Sat May 8, 8:04 AM ET
By Cyrille Cartier
CUMBERLAND, Md. (Reuters) - For many in the sleepy town of Cumberland, home of the military company at the heart of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, the U.S. soldiers are the real victims and the Iraqis had it coming.
In bars, shops and throughout the town of 21,000 people, residents gathered on Friday to watch Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testify to Congress about the abuses that involved soldiers from their local 372nd Military Policy company.
For some, shock mingled with embarrassment over their hometown's sudden and unwelcome notoriety. For many others, sympathy for the soldiers far outweighed their concerns.
"Excuse me, if I see somebody dragging my people through the streets and hung up on a bridge -- I mean, the bible even says an eye for an eye," said retired Vietnam War veteran Robert Zalewski, 56, drinking a beer at Pete's Parkview Tavern and Grill.
"People are trying to kill you. You got to protect yourself," he said, adding the abuse by the soldiers was "half what they (Iraqis) have done to us."
Jamey Hill, a local postal worker, said the photos of naked prisoners in sexual positions, in a pile or on a leash, were nothing compared to the images of murdered Americans dangling from a bridge in the town of Falluja in March.
"I'm not happy about it (the prison abuse). I'm not very happy about having the pictures of us on the bridge either," Hill said.
Tanya Vargas, 29, who said she knew two of the soldiers linked to the scandal, said it had been hard to believe her friends were involved.
"What were they thinking to do this, and then to take pictures of it?" she said. "When they come home, it's not going to be the welcome home the soldiers usually get," she said.
Many local residents were eager to point to the sacrifices made by U.S. soldiers seeking to bring stability to a country halfway around the world. Faced with daily attacks and a rising military death toll, residents say hard-working soldiers may just have snapped.
"What they did was wrong. Maybe they kind of regret it. But maybe they just kind of lost it," said Glenn Rice, 55, another Vietnam War veteran who is a bartender in a local club. "Maybe somebody got hurt they knew."
Helen Forbeck, 36, a receptionist at a Cumberland insurance agency, said the military was partly to blame for keeping the soldiers in Iraq (news - web sites) far longer than they had initially been told.
"Don't you think it has something to do with the fact they've been told three different times they're coming home and three different times it's been pushed back?" she said.
Zalewski said he was worried the soldiers in the photos would be prosecuted, taking the fall as scapegoats while their superiors washed their hands of the affair.
"They're going to hang the little man, not the big guy," he said.
Jessica Buzzard, a 24-year-old college student and mother of two, said she was among the few in her town who were appalled by the abuse.
"I don't care what background they're from and what culture, but to treat them like animals, that's not right," she said.