Posted on 12/14/2002 4:24:24 PM PST by Pokey78
Barechested commandos brandishing knives take turns to charge towards a live dog, tied and spreadeagled between vertical poles. They slash and stab the helpless, yelping animal until it dies. Then, in a grotesque act of military machismo, the soldiers eat the dog's heart and drink its blood.
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The troops belong to the Peruvian army and the slaughter of the dog is the climax of a series of "bravery tests" to train them to be ruthless killers.
The barbaric ritual has been uncovered by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), a British charity which last night expressed disgust at the cruelty.
Jonathan Owen, a spokesman for the charity, said: "This is one of the worst cases of animal cruelty we have ever come across. Unlike most other forms of animal abuse, there is no commercial motive behind this.
"It is pure, unadulterated cruelty. They are using an animal that cannot defend itself to practise killing. They call it war games but this game always ends in the animal's death."
The cruelty was recorded by a cameraman who was invited to film the army's Otorongo Command Group 125, near Lima, the Peruvian capital. Shocked by what he saw, the cameraman passed the video to the WSPA.
The film shows the soldiers doing a number of other tests before they attack the dog. These include running through a ring of fire, and standing in a circle throwing a grenade to each other before one of them tosses it into the middle and they all dive to the ground as it explodes.
For the final challenge the soldiers run 20 yards towards the suspended dog, clutching an attack knife with an eight-inch blade. Some slash the animal just once; the more enthusiastic stab it repeatedly.
The mongrel can move its head but is otherwise utterly defenceless. It can only scream as the knives rip through its skin. Worse, the dog is a camp pet that belongs to the soldiers, an extra detail to ensure that these killers are rendered truly heartless, unhindered by emotion or sentiment.
Once the animal is dead and the soldiers have completed the test, they put their hands into the open wounds, pull out the innards and heart, tear them up and eat them.
The aim is to turn them into men who are not merely untroubled by the sight of blood, but positively relish it.
The brutal ritual ends with one of the soldiers putting the dog around his neck like a victory laurel and leading the troop on a "lap of honour" around the training ground.
Maj-Gen Peter Davies, the WSPA's director general, said: "There is no justification for such brutal training methods. Inflicting great suffering on a helpless animal is unnecessary, unacceptable and has no place in any civilised armed force."
The Peruvian government admits that live dogs have been used in military training but claims that the practice has been banned since August. A ministry of defence spokesman says that the exercise shown on the video took place before the ban was introduced.
"The exercises shown on the video are currently strictly forbidden in all Peruvian military institutions," the spokesman says. "At present no animals are being used in exercises carried out during military training."
However, the WSPA believes