During his two-month, 2500-mile journey through Poland, Morgenthau visited the eight cities in which the more important excesses had occurred.

The excesses uncovered at Abu Ghraib prison most likely occurred, he added, because the conditions for effective interrogation had not been established.

Paleontologists David M. Raup and Jack Sepkoski have proposed that an excess of extinction events occurs roughly every 26 million years (though many are relatively minor).

When excesses occur, the perpetrator is disciplined and sometimes transferred from the force if considered unable to keep his temper.

"It is quite clear that excesses occurred, almost none of them venal," Mr. Casper said.

It's not the case-at least not for me-that I have the idea to write a story in which a particular excess occurs, or "about" a particular excess.

Where excesses do occur they should be spent.

The worst excesses occurred in the overwhelmingly Sinhalese south, where a violent Marxist rebellion took hold among young people.

When excesses occur, they have to be corrected.

Without a doubt, a great many people would be better off today if the excesses of the 1980's had not occurred.