McGreal reports: "The Pentagon said it is attempting to identify the soldiers responsible for the latest in a series of abuses by US forces which is likely to further inflame hostility to Nato troops in Afghanistan and reinforce the perception that there is an institutional problem in the American military."
A video anonymously posted on the web allegedly shows American forces in Afghanistan urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters. (photo: Reuters)
A Video of US Marines Urinating on Corpses Sparks Outrage
12 January 12
fghan president Hamid Karzai and US defence secretary Leon Panetta have led a chorus of condemnation of American soldiers filmed urinating on the bodies of dead Afghans as "inhumane" and "utterly deplorable".
The Pentagon said it is attempting to identify the soldiers responsible for the latest in a series of abuses by US forces which is likely to further inflame hostility to Nato troops in Afghanistan and reinforce the perception that there is an institutional problem in the American military.
Panetta said he had viewed the graphic video of four US marines urinating on three bloodied corpses. As they are filmed by a fifth soldier, the marines sigh with relief, laugh and make comments including "have a great day, buddy" and "golden, like a shower".
"I have seen the footage, and I find the behaviour depicted in it utterly deplorable," said Panetta. "Those found to have engaged in such conduct will be held accountable to the fullest extent."
The soldiers in the undated video, which was posted anonymously on the web, appear to be members of Scout Sniper Team 4, a US marine unit based in North Carolina that served in Afghanistan as recently as last year.
It is not clear who the dead Afghans are. They are possibly Taliban fighters but their corpses are not shown with weapons.
Karzai said in a statement that he was "deeply disturbed" by the desecration of dead bodies which is defined as a war crime by the Geneva conventions.
"This act by American soldiers is completely inhumane and condemnable in the strongest possible terms. We expressly ask the US government to urgently investigate the video and apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime," he said.
The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said it "strongly condemns the actions depicted in the video, which appear to have been conducted by a small group of US individuals, who apparently are no longer serving in Afghanistan".
"This disrespectful act is inexplicable and not in keeping with the high moral standards we expect of coalition forces," it said.
John McCain, a navy veteran and the leading Republican on the US senate's armed services committee, said the video "makes me so sad".
"There should be an investigation and these young people should be punished," he said.
A leading negotiator in Karzai's peace council, Arsala Rahmani, said that the film will have a "very, very bad impact on peace efforts".
"Looking at such action, the Taliban can easily recruit young people and tell them that their country has been attacked by Christians and Jews and they must defend it," he said.
But the Taliban, while criticising the actions of the marines as "shameful", said the latest revelations of abuse by US forces will not block attempts to get talks started to bring an end to the Afghan conflict.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, told the BBC that it is not the first time Americans had carried out such a "wild action". But another different Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the video "is not a political process, so the video will not harm our talks and prisoner exchange because they are at the preliminary stage".
The exposure of the video, widely viewed on the web, comes as the Obama administration attempts to begin peace talks with the Taliban before the US begins to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan.
Marc Grossman, the White House special representative, will meet Karzai in Kabul this weekend as well as officials in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Last week, the Taliban announced it would to set up a political office in Qatar which appears to be an important step toward negotiations. Washington is considering reciprocating by releasing several Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo jail as a confidence-building measure.
While the latest revelation of abuses does not appear likely to derail the latest peace effort it again raises questions about whether there is a culture of abuse in US forces serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Last year, 11 soldiers were convicted over the murders of three Afghan civilians by a "kill squad" and the subsequent cover up. It was revealed that some of them collected body parts, including fingers and skull parts, as trophies, and posed for photographs over the corpses of their victims.
This week, a US marine went on trial over the killing of 24 Iraqis, including women and children, in their homes. Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich faces charges of manslaughter over the killings as he commanded a group of soldiers who burst into the victims' homes in Haditha in search of combatants. Seven other soldiers also charged were either acquitted or had the case against them dropped.
The US military is also still grappling with the legacy of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and its role in the torture of alleged terrorists.
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Comments
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"some Haji" doesn't show a lot of respect, does it? Bin Laden is dead. "some Haji" may be some 12 year old kid, whose entire life has been lived under an American gun. "Some Haji" could be an 80 year old lady, whose only crime was having been born "a Haji".
Speaking of roadside bombs and suicide bombers, I'm sure if they had the kinds of weapons our military has they'd use them. Instead, they use what they have. It's almost as if they're willing to die to get us out of there. Remember when we pontificated about "being the liberators"? Clearly, you don't think a bunch of "Hajis" deserve liberation, or even human dignity, do you?
Maybe an "asshole of the world" is just a crater from an unbeliebably HUGE bomb, sent by someone who "just hates Hajis".
