I didn't get to that last paragraph before posting. The whole Ron Paul meme doesn't even make sense in the context of the article. Still, leaving out that angle as well as the conspiracy angle in the article, just the hard data about troop behavior is fascinating.
There is a much better - more detailed and factual - article on the issue here:
The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Othershttp://www.sott.net/articles/show/148141-The-Trick-%20of-the-Psychopath-s-Trade-Make-Us-Believe-that-Evil-Comes-from-OthersIt is in the form of a lengthy interview with two editors of a book on the subject, titled "Political Ponerology", by a Polish researcher Andrzej Lobaczewski. The author was not available for in terview due to his old age and ill health, so the interview is with the editors. The book out of print on Amazon, alas, and the impenetrable title relegates it to a limited scientific circle, which is a shame. The interview itself is absolutely fascinating and frightening, too. A few excerpts:
But Political Ponerology presents the subject in a radically different way from other texts about psychopathy, suggesting that the influence of psychopaths and other deviants isn't just one of many influences working on society, but, under the appropriate circumstances, can be the primary influence that shapes the way we live, what we think, and how we judge what is going on around us. When you understand the true nature of that influence, that it is conscienceless, emotionless, selfish, cold and calculating, and devoid of any moral or ethical standards, you are horrified, but at the same time everything suddenly begins to makes sense. Our society is ever more soulless because the people who lead it and who set the example are soulless - they literally have no conscience.
(...)
Early in the book, Łobaczewski describes his experiences in university where he first encountered the phenomenon. He went into the library to get some books on the question of psychopathy and found to his amazement that they had all been removed! This fact demonstrates a self-awareness of their difference amongst at least some of them, and in the case of Poland under communism, of those in a position of power highly enough placed to get books removed from the university library. Laura said reading that passage made the hair stand up on her neck! The implications of this fact are far-reaching in understanding our world, how it got that way, and what we need to do to change it.
(...)
So now imagine how human beings who are totally in the dark about this can be deceived and manipulated by these individuals if they were in power in different countries, pretending to be loyal to the local populations while at the same time playing up obvious and easily discernable physical differences between groups (such as race, skin colour, religion, etc). Psychologically normal humans would be set against one another on the basis of unimportant differences while the deviants in power, with a fundamental difference from the rest of us, a lack of conscience, an inability to feel for another human being, reaped the benefits and pulled the strings.
(...)
...and here it ties back into "The Power of NIghtmares" and the whole neoconservative thing:
Schizoidal psychopathy is a deviation that produces people who are hypersensitive and distrustful and disregard the feelings of others. They are attracted to high-sounding ideas, but their impoverished psychological nature severely limits their perceptions and turns their so-called "good intentions" into influences for evil. Their idea of human nature ends up perverting their attempts. As Łobaczewski says the typical expression of their attitude to humanity is expressed in what he calls the "schizoidal declaration": "Human nature is so bad that order in human society can only be maintained by a strong power created by highly qualified individuals in the name of some higher idea". How many movements, from fascism to communism on to the neoconservatism we see today are based upon that idea! One could easily imagine this statement coming from Leo Strauss, for example.
I should have posted that article instead of Barrett's, but I found it later.