Sympathy for the Devil

I tend to get pretty bent out of shape when people on the anti war side start comparing Bush to Hitler and the US to the Nazis.
That being said, some understanding for some of their actions can develop as things progress in Iraq.
In WWII when the French Maquis or the Russian Partisans (who, coincidently, were called terrorists by the German forces) blew up a vehicle full of German soldiers, or shot some commissioner or other official the Germans had a tendency to borrow from the ancestors of their Italian allies and decimate things. For those who don't know, this quite literally meant to kill one out of every ten of some group of people. The Romans tended to do it to rebellious Legions occasionally to rebellious villages although they more often were just exterminated, the adults all killed and the children sold off into slavery. This was of course soundly condemned by the Allies when it the Germans did it despite the US, the British, and the French haveing histories of doing the same things in past wars.
But where does our understanding of the desire to inflict such an "atrocity" arise? Well,it has come to light that on the 20th of September of this year a convoy of contractors escorted by some soldiers took a wrong turn in the town of Duluiyah which is north of Baghdad.
The vehicles came under fire from RPGs and machine guns and one was pretty wrecked. The four contractors riding in the vehicle were killed. Thus far this is an act of war and can be understood if not liked. Unfortunately, two of the contractors were not killed in the initial fire fight. They were dragged from the vehicle and forced to kneel at the side of the road. One of them was then shot in the back of the head with a rifle. (He was the lucky one.) The second man was drenched in gasoline and set on fire. Children in the area crowded around and threw straw on the burning man as he screamed in agony to make the fire bigger.
This is reported in the the Daily Telegraph of London and is now being carried by the AP, Boston globe, Al Jazeera and other news agencies.
Yahoo News has the AP story.
Four U.S. Contractors Killed in Iraq

Now I am pretty understanding about what happens in War. I know that it is my job (in the long run) to kill the enemy soldier and it is his job to kill me. But I draw the line at roadside executions and dousing prisoners in Gasoline and setting fire to them. (And if ANYONE says "Well look at Abu Ghraib..." to justify this... Well, I will despise you as the ignorant piece of crap you have just proven yourself to be. Unless of course you can PROVE to me that we poured gasoline on prisoners and set them on fire.)
In this case I begin to seriously understand how the Germans felt when they torched towns in occupied Europe. Near as I can tell the French didn't do stuff like this. The Russians did.
It is hard not to really, really want to follow that age old tradition of decimation at times.