up this claim?"

And in answer was given these 'failures of leadership', which seem to be PR disasters (the problem was not that they happened but that people found out about them - "simply the troops indiscipline becoming known to the public" - things that couldn't possibly be spun as the greatest country on Earth doing God's work) or people not doing their duty.

The moral dimension has entirely disappeared, which rather supports garyhunt's suspicions. Maybe questioning everything about your country is more important than 'questioning everything about yourself'. More important for the hundreds of thousands that were killed, at least.