In 1997, Mark Hamm noted an over-representation of combat veterans among the prison population and, drawing from a number of studies, discussed possible underlying psychological factors that led McVeigh to bomb the Murrah. Among them was the Army’s training, fine-tuned over the years to remove soldiers’ aversion to murdering other humans through highly calculated conditioning, which leads to a reflexive willingness to obey any orders, including killing. Once conditioned, soldiers retain the learned aggression and desire to kill, sometimes enacting this in the civilian world.