A recruiter called this morning hoping to catch my college age daughter in his net. I told him we were pacifists and unwilling to support illegal wars or war in general. He wanted to know what religion 'pacifist' was. Jeez, what a brain. He became rude, demanding to talk to her and I asked him to place this number on his do not call list. He became angry and well let's stick with rude. I asked to speak to the officer in charge with the intention of complaining. He informed me there was no officer in charge, he was in charge. When I requested his name he replied it was 'soldier, citizen soldier and I needed to remember that.' Let's talk about respect if my encounter is any measure of respect the armed forces have for it's citizens. Don't think for a moment the US military would treat American citizens any differently. They are pumped up on this 'hero' business and feel it gives them license to do what ever they feel is right. I find today's military a scary bunch, at home and abroad.
Then again, maybe you'd apologize for being a "Haji" in your own country and just kill yourself to save American amunition and urine.
Are you refering to the 19 guys from Saudi Arabia funded by the Saudi Arabian royal family, or are you refering to the Saudi Arab (bin laden) we already assasinated?
No, what brought the war to us was all that mineral wealth. Not a bunch of civilians who have absolutely no control over their fate.
We've lost the moral authority to act like victims any more! Get over it.
So you really believe that some guy in a cave with a few laptops and some disposable cell phones could do all that-including melting 100,000 tons of steel in each tower with jet grade kerosene? Be very very afraid then, because in that case we are dealing with very powerful evil magicians against whom bullets and urine won't work.
Setting that aside if you are not robert, and you also lost a lot of friends, on 9-11 then the government count must be very skewed showing less people actually killed on 9-11, and that would not surprise me either...
So, having been programmed to hate, being placed in a horrible set of stressful and dangerous circumstances, and facing 'the enemy', isn't urinating on them entirely predictable? After all, they had to kill them first... and isn't killing as deplorable as defiling their corpses?
I have met the enemy, and it is us.
[Not for nothing, but... don't forget that Timothy McVey came to same conclusion, and he was 'trained' (brainwashed?!) to dehumanize then kill his enemies. Of course, I would never act in the way that he did, and neither would the vast majority of people. But what about the thousands of American kids once they come home? What kind of support are we providing them? PTSD can manifest itself in many ways, and I fear for the safety of our veterans and their families, friends and communities. ]
Stay out of the hands of institutions! (as much and as long as you can)
I'm still waiting for the "Peace Dividend."
The peace dividend is a political slogan popularized by US President George H.W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the early 1990s, purporting to describe the economic benefit of a decrease in defense spending. It is used primarily in discussions relating to the guns versus butter theory. The term was frequently used at the end of the Cold War, when many Western nations significantly cut military spending.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_dividend
Well, Iraqi civilians, & Iraqis who fought against the U.S. war are only human beings who I'm sure reacted unfavorably when friends &/or relaitves were blown to bits by U.S. bombs/missiles, & thus having their father, son or husband who died. I'm sure you have enough common sense to realize that the U.S. arsenal, w/ its fuel-air bombs, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, white phosphorus, naplam, etc. produced a wider path of destruction than roadside bombs & suicide bombers.
i'll start with your question. the alQ decapitations seems marginally less depraved to me. the only 2 beheadings i know of, berg and pearl, were done in revenge of atrocities. they killed them by sword, and that was the end of it. as horrendous as it was, they did not degrade ALREADY DEAD bodies and joke about golden showers and laugh over the incident. berg and pearl were treated with resect and seriousness compared to the humiliation and degradation of this incredibly animal like behavior. they see it like a JOKE! at least alQ takes it seriously. [it it particularly disgusting to muz. they r very 'hyper' about piss.] this was such a cowardly, juvenile, unnecessary, ANIMAL act. then the morons film it [for the fun of passing it around and laughing with their buddies later, no doubt] they make all americans look like... -words fail me. this seems so symbolic of america pissing on the world. how many of these incidents occur and never come to light? and when they do, and there are criminal charges, they are dropped, or dismissed, or they get a nothing sentence. we are in THEIR countries.
How do you know that? And even if that didn't happen, how "respectful" is it to kill innocent civilians in "revenge"?
Still we DO know that these were purely religious lunatic assholes committing these crimes. They committed them for religious reasons. As evil as the people who committed those acts are, it's just not part of their m.o. to desecrate the body afterward in that way. If anything, they're anal retentive about body functions as much as they are about women's rights. Regardless of their obvious barbarism, they actually believe they're the civilized ones. There AREN'T any purely good guys or civilized parties involved in this mess.
