We cannot allow our classified enhanced penis technology to be revealed to the enemy!
So basically Obama is worse than Bush, but Congress is even worse. Great.
I seem to remember a part in “With the Old Breed” where Sledge talks about an officer who makes a habit of peeing in the open mouths of dead Japanese soldiers during the no-holds-barred Pacific island campaigns of WWII. A corpse’s mouth gapes open unless you restrain it (undertakers wire or bolt shut the mouths of your dead relatives for viewings) and there were bodies everywhere, too many to bury, so this officer always had a grotesque urinal handy. I think Sledge and the other Marines considered it a disturbing habit, but forgivable given the hellish conditions.
Sorry, 1st Amendment. Print it.
Support our troops.
On the one hand, the pictured act is highly disrespectful to the dead. Hiding it is even more highly disrespectful to the dead.
On the other hand, I would not want to be a soldier working in those conditions. I would also not want to be a congresscritter working under those conditions.
On the other other hand, this is how participants in war lower themselves to the level of the worst acts they criticize the other side for doing.
‘Undeterred by Landlocked Afghanistan, 21st Century Marines Develop New Style of Amphibious Assault In Their Pants’
On one hand, a penis, on the other hand, a M-16.
Maybe the Marines need to learn the right way to use both.
One is a rifle; one is a gun. One is for fight, and one is for fun.
The governments laughable argument- for this and so many other things- “It’s not that peeing in dead enemies bodies is a bad thing (spying on friendly governments, etc…) but if anyone finds out about it, that’s where the harm to national security occurs.” As if, by definition, anything they do is only to advance national security, and anyone who utters a peep is the real threat.
Life without consequences sounds wonderful, I hope I never get there.
This is my rifle, this is my gun. This one’s for fighting and this one’s for defiling the corpses of my enemy.
Worse than Bush how? Seems pretty much what Bush would do.
Quantitatively worse than Bush, as far as government transparency goes. Bush was far more willing to tolerate leaks and whistelblowing, and almost certainly would not have condoned retroactively classifying these photographs. He had opportunities to do this kind of thing, and he did not take them.
Meanwhile the Obama administration has been repeatedly characterized as the most secretive in US history, and the most aggressive in prosecution of whistleblowers. The numbers support these claims, although of course we can’t really know how much Obama’s people have successfully hidden from us.
Consider that we know quite a bit about the horrors of the Bush administration. Uniformed US soldiers raping teenagers in front of their parents at Abu Ghraib, uniformed US soldiers torturing a known innocent man to death solely for the pleasure of hearing him scream for Allah’s mercy at Bagram, the sadistic practices of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program and secret “black jail”, etc. The Bush administration leaked like a sieve, as it should have.
But personally, I suspect the current administration is up to something even worse than anything Bush’s sadists did, since Obama’s being so much more aggressive about hiding it. Most people who voted for Obama are unwilling to face this possibility, though; it seems Americans are often incapable of accepting any fact that doesn’t support their pre-existing ideology.
I think it’s more along the lines of the liberal (and deep thinking) president being horrified and ashamed at what the job entails, whereas the “conservative” (and simplistic thinking) president didn’t believe there was any reason to hide egregious acts of unlawful and disrespect behavior.
Although that might explain the pre-emptive secrecy and situations like these photographs, I don’t think that explanation fits with the administration’s aggressive punishment of whistleblowers at all.
OK, I can agree with that.
Maybe we can chalk that up to the old adage: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The last people we want in politics are the people who WANT to be in politics.
From Wikipedia
The U.S. military dealt out on August 27, 2013 punishment to three Marines for their roles in urinating on Taliban corpses. As part of a plea deal two non-commissioned officers and a staff non-commissioned officer pleaded guilty. The three marines will receive a permanent mark on their records that will impact any future promotions and re-enlistmensts. Six more Marines are still awaiting their punishments in the urination incident. Two officers will be charged with creating a command climate that led to acts of bad behavior, but it was unclear what disciplinary action the four other non-commissioned officers will face.[25] The three Marines who received non-judicial punishments (which can include, among other things, a reprimand, reductions in rank, forfeiting pay, extra duties or being restricted to a military base) were all members of Third Battalion, Second Marine Regiment (3/2) or served in units that were attached to 3/2 during their deployment. The battalion is based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The names of the three Marines were not disclosed because their punishments were administrative.
None of them were charged with killing people who were not supposed to be killed. We punished them. Hillary Clinton said they committed war crimes. How do you feel after combat. Scared? Ashamed? Invincible? Cocky? Don’t know? Should we have burned them at the stake, jailed them for life? What happens to the corpses of american soldiers? There are over 2.2 Million people in the military, if you get enough 18-24 year old people together and put them in hazardous situations someone is going to crack.
The only way to get despicable behavior to stop is to use it’s natural antidote: sunlight and shame.
Otherwise we implicitly endorse such behavior.
Which ones to support? The one’s who commit shameful acts? Or just support them all because they are dressed the same?
how many hands do you have–and who is your tailor?
