The two tortured soldiers were a response for Mahmoudiyah

While everyone is focusing on the broadening of charges of the rape and killings in Mahmoudiyah to five more soldiers, this story seems to have slipped by. Local Sunnis are saying that the capture, torture, and apparent beheading of Pfc.'s Tucker and Menchaca were a direct response to the rape and murders.

I don't know how much credibility to place in the local's claims, but, remember, they were in the same platoon.

The American soldiers accused of raping an Iraqi girl and then murdering her and her family may have provoked an insurgent revenge plot in which two of their comrades were abducted and beheaded last month, it has been claimed.....

US army officials have already begun a separate inquiry into possible links between the two cases, although they insist at this stage that it is purely "speculation". However, locals in Mahmoudiyah, a Sunni market town in the heart of the "Triangle of Death" south of Baghdad, say relatives of the dead girl's family with contacts to insurgent groups asked them to take a "blood for blood" revenge.

There's also a threat that 8 more Americans will be similarly killed.