Stuff like that has been happening for centuries. So what is different now? I guess the way we exchange our information and speed at which news become available changed everything. Pictures from the prison were taken with horrible quality 100 dollar digital camera. Thrown on the internet got here in a flash. Any one out there with a camera cell phone just became a photographer. Any one out there with some server space and decent bandwidth became a broadcast center. We read about this stuff before but no pictures (or limited ones) and no videos. Especially now when people stop reading and watch more and more Tv what's better than recording a video and showing it? It's all aimed to strike fear into our hearts... It's all aimed to make our gov't look horrible... It's not like we became any more uncivilized. It's just the amount of violence we used to accept as a norm just tripled. You are watching TV and any bombing around the world that has less than 10 victims doesn't even make news. We just became very numb and it takes big shocking event to get some kind of reaction out of us.