That's the real shame. We HAD the moral authority at first and we squandered it.
they disgraced the whole country with their piss and their jokes.
and these were taliban, not alQ. these r the people that the usa has been trying to negotiate with for the last year. they finally seem to be getting negotiations started, and these jerks pissed all over it.
if u are going to kill in war, u just kill. the taliban r soldiers fighting for what they believe is right just like our soldiers. they are fighting to take back their own country. a soldier should treat another soldier with a modicum of respect. the pissing, while not as bad as abu ghraib and bagram, etc etc recalls all that sick behavior. it recalls every insult and degradation inflicted on all the 75% acknowledged INNOCENT detainees.
and the comments from americans on youtube! they are along the lines of, 'booyah. they should have pulled down their pants and shat in the rag head's face. way to go, marines. USA,USA'
next stop-iran. this is only a bump in the road that smells like a sewer from all america's piss filled sewers.
those places were not 'assholes of the world' until america got there. iraq was beautiful. iran is beautiful. a/stan was once full of people who really liked and admired americans. we destroyed their countries and their lives and killed and starved and maimed their kids. it is going to take an outside force to stop america. i expect that well deserved day to come. american soldiers go there by choice. these people have no choice. i feel very little regret when a soldier dies in someone else's country. they went there to kill. they knew the risk and they had a choice.
thanks for listening, brenda. i was probably very incoherent. i am horrified. its not just the piss. its the whole thing.
Just imagine these "heroes" are coming home and will be "pissing" on our children protesting the regime here.
I personally believe, beyond the shadow of any doubt, that 9/11 was an inside job by Bush & Cheney to give them the political capital to be able to invade any country they so desired & to destroy our democracy & our Constitution in the process, & they succeeded beyond their widest dreams thanks to fools who actually believed the fable they told.
We illegally invaded Afghanistan & Iraq for the purpose of world empire. Google PNAC. We are in their country, not ours. These men that lay dead on the ground being urinated on by foreign soldiers were simply fighting rid their land of an illegal foreign occupation. If the situation were reversed & we were invaded by a foreign power, we would do exactly what these dead Taliban were doing.
If this video provokes one more casualty than would have happened without it, that blood is on the hands of those participating in this video, authentic or fake does not matter. If authentic, then these fools have harmed their own, and should be dealt with accordingly.
Even tho it doesn't work in reality, U.S. soldiers have the legal & moral right to refuse an order if they feel that it is illegal & immoral. But, that rarely happens. The invasion of Iraq was outright illegal & based on known lies by the Bush admin. Theoretically speaking, every soldier that was ordered to Iraq had the legal right to refuse that order & that's what they should have done.
Well over 2 million Iraqi men, women, & children are now dead & well over 5 million displaced, homeless & countryless. A whole society & an ancient culture destroyed in the process. Bush & Cheney should be arrested, tried & punished for causing the needless deaths of more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein is guilty of. How many innocent Afghans will have to die or be made homeless or countryless before the U.S. is done in Afghanistan? And, as long as Obama continues these illegal wars of aggression & these illegal prisons thru-out the world, he's no less guilty than Bush & Cheney.
I have an East Indian friend who is FURIOUS at what she experiences (in the US)as a progressive media and progressive pundits who see OUR casualties and suffering as of unique importance, while the deaths and pain of others is of little interest or concern. I believe many of the comments here are evidence that we, at least, do not feel things that way.
It will be a pity, at least for us, if we do not right ourselves, do not regain (or achieve, perhaps for the first time?) some basically moral, unhypocritical posture, both here and at home. It's hard to believe there is not a majority of basically good, thinking and feeling people in this country. And if there are, it makes you wonder why our nation doesn't reflect it.
It's not just that they pissed all over the corpses of people, who, even if they had bothered to fight back when they were alive, are nothing more than citizens of a foreign country where we don't belong in the first place.
It's not just that.
It's that they showed LITERALLY what the military thinks of EVERYTHING our country claims to stand for.
You know, naziism was and still is completely evil. Hitler is, I'm sure, occupying a special spot right now, being pissed on by Satan,
STILL, the attrocities of the nazi empire didn't seem to PERMEATE EVERY FIBER of nazi soldiers with a PUTRESCENT ODOR of ABSOLUTE SLIMY IMMORAL BARBARISM the way OUR VERY OWN military has, to "our" "soldiers".
Remember the YouTube video of the "soldier" torturing puppies? Remember the Rolling Stone article on the all-pervasive nature of the "trophy hunting" attitude?
I SERIOUSLY DON'T WANT THESE PEOPLE TO COME BACK HOME.
CONT.
The criminal behavior is already spilling over and spilling blood in our own country. Just think about the military grade psychopath who went on a killing rampage JUST LAST WEEK!
