ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by Chuffingcivvy

We should have just turned Afghanistan into a sheet of glass years ago.

What about the decent people who live there? There are some.

It's not good for Hearts and Minds. As much as many of the populace may hate Terry, they will still take offence at acts of stupidity like that. Relationships can take years to build and seconds to destroy.

Originally Posted by FNUSNU

It's not good for Hearts and Minds. As much as many of the populace may hate Terry, they will still take offence at acts of stupidity like that. Relationships can take years to build and seconds to destroy.

No they won't. They have much more serious things to think about. The only ones to froth over this will be the hand-wringers and politicos on all sides. The man in his compound won't give a flying fuck.

Certainly our enemies should not really expect delicate treatment from US Marines especially since delicacy is not one of our strengths, but in this age of YouTube they should be smarter than to film it like those idiots did--a grunt CO's worst nightmare is Marines "at play!" That is why I kept my Marines in the field working hard as much as possible since as soon as they have "down" time bad things happen.

It is also inexcusable from a legal standpoint and suggests to me a real leadership failure somewhere along the line.

Yet another embarrassment to what used to be "my" Corps.

Originally Posted by jumpinjarhead

Certainly our enemies should not really expect delicate treatment from US Marines especially since delicacy is not one of our strengths, but in this age of YouTube they should be smarter than to film it like those idiots did--a grunt CO's worst nightmare is Marines "at play!" That is why I kept my Marines in the field working hard as much as possible since as soon as they have "down" time bad things happen.

It is also inexcusable from a legal standpoint and suggests to me a real leadership failure somewhere along the line.

Yet another embarrassment to what used to be "my" Corps.

So the only thing they did wrong was to film it?

It's not inexcusable from A legal standpoint, it's inexcusable from a winning the war standpoint. I listened to a US general apologise today, to a room full of Coalition soldiers. He described events as a tragedy, noting that this is now how much of the world sees the US military. Not as the most awesome military outfit the world has seen, but the perpetrator of acts such as this and haditha. He also described the urine as soaking the US flags that cover coffins, as that is essentially what it does the their legacy.

At least it's just marines at play though.

I do not disagree---that effect was intended to be implicit.

Originally Posted by BarkingSpider

And the difference between them and us is?
So called civilised behaviour? We can't take the moral high ground on their disgraceful behaviour if we fail to maintain decent standards ourselves. What a poor show from these men that they have no respect for the dead. The moment these Taliban were killed, they ceased to be the enemy. I'm not outraged by this (it's just sad) but I pity the next man to be captured by them as before he dies, he'll suffer at their hands in retaliation for this sort of thing.

Have you ever read the reports of what the Taliban do to virtualy anyone they capture?

How about the Jock soldier they nabbed last year? Tortured before being killed and the interfered with after death.

Do you think they will torture the people they capture a bit more because some of theirs got pissed on? It wont make any difference. They torture people anyway. Some of them rape children.

I don't care that some septic soldiers pissed on the dead bodies of the enemy. If that helped to reduce their stress, good oh.

As I said before, the stupid bit was filming it and making the film publicly available. Who do they think they are, al Jazira?

It was wrong. They have been told not to do this sort of thing and they did; they have disobeyed orders and intent.

One thing the hand wringers won't focus on us that US and broader coalition authorities have immediately condemned this action and will take disciplinary/legal action. It is, in effect, the exception that proves the rule. We condemn this from our people, the enemy condone it from theirs.

And finally, let us not forget that whilst they are pissing on these Taliban they had just killed them. I'd rather be pissed on than killed. To quote Colonel Kurtz:

" We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!"