Piss on the Taliban...

[wa3zrm]

Allen West on the Marines Incident: 'Shut Your Mouth, War Is Hell'
The Weekly Standard ^ Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a former Army lieutenant colonel, sends THE WEEKLY STANDARD an email commenting on the Marines' video, and has given us permission to publish it.
Allenwest:
“I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.
“All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?
“The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.
“As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.”

[truthwolf1]

Gotta watch out for those cameras! because everybody wants to capture everything these days. It's not like VIETNAM where you could do anything you wanted to. Or was that the purpose to cause a stir??

This really is no big fricken deal in my mind but the Abu prison rapes and torture of kids was pretty much the day our USA respect went into the toilet.

[sgreger1]

I have to agree. While it would NEVER have been tolerated in my unit to do something like this, nor is it generally of high character to piss on a man after you've killed him (well, neither is kiling him but thats another story), but everyone is making too big a deal over it. I'm sure you all would love to see the stuff they do to our guys when they get the oppertunity.

And these are just kids being juvenile, from what I gather the firefight was over and these were some privates that came along after the fact (not having been the ones who actually killed them) and thought it would be funny to piss on the bodies. Honestly I can see why they don't feel like it's a big deal, you spend a year in some foreign country with these guys shooting at you and blowing up your friends and naturally you don't have much respect for them, so you end the mission by topping it off with a little juvenile behavior and a golden shower. Big whoop.


Again, this isn't something that would have been tolerated in my unit or in most army/marine units, but it is something that I think many of you would do in similar circumstances if you thought you could get away with it. It's way easier to pretend you would be this morally upright captain America from your armchair than it is to do what these guys are putting up with other there. My 2 cents.

[Crow]

It was a childish act and it was out of line, but I'm not losing any sleep over it...

It would be a completely different story if the deceased were civilians.

[wa3zrm]

In case you haven't heard some US soldiers might have urinated on dead Taliban fighters. Hopefully they did it facing in the direction away from Mecca, as American soldiers have been ordered to do to avoid offending Muslims, and that the dead Taliban didn't have Korans in their pockets at the time or it'll be a holy war. Oh wait it already is a holy war.
McCain, fresh from being saddened by the Communist attacks on Bain Capital, announced that he was saddened by the video and wanted the marines punished. Because having trials and routing that sort of thing through a military justice system rather than through the fiat of sad senators isn't how we do things anymore.
Good news though, the Taliban have announced that the video will not prevent them from accepting our surrender anyway.
Noted kleptomaniac and humanitarian Hamid Karzai denounced the video as "completely inhumane." Speaking of "Completely inhumane", there's Karzai's buddy Abdul Rab Rasoul Sayyaf. Abdul is the head of the Islamic Union who was a pal of Osama bin Laden and a mentor to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Here's some of his very "humane" handiwork. During the Afshar massacre, Sayyaf's Wahhabis, with Saudi funding, massacred Shiite men, women and children. But that is humane. Unlike urinating on a dead Taliban.
The Taliban have also denounced it as inhumane.
The Taliban initially indicated that the video would not undermine the push toward talks, saying that they saw it as just more evidence of what they said was American brutality and arrogance.
“We strongly condemn the inhuman act of wild American soldiers, as ever, and consider this act in contradiction with all human and ethical norms,”
But let's hear it from the Taliban what they consider "humane" behavior.
"You must become so notorious for bad things that when you come into an area people will tremble in their sandals. Anyone can do beatings and starve people. I want your unit to find new ways of torture so terrible that the screams will frighten even crows from their nests and if the person survives he will never again have a night's sleep."
Instead of just searching for criminals, the night patrols were instructed to seek out people watching videos, playing cards or, bizarrely, keeping caged birds. Men without long enough beards were to be arrested, as was any woman who dared venture outside her house. Even owning a kite became a criminal offence.
"Basically any form of pleasure was outlawed," Mr Hassani said, "and if we found people doing any of these things we would beat them with staves soaked in water - like a knife cutting through meat - until the room ran with their blood or their spines snapped. Then we would leave them with no food or water in rooms filled with insects until they died.
"We always tried to do different things: we would put some of them standing on their heads to sleep, hang others upside down with their legs tied together. We would stretch the arms out of others and nail them to posts like crucifixions.
"Sometimes we would throw bread to them to make them crawl. Then I would write the report to our commanding officer so he could see how innovative we had been."
Is there anything in there to make McCain "sad"? Anything to make Obama question negotiating with the Taliban? Don't count on it.
Urine washes out but there are worse stains on the soul. Like sitting down at a table with filth like this and accepting medals from the moneymen funding the murder of Americans. Urine washes out. Evil doesn't.

Source: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-.../2832783/posts

[AllanH]

Well, with all that body armour it's pretty safe to urinate on corpses.

[snusjus]

It's ironic how the media (both liberal and conservative) rarely objects to innocent civilian deaths resulting from bomb and drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, yet it latches onto an event that is profoundly less significant.

P.S. I believe the Marines in the video acted unethical and deserve to be punished, but I also believe the chauvinists who rationalize the slaughter of innocent civilians rarely get the criticism they deserve.

[Crow]

P.S. I believe the Marines in the video acted unethical and deserve to be punished, but I also believe the chauvinists who rationalize the slaughter of innocent civilians rarely get the criticism they deserve.

I agree. A dishonorable discharge is in order (at the very least).

[GoVegan]

After being in the Army for 5 years and in the active reserves for 2 years it really makes me sick to think of our troops doing this to anyone. I really don't give a crap about how bad the enemy is. I don't think we need to stoop down to their level. I am really glad I got out when I did. It seems like human dignity and the Geneva Conventions are things of the past.

[Dirty Hippy]

I want to piss on you!

[dpete]

Imagine a group of Taliban soldiers taking a dead NATO soldier, lopping off his head and literally defecating down his neck. Would the "aw, shucks, boys will be boys" and "war is hell" crowd would be ok with that sequel? Bet not.

[sgreger1]

It's ironic how the media (both liberal and conservative) rarely objects to innocent civilian deaths resulting from bomb and drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, yet it latches onto an event that is profoundly less significant.

P.S. I believe the Marines in the video acted unethical and deserve to be punished, but I also believe the chauvinists who rationalize the slaughter of innocent civilians rarely get the criticism they deserve.

I agree, it's like "Yah we killed them and injured 3 non-combatants in the process, but dude pissed on him man that is just uncalled for!"

(Note: as far as I am aware no civilians were hurt I was just joking, but it's to show how the media reacts. They don't report daily "WE ARE KILLING PEOPLE IN AN UNNECESSARY WAR", it instead reads "Bad, totally not ethical soldiers piss on corpses of dead enemy soldiers which is against our American code of honor!"

If you want to call for blood, list the names of people who voted for this war, not the people who are caught up in it. I'd piss on a dead taliban soldier too, if i'm willing to kill them than pissing on them isn't that big a deal. It's funny how we are focusing on urination and not on the tragedy that is the war in Afghanistan/Iraq.

[sgreger1]

Imagine a group of Taliban soldiers taking a dead NATO soldier, lopping off his head and literally defecating down his neck. Would the "aw, shucks, boys will be boys" and "war is hell" crowd would be ok with that sequel? Bet not.

The Taliban does way worse than that to our guys. Ripping off our neck and shitting down our throat is a luxury compared to how they treat the people they capture...

[sgreger1]

I want to piss on you!

So gimme that POO POO, let get somma that PEE PEE.

[dpete]

The Taliban does way worse than that to our guys. Ripping off our neck and shitting down our throat is a luxury compared to how they treat the people they capture...

So how low do you want to set the bar for your side? Why do you allow what someone else does to affect what kind of human being you are? In this context, see what George Washington did with prisoners he captured and then look at what George Bush did. Which deserves more respect?