The Glade 4.0

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/12/us/video-marines-urinating/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Oy.

In a way, I feel bad for the marines involved. It sounds like they will be treated very harshly for this. I'm not excusing this, but I do understand that it's a tough job. You have to detach yourself in order to survive and do your job, but the more detached the more this sort of stuff becomes likely. These are young men, and yet we expect them to be completely disciplined and responsible.

Bad situation all around.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I'd agree with that.

Kinda takes someone who's a bit of an animal to kill on command, it's a wonder that more of this doesn't happen.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Break it off in them ...

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This is most likely the result of PTSD, in a large part. They still should know better, but now that it's caused a public issue, punishment will undoubtedly be harsher than it otherwise would have been. This is the sort of thing that could be handled at Article 15 (The Navy and I believe the Marines also refer to it as Mast) but now that everyone and their brother is involved it will doubtless be a court-martial.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It's still inexcusable; break it off in them.

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Obviously it's inexcusable. PTSD doesn't mean you can go around handing out propaganda victories to the enemy (or desecrating corpses for that matter). It does, however, mean "break it off in them" is a bit harsher than strictly necessary. I'd be interested to know what their chain of command was doing while this was going on and in the months preceding.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

New policy:

Do not piss on Taliban bodies after shooting them. If you're going to piss on them, do it beforehand. In life, they aren't worth ****, feel free to disrespect them. In death, they ARE worth ****, and are perfectly good fertilizer. Don't disrespect that. Throw it on the opium fields.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I'm giving our military at large a rather big benefit of the doubt and assuming this is isolated to the individuals mentioned in the OP. I'll accept that other incidents of equal or similar stupidity have happened. All of that said, you still give these kids the harshest punishment possible. Replace nations with Sergeants and other nations with Grunts in your signature.

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While this is inexcusable, I have a hard time accepting that this is the worst thing ever, in light of other things that have happened due to The War Against Terror (TWAT).

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Yeah like all those innocent people who were beheaded. Tell me why we should ruin the lives of a couple young men who were willing to serve their country just to appease a bunch of people who would murder/enslave every one of us given the chance?

Let's have some sense of context here. They deserve to have their heads banged together, not chopped off.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Well, beyond the obvious false dilemma and appeal to emotion?

How about this ...

Punishing the soldiers in question has nothing to do with appeasing our enemy; it has nothing to do with the Taliban or Al Qaeda or whoever the hell we're fighting at the time.

You punish these soldiers because you want your own military to be above reproach. Are they 18, young, dumb, and full of cum? Sure ... Are they immature? Can be. Are they perhaps under stress, duress, and other negative external pressures? Absolutely. It doesn't change the fact that their actions are inexcusable regardless of whose body it was.

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Ror - once that video gets out to the people (people who don't have immediate access to youtube or tv) those soldiers just recruited more people against us than they would kill in 40 years over there.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

It's not about who got pissed on or when it happened. It's about the fact that American Soldiers were doing the pissing, and we're supposed to be better than that. It's not like we sent R-Kelly over there.

I'm not saying the dead soldiers in question deserved to be urinated upon, and a public screw up deserves a public and severe punishment. I'm just wondering if it should be a court-martiable offense. Unless you have a different definition of breaking it off in them. My admittedly layman opinion is that I don't feel this means these four guys should have a shadow of a dishonorable discharge following them around the rest of their lives. Should they be allowed to resign? sounds good. I don't think grunts get to do that though.

Elm, maybe maybe not. Any excuse will do, if not this one another. That's how it is when you are dealing with people whose basic tenets are anyone who disagrees with you should be converted, enslaved, or killed. I know that's not how all Muslims think, but it's certainly the line put out by the Taliban's former leader.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Yes, they should be dishonorably discharged; yes, they should have to deal with the consequences of their actions. Who the enemy is; where the enemy is; what the soldiers are doing ...

These things have very little, if any, bearing on the severity of the punishment necessary. The punishment isn't about appeasing our enemies; it's about making god damned sure the rest of our soldiers aren't stupid or ignorant enough to do the same thing.

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That's pretty ridiculous, there are soldiers serving years in prison that didn't get dishonorably discharged. They'll be on welfare for the rest of their lives if you do that.

Idiots...

Makes me wonder what joys would have been filmed had every other kid in Vietnam had a video camera.

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Raell Kromwell

This, to a t.

/seconded

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

Pfft. They shoulda rubbed bacon on them.

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Holy shitsnacks!

What's the penalty for excessive celebration in the NFL? That would work.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

I frequently work with veterans. Last semester I had a student who was finishing up an enlistment in the Air Force. Many times, he'd come to class or to help sessions dressed in his fatigues, because he didn't have time to change into civilian clothes after his shift on base. This guy always stood up straight. He was proud of himself for being in the Air Force, and he wanted the rest of us to be proud of him, too. That's not unreasonable.

One of the great tragedies of the Vietnam War was the aftermath, when young men who really didn't want to fight in a war came home to be called murderers and baby-killers. That's a raw deal for anybody. You get taken away from your family, sent off to a foreign land, and when you come home your own family looks at you like a monster.

These knucklehead marines are **** things up for everyone else in the armed forces that was looking to come home and be treated with dignity and respect. They're **** things up for everyone in the country that wants to look up to members of the armed forces, both past and present, as heroes. **** what any other nation thinks. This is not the pride, dignity, and honor that we want to associate with our military. This is not how U.S. soldiers conduct themselves. Our troops are better than this. I know, because I have met them.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

/agree Coro

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones