"C'mon! Sign it! All your friends are doing it!"

Justin Raimondo focuses attention on a key part of the brouhaha about "fake" letters being sent by soldiers that say that everything is hunky-dory in Iraq:

The Olympian quotes Sgt. Christopher Shelton, signer of a letter that was published in the Snohomish Herald, saying "his platoon sergeant had distributed the letter and asked soldiers for the names of their hometown newspapers. Soldiers were asked to sign the letter if they agreed with it."

Shelton, it appears, did agree with it, but can anyone honestly imagine a soldier refusing to sign it when asked to do so by a superior officer?

It isn't even necessary to presume that these soldiers were ordered to sign the letter. Just the peer pressure of their compatriots would be enough to get them to sign something that they might not necessarily agree with. One question that should be asked is whether the soldiers were asked to sign the letter in front of their buds. If this was done while everyone was sitting in a hot tent just outside Tikrit how many of them would be willing to say, "I don't agree with this" and refuse to sign it?

<Rumsfeld>Do we know that it went down this way? No. Is it possible that it did? You bet your sweet bippy!</Rumsfeld>