if you have a fine strong piece of metal, one you can barely bend, you can still break it with a bit of patient persistence
repeated bending will lead to metal fatigue, cracks will nucleate and migrate, then grow, until suddenly there is catastrophic failure.
Not from any stress that on its own would break the piece, but rather from persistent cumulative light stress that concentrates flaws into weak points until a finely engineered working tool falls to pieces.
On a completely unrelated issue, here is a zoomable chart of US Army division deployment during world war II.
Out of almost 100 divisions, two were in combat for as long as 18-24 months, the 32nd and 37th, both in the Pacific - the 32nd fought on New Guinea then an 8 month break and then back to New Guinea and then on to the Philippines for about 18 months almost continuous deployment.
Total of 13000+ hours of combat, the longest of any US Army unit during WWII.
Most divisions did less than a year of combat operations, and then had to be rotated out as ineffective and the war did not last long enough for many of them to go back into line.
No 3rd or 4th tours.
The highest casualties were in the 3rd inantry division, which landed in North Africa, Italy and Southern France, finishing in Germany. They had more than 100% casualties, in 18 months of near continuous combat.
If the surge extends to 18 months, then something like half of the combat brigades of the US Army will have done the same, and for most of them it is on top of previous shorter tours.
The US Army started cracking about 6 months ago, it is now being bent.
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If 40% of US military personnel think that torture is ok to get information, then I think the cracks are starting to show through.
But hey, what do I know. I never served and I live in California. Maybe US military personnel are morally better than the likes of me. I am sure we will find out when these folks muster out and become police officers.
Officers or enlisted?
That is marginally consistent with the general US attitude (~ 25-30% condone some torture +/- 5%) - answer also seems to depend quite a bit on how question is phrased.
Phillip Carter (a former US Army officer who has served in Iraq) argues that the US Army "has broken."
The question was "Officers or enlisted?" and I believe the survey was enlisted, though included both Marines and Army personnel.
If ~25-30% of the US population believes torture is ok, we know how watches "24" and is the core of Bush's support. I would like to think that, since the US military tries to instill in the enlisted ranks a firm understanding of what war crimes are, that the enlisted would be less supportive of torturing people, not more.
If 40% of the officer corps thought torture was ok, I'd be seriously worried.
The enlisted are mostly early 20s and male, the demographic most likely to not have thought this through - but that is why they have an officer corps over them.
Philip Carter may well be right; in my uninformed and ancedotal impression I think the US army hit its first limit late 2006, but right now if they pulled out or drastically reduced operational tempo they'd be back to full effectiveness in about a year (actually top of their form as they'd have a high proportion of combat vets).
But, the current tempo is completely unsustainable and sometime in the next 12-18 months they are in danger of major unit breakdowns, which would take 5-10 years to recover from. The soldiers in the combat units are spending too long in the field and doing too many closely spaced rotations, most of them can not keep up this intensity.
Speaking of fatigue...Doesn't the Navy have two carrier groups in the Gulf of Oman at the moment. Cat4/5 Tropical Cyclone Gonu is the first one to enter said Gulf in at least a generation.