Meanwhile, the Pentagon keeps pouring millions in OUR TAX DOLLARS into, what I call the "WAR PORN" industry.
Our parents and grandparents fought in MUCH TOUGHER wars, but tried to maintain their humanity.
Our generation has pissed all over that concept.
RSN, If you don't like my free use of the word, "PISS", don't print stories with "PISS" as the main character.
Another side note: I have a cousin who's one of these very assholes. Trust me, he's not an idiot. He's a squandered wasted lazy mind who had the natural gift of intelligence to be a decent human being, but joined the military to help with his alcoholism from too much partying.
The last I heard from him, he couldn't wait to get over there and start killin' some "Hajis". Can't let all that trainin' go to waste. I don't think he quit drinking either.
What I find ironic is that when any politician is sworn into office, or when any soldier is sworn into the service, or when a police officer or any law enforcement officer is sworn in, they pledge to protect and uphold the U.S. Constitution. The oath doesn't say that they will protect and uphold our govt. It only mentions the Constitution. But, it seems that the people who take this oath of office, especially our representatives in Washington and our president, always seem to miss that particular juncture in the oath.
If the militarized police in this nation are willing to act like Nazi stormtroopers as they did when they violently put down the peaceful protests in the street as if they were automatons, robots without any feelings or remorse or regret, then imagine what our soldiers would be willing to do to the American people if we rise up against what is quickly becoming a tyrannical government, not just in Washington, but in many of our states as well.
The state national guards have been trained very much like the regular soldiers in our military. They will obey almost any order given to them, even an order to kill their own people if necessary to put down a necessary rebellion. Remember Kent State on May 4th, 1970.
One might argue that since we vote our representatives into office, that if they turn on us, as they seem to have done, that we may not have any moral right to even consider a revolution in this country since we would be expected to accept the responsibility of putting them in office in the 1st place, that if we don't like what they're doing, to simply vote them out of office. What we really need in this country is the ability to recall our national leaders like we can recall our local state leaders without having to wait until the next election.
There are several problems that we face today. One of the problems has always existed and has been exacerbated by the "Citizens United" decision. It's how easy it is for political ads that are deceptive & contain false innuendos, & lies, to influence voters. But, the problem that has really hammered the final nail into the coffin of Democracy in this country has become the required (by law) national use in all 50 states of these fraudulent & unverifiable e-voting machines produced & manufactured primarily by companies that favor the Republican Party.
There is no real legal recourse for us to get out of this mess.
I have mentioned in many of my postings that Obama and the Democrats, when they had very strong control of Congress in January of 2009, should have killed the filibuster in the Senate by the use of the nuclear option, especially after Mitch McConnell's threat to do everything in his power to make Obama a one-term president, and then immediately repeal HAVA, the Help America Vote Act and to require that all elections, both state and national, with absolutely no exceptions, use paper ballots that will be counted by hand, and that will be strictly controlled and monitored all the way from the voting precinct to when the ballots are actually hand counted. No more surprises. The use of e-voting machines should have been completely outlawed.
In any case, I guess that we're all screwed.
Also, in the name of "pacifism" it's pretty easy to just lay down and let people dominate you. Of course I'm not worried about our country being taken over by al qaida. That's a right-wing lunatic fantasy, and an excuse to run roughshot. But who will defend us against the right, if the left is unwilling to fight? There ARE good guys and bad guys in the world, just as you said. Right now, I don't see any evidence of "good guys" in the Middle-East, and that's the problem.
Still, I think John was refering to what humans were "MEANT" to be, as-in their higher selves. I agree with that too. We can be just as cruel and violent as chimps, but when we do it, are we really being human at all?
Children are trained to be what we are. They are not born with a sense of the 10 commandments, manners, a conscience, and they do not learn to love and extend affection unless they have experienced that through the adults around them. If left to their own growth, without training, there would be killers and lovers and all manner erratic behavior. The human brain must be trained. Why do you think religious groups spend so much time brain washing their children.
Human beings can be desensitized, as well, and misguided, right from birth. The behavior of the soldiers urinating on the dead is the perfect example of even adults succumbing to behavior changes due to the brain being affected by their situation and training.
But I wonder why it is a crime to desecrate corpses, but not to create them in the first place?
While irresponsible and dumb on behalf of the young troops depicted, this raises large institutional questions on the real agitators and funders of warfare. As always the low-level lackeys who do the dirtiest work are left with the suffering, stress, and damage that manifests itself in peeing on the dead bodies of your "enemies". They will receive the blame, but not the entities that put them there in the first place.
When will we do better?
It's not a war crime to engage in war itself, but it certainly is a crime against humanity to engage in any behavior meant to humiliate, degrade and dehumanize your enemy in a way that has nothing to do with a "mission" (no matter how immoral that mission was to start with), but has to do with exercising dominance for the sake of dominance.
