If you are one of those Americans who believe the war in Iraq and subsequent occupation are immoral or criminal acts, but you still claim to support our troops, I have a question for you: do you support the troops who abused Iraqi POW's? To be consistent, there is no reason you should not support those troops, unless you differentiate that the rest of our troops deserve our support because they are only following orders.
In a way, it would be refreshing to hear you say so, since you would then be admitting that the abuse of POW's is an anomoly and a violation of American policy, rather than the norm. On the other hand, that answer places you in the unenviable position of having to defend the Nazi guards at Auschwitz, on the same basis of "only following orders" - not merely defend those guards, mind you, but assent to the proposition that all German Citizens owed them their support.
For those of us who believe in the goodness of America's mission in Iraq, supporting the troops is simple. I wholeheartedly support the activities of our troops in Iraq, and by extension I support the troops themselves. I do not support the activities of those troops who participated in violations of their code of arms, therefore I do not support those troops themselves. By contrast, the anti-war crowd has staked out a tough position to defend. They claim to support our troops, while opposing the activities of our troops; therefore anti-war Americans, who claim to support our troops generally, have no grounds on which to not support those troops who abused Iraqi POW's.
The fact is that those who do not support the activities of the troops do not support the troops themselves, and indeed insult all those who serve honorably. The only reason the anti-war crowd insists that they do support our troops is that they know it is politically damaging to say otherwise. To accomodate the political needs of anti-war partisans then, the word "support" has been emptied of meaning, so that those who denigrate the mission of our troops can claim that they "support the troops." They are hoping nobody notices how ridiculous that claim is.