2 U.S. marines in urinating video ID’d by corps
An official says the U.S. Marine Corps has identified at least two of the four marines in an internet video that purports to depict them urinating on Taliban corpses in Afghanistan.
A marine official said Thursday that the four were members of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, which returned to its home base in North Carolina last fall after a tour in Afghanistan. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because a criminal investigation is underway.
The official said that at least some of the four marines are no longer in that battalion. He provided no other details.
The matter is being investigated, including by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), the worldwide law enforcement arm of the navy.
Earlier Thursday, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta phoned Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and promised a full investigation of the video, which they both condemned as deplorable.
In a separate public statement, Panetta said such behaviour is “entirely inappropriate for members of the United States military” and that those responsible will be held accountable.
The video, posted on the internet, shows men in marine combat gear standing in a semi-circle over three bodies. It’s not clear whether the dead were Taliban or civilians or someone else. The title on the posting called them Taliban insurgents and said the men were from Camp Lejeune, N.C., but officials would not immediately confirm it.More at source
U.S Soldier dragged through Mogadishu
(warning graphic pictures)
It was a media war that the United States lost in Somalia, ironic since its involvement was forced by the pictures of famine-stricken people there. In one of the clearest and earliest examples of the CNN effect, the war was repeatedly dogged by the dozens of press photographers. It is an anticipating media, not snipers or enemy combatants, that greeted the U.S landing forces in Mogadishu in December 9th 1992.
For a war that began with memorable images, it is both fitting and ironic that it ended because of another set of dramatic images. The photos taken by Canadian photographer Paul Watson, of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu spelled the beginning of the end for U.S.-U.N. peacekeeping force. Domestic opinion turned hostile as horrified TV viewers watched images of the bloodshed—-including this Pulitzer-prize winning footage of Somali warlord Mohammed Aideed’s supporters dragging the body of U.S. Staff Sgt. William David Cleveland through the streets of Mogadishu, cheering. President Clinton immediately abandoned the pursuit of Aideed, the mission that cost Cleveland his life and gave the order for all American soldiers to withdraw from Somalia by March 31, 1994. Other Western nations followed suit.
When the last U.N. peacekeepers left in 1995, ending a mission that had cost more than $2 billion, Mogadishu still lacked a functioning government. The battle deaths, and the harrowing images prompted lingering U.S. reluctance to get involved in Africa’s crises, including the following year’s genocide in Rwanda. In 1996, Osama bin Laden cited the incident as proof that the U.S. was unable to stomach casualties: when “one American was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu you left; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear.” Never before or since had a photo altered a nation’s political destinies so much so.
I know ‘Black Hawk Down was made about this’ but do you know what is the worst part about this? Having to listen to Somalis that are in America now, cheer over the fact that American Soldiers are being drug through the streets and victimized that way. Where any of these sick SOB’s ever prosecuted for their sick acts? Most likely not, they where just given a ticket to America where they can live at American Tax payers expense.
I find that more degrading then a dead body getting pissed on.
No comments:
Post a Comment