Naturally, anyone who takes the concept of "war crimes" seriously, has to be lawyerly about it and leave no loopholes behind.
Obama believes in being President. I don't think he had a contingency plan for what he'd do if he were ever elected. He just wants to make his friends happy. Unfortunately, he doesn't have any friends who'd complain about more attrocities.
This kind of offense against all that is decent and holy has killed this country. Now what do we expect?
if u go to youtube and look at the comments, americans are not just supporting, but wildly enthusiastic about the marines behavior.
soon the marines will be pissing on dead iranians. are we helpless to stop it?
The Afghani people (I refuse to call them "the enemy", because there's no logical, moral, or consistent reason why we're even there any more) are fighting for their country and feel religiously persecuted.
Our military, on the other hand, is fighting for crony profiteering, and any Americans who seriously consider this a battle between religious philosophies are easily disproven, just by forcing them to witness the attrocities done in their name.
In fact, since 2001, many many many military attrocities have been deemed SO potentially POISONOUS to our psychie as a nation, and to their ability to convince us of our moral authority to commit them in the first place, that we haven't been allowed to see them for ourselves. Even the very mention that these attrocities have taken place is considered an act of great courage and will possibly be treated as treason or terrorist sympathy, by all the FREEDOM HATERS who can't stand the fact that this country STILL hasn't completely grown out of it's stage as a democratic republic.
As usual, we'll nail "the small group"'s ass to the wall and life will be GREAT again. Just as we nailed asses to the wall at Guantanamo (and later continue torture justified by rhetoric and terminology). These guys are fed this crap and brainwashed from the first moment in boot camp and they are the ones to blame? Seems like they're following through with official "unwritten" policy. This is WAR, U.S. style. This and torture is a preview of how we can expect our dead and captured youth to be treated! When we make it known to the world(and our media)and the trainers of our forces that we do not hate the race of civilians, we do not torture, rape, and abuse, and prove it through our actions over time, then our soldiers can feel secure that they will be treated humanely themselves (maybe by the military too).
US Marine degenerates are at least on the ground - what about operators of drones dropping VP Biden COOL bombs on Afghanistan women and children?
Go on Yahoo and follow the discussions - how Americans think!?
Those would also be marines.
Honorable behavior among Marines
and is a truly sad thing to see
When a military becomes a military society, with the support of a gullible public, there is need to worry beyond what we are concerned with in this video. The atrocities and worries are going to increase as the U.S. military spreads out across the planet.
Will report back.
Words from me would be meaningless as a lifelong anti-military activist but I do know that a couple of former high-school mates were totally brutalized by joining the British Army, one was bit of a loose cannon and loved it, the other an easy-going guy looking for a bit of adventure who was abused physically and permanently scarred mentally by his time in Germany and N. Ireland.
It takes all kinds to make an army but affects everybody in different ways, none that I know of which could be called positive unless you are a sadist!
Oliver North springs to mind as an example of the career criminal in uniform profiteering from his misbegotten war monger life.
Yet we still have the "School of the Americas which trains the scum of the South and Central American death squads to be even more efficient killing machines on behalf of the corporate state; patriotism is a myth and you see the results here!
Terrorists seem to win every war.
doubt that there will be deep investigation - but there could be ONE brave journalist and explicitly tell us about the bodies of the people on the ground.
What they did - how many of their families were killed - how old they are. Make these "terrorists" human.
This could END the war - put human face on "Taliban".
I guess that most of these are peasants - drawn into the conflict by NATO occupation/war lords, and rulers in Kabul.
Good Marines know how to fight AND how to think. And to employ foresight to avoid aiding and abetting the enemy--which is exactly what this vulgar and disgraceful group action did.
Thanks to those who recorded and shared this. The world needed to know. And the Corps and Pentagon needed to see it.
The society raising these kids are complicit in creating attitudes and neurosis to begin with. And the military knows how to exploit that very thing.
Right.
It is our Politicians, The Commander -in-Chief, in Particular, (not my choice. This IS where The Buck Stops!) who are responsible for Every Death, every single Outrage..
For once, I hope, God will NOT have mercy upon their souls. I don't even believe in Hell, but I hope they are consigned there forever.
This (warfare) is all about MONEY!
It is present Money Culture - Militarism - Greed. What is happening to America?
I wonder how many of these people would be engaged in any of this despicable behavior if they didn't think someone was watching with approval, or that someone at home was worshipping them like a hero.
This will just be one more american made recruiting video for al Queda. Hell, I'd join if those were my brothers on the ground and for sure I'd piss on some dead marine. That's the sort of people Bush/Cheney/Oba ma are creating all over the world.
Also, these are Marines, people. Having trained with the Marines while I was in the Navy during Viet Nam, I can tell you that while Marines can be brutal, arrogant pricks, this kind of dishonorable behavior is totally contrary to their most basic values as Marines. It is one thing to have a bunch of Army dufusses pull this kind of crap, but Marines? This reflects a grave breakdown of unit discipline in the Corps that should concern every American.
The behavior described in this article goes way beyond problems with unit discipline. This kind of behavior results from a total failure of leadership from the top down, and from the foundation of training in the military today – the focus on dehumanizing troops so that they can dehumanize the “enemy.”
Maybe the difference is that our fathers WENT IN TO the military ALREADY HAVING a shred of decency and humanity.
These people joined the military for target practice and NEVER had a sense of humanity in them. I don't just blame the military for this. I blame our entire culture. It seems to me that the ONE THING conservatives are actually right about is the fact that our country is becoming less and less civilized. The problem with their logic is that THEY'RE THE ONES CAUSING IT.
Our culture has become corrupt from the top down. "Corrupt" is a bad enough word to describe EVERYTHING wrong with the world. It seems like such a mild description, but is a description of everything vile.
I don't think one individual thing could fix this. I think OUR ENTIRE SOCIETY needs to be scrubbed clean. Start with your children and don't ever let these assholes influence them.
Maybe if soldiers who broke civilian law or committed crimes against humanity or the Geneva Convention which they are all given a copy had to face trail and punishment in the country where they committed the crime they might have second thoughts before they acted.
Its not just in war that USA troops misbehave but anywhere they are stationed young men with a license to break the law will.
The uglies of war have always been there - in every conflict that has ever existed deplorable behavior has occurred - we're just in the age of instant info now.
Those looking into this need to go further up the chain of command, not just bust these guy's chops but also the chops of who is responsible for them thinking this was acceptable behavior. Anyone see McChrystal in the area at the time? grrrrrr
Oh my God, do you think so? We have misused and abused our troops for ten years in two unlawful conflicts and nation-building . Now we are surprised that there may be problems within?
Have a look at what we have demanded of the military as well as the deaths, disabilities, suicide rates, PTSD, divorces, family abuse, etc.
In a sentence, what the hell do we expect when we launch insane occupations lasting ten years? Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz should be put on trial!
The civilian was also a "contractor" (read war profiteer).
How many innocent civilians have been killed in the Middle-East over the past decade? Guess who was doing most of that killing.
You're right though, if you join the military to kill and torture ragheads, and after killing thousands of them, experience the horror of some of them improvising ways to kill you in retaliation, you'll probably feel the urge to kill all of them and piss on their corpses. Afterall, it would be perfectly in line with everything else you've done so far.
First off, I think you should replace the word "Muslims" with "Iraqis". They were simply people outraged by the rape and pillage of their country after many years of sanctions which hurt and killed everybody but those in power.
You are referring to the Fallujah incident which was a carefully-plann ed overwhelmingly- armed massacre targeting an outpost of resistance to "Shock and Awe" perpetrated and manned by the formerly named "Blackwater" (Now Xe) Christian-merce naries, paid large salaries to brutally prosecute the wills of Bush/Cheney/Rum sfeld/Rice in their privately financed crusade billed eventually at HUGE markups to YOUR tax $.
This is the same crowd that consistently and in full view of people on both sides, shot civilian Iraqi men, women and children including elders, at little or no provocation, even some who tried to help their countrymen to safety, then later joked about it being like "Target practice"!
War is no good for anybody, even the psychopaths who enjoy it, seemingly without feelings!
Then perhaps we should stay home.
If you want to stand up for civilization, the first step is to act civilized. You can't torture, humiliate and degrade barbarians into civility.
All it proves is that OUR barbarism is more powerful.
Agreed that the Taliban are a horrible quasi-theocrati c gang of thugs using extreme interpretation of Islam to violently usurp power and abuse it, including the outrages that you mentioned. BUT the US and allies are supposed to be "civilized" always pointing fingers and assuming that they occupy the higher ground. And there is no current proof that these people are Taliban -that's still to be established. However, there IS AMPLE DOCUMENTED proof that civilians in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been murdered in cold-blood, especially by the highly-paid Backwater (Xe) mercenaries, hence Fallujah.
Perpetrating barbarisms is inexcusable from any point of view.
This dehumanization will continue until public opinion against is powerful and stays powerful in every country in the world. That's going to take some time.
Hamid Karzai is an American puppet put their by U.S. to do their bidding. But, he has to show a phony facade of caring for his people in order to stay in power & the U.S. govt, represented here by U.S. defense secretary Leon Panetta, has to show that it condemns this act if it doesn't want to help the insurgents of Afghanistan increase their numbers fighting against us. Our govt & Panetta could care less about the lives of the Afghans (or the Iraqis for that matter), & you can be assured that Hamid Karzai will never demand that the U.S. pull all of its troops out of Afghanistan. The U.S. will instruct Hamid Karzai (secretly) as to how many U.S. troops we want to permanently keep in Afghanistan, & Hamid Karzai will, like an obedient dog, then ask the U.S. publicly (as if it was his own personal idea) to maintain a minimum force in his country to help train his police and his military.
It is the Modus Operandi of how imperialistic countries like the U.S. who desire to expand their control thru-out the world operate. In Iraq we have 16000 well armed personnel working out of the biggest U.S. embassy in the world in Baghdad & we have an armada of ships in the Persian Gulf and troops in Kuwait just in case we have to go back in.
It's already happening in domestic murders, suicides and mental breakdowns and on top of that, joblessness (and will only get worse).
Add the possibe realization that they were simply cannon-fodder for the Cheney/Bush cabal of cowards who started it all.
No, it's not. It is the completely foreseeable result of training kids to kill other people and to regard anyone not them as some sort of lesser animal.
Now that the film is out there, however, all the pious assholes have to chime in and say the right thing, and these guys will probably have to pay a price out of proportion to the deed.
Before you get bent out of shape, try to remember that we told these young men that killing is OK, so a little urination doesn't seem like much in the circumstances. It certainly doesn't compare to the time-honored traditions of scalping and other trophy taking.
Vietnam outlasted us though, didn't they? Maybe one of the reasons we were able to win every battle of Vietnam and bomb the shit out of them for years, but still manage to lose, was the fact that, back at home, we knew we had no moral authority.
Moral authority wins wars just as surely as any weapon of mass destruction. We've lost ours.
The POINT is, that it makes them look small, ignorant and without ANY moral fiber. Americans are supposed to be made of FINER stuff! Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD! Killing the enemy is one thing, defiling his corpse is an ENTIRELY different matter, and you CERTAINLY don't want to film yourself doing it! It's demoralizing to find out how base and savage our Military has become. We no longer have any Role Models or Heroes to look up to so I guess this kind of thing is to be expected. I just never thought I'd live to see the day WE were as bad as THEM!
What if it were revealed, back in WWII that WE were the true villains. What if our country was constantly being barraged with information of American attrocities rather than nazi attrocities? What if it was Germany that was trying to prevent US from taking over the world and WE were the ones with all the death camps with the smell of burning flesh in the air as we methodically tried to commit genocide against millions of our own people?
Do you think all those scrap metal drives and War Bonds would be nearly as successful? Do you think people would go out of their way to give their lives as much as they did then, for a country they believed was up to no good?
MORAL = MORALE
Whatever attrocities are committed by ALL sides in ALL wars are besides the point. The issue is the morale of a nation seriously questioning if it has any moral authority at all. If this pissing incident was an ISOLATED incident, it might not be so disturbing.
The fact is that we all know too well the truth.
CONT.
In fact, raising a generation of volunteer soldiers with no sense of humanity or morality creates a self-fulfilling downward spiral. Who else will be attracted to join the military? The answer is people who already have an inclination to committing these kinds of acts. Our country even makes it cool by funding video games glamorizing it.
This ACTUALLY CAN be fixed. But, not without accountability.
now, in our day to day lives here in amerika we hide what we are, but it is internalized, get along to go along, play the game. in war however soldiers are taught to let go of these constraints, trained to kill, hate the other, let the beast range free. so, pissing on corpses? this is somehow worse than killing them in the first place? after we take death and destruction to their country without even the courtesy of a declaration of war? what do we expect to happen?
yes, the taliban and al qaeda bombed down the towers, maybe we should have declared war, i'm split.
ok, pakistan formed the taliban, we encouraged it, read the history of the bhutto's. we financed the mujahadeen to overthrow the socialist govt. of afghanistan, before the soviets ever "invaded" to support the socialist govt. of karmal, true story, the red's were trying to reform this country, and enforce equal rights for all, we couldn't have that.
al qaeda and the taliban, just like saddam were our quasi-allies before they weren't. can anyone say blowback?
If you want to see even worse behavior go to Mathaba and Libya SOS websites where they show mercenary armies (trained by the US) participating in some of the worst crimes against humanity. I clicked on one and it was of a Black Libyan being lynched by a mob of Libyan rebels during the fall of Qaddafi. It was completely horrifying. These were the rebels that the U.S. & France helped finance and arm along with 7 months of NATO strikes which left Libya in rubble. Let's not forget what these rebels did to an elderly Qaddafi and his son. No leader no matter how corrupt deserved such a heinous death yet Hillary cheered when his murder was announced.
It's a sad state of affairs when our leaders boast about who they've murdered today. Our own Nobel Prize winning president gloated when Bin Laden was assassinated as well as Al Awalaki and his teen son and then Qaddafi. Who will be next Ahmadineajad? Assad of Syria? Hugo Chavez? an elderly Fidel Castro? Evo Morales? Daniel Ortega?
Ask hard core Texans what they thought of Ozzie Osborne pissing on the Alamo - and that's an inanimate object.
I'm as liberal as you can possibly get, and I personally think flag burning shouldn't be covered under Free Speech.
This isn't an act of war. It's an act of humiliation. It's one thing to beat up a kid. It's another thing to run his underwear up the flagpole, make every girl in the school point and laugh at his naked body, call him a faggot, and make him go home to explain to his parents what happened.
Beating him up hurts his face a bit. The rest could turn him into less of a human being for the rest of his life. He may wait until 20 years later to get revenge.
Isn't killing them enough? Is it wise to make them so filled with hatred against us that we've recruited another few thousand terrorists?
The military takes our children brainwashes them to go against their religious and cultural upbringing as degrades the people making them less then human in order to make it okay for them to kill without remorse.
To top that off the USA requires every government where USA bases & troops are to sign an immunity agreement for the troops.
So now you have 18,19,20 yr old running around with guns with a license to kill, steal, maim, rap. They can and do anything they want. That is why the people of Okinawa want them off their island and the Philippines imports women from other nations to live & work in the district near the USA base. To protect their population.
This is not new behavior for our troops, but now it can be easily exposed because of digital cameras, phones with cameras and Internet.
Its time to stop war for the profit of the 1%. They are making criminals of our children.
Its time to close all foreign bases bring all the troops, aircraft, missiles, guns, vehicles, naval vessels, all military equipment back to the continental USA to be publicly accounted before 1 more cent is spent for defense aside from the salary of the troops and their food, clothes & medical care.
From this day forward our military should be used to protect the 50 states from foreign invasion that's all.
We must stop war as a means to enrich the 1% at the expense of the nation & its children.
Are you suggesting the Department of "Defense" be used for DEFENSE?
McCain says, "There should be an investigation and these young people should be punished." Yes, there should be a real investigaton.
The negative reaction to this is justified. It symbolizes the failure of the war and the brutality that has so often been ignored. Right now on msnbc there is a former official trying to say this is an overreaction. The overreaction was ever going into war in the first place.
Bring em all home. Turn swords into ploughshares. But until we do that, let's leave these people alone to do their nasty jobs.
Little Johnny Johnson wants an M-16
Sister Suzie wants an Uzi and a sub-machine
Kids are makin’ wishes and wartime strategies
Singin’ “Happy Happy Birthday to the Prince of Peace”
Buy war toys for Christmas, have a happy holiday
Santa traded in his red cap for a green beret
Teach those happy little children to be hell-cats when they play
And have a very merry military day
Janie wants the latest deadly lazer gun
Little Tommy asked his mommy for his own B-1
Kids are roasting chestnuts on burning effigies
Singin’ “Happy Happy Birthday to the Prince of Peace”
Buy war toys for Christmas, have a happy holiday
Put the missile in the misteltoe, that’s what I say
Teach those happy little children to be hell-cats when they play
And have a very merry military day
Little Danny Simpson armed his own brigade
Staged a coup and overthrew the Christmas Day parade
Kids are roasting chestnuts on burning effigies
And hiding chocolate covered cherry bombs in a box of seeds
Buy war toys for Christmas, have a happy holiday
Santa slayed his reindeer, now he flies the Enola Gay
Teach those happy little children to be hell-cats when they play
And have a very merry military day
And have a very scary military day
Singin’ “Happy Happy Birthday to the Prince of Peace”
But now, in a 24 hour news cycle, internet world, such behavior can be viewed on our computers screens, in the comfort of our own homes. And out comes the, somewhat tardy, moral outrage. Where was that outrage as our leaders plunged our youngsters into the insanity of warfare? But none of that matters now as these Marines will no doubt be reprimanded and pilloried - perhaps rightly so - for allowing a bit of the reality of the war zone to leak out into polite company. Just a bunch of heavily armed and somewhat psychotic dumb young kids... our kids, molded into their current shape by our dear Uncle Sam.
Those crying out for their scalps will likely get their pound of flesh but what about our fearless leaders who trained and sent them in the first place? When do they get their comeuppance and just deserts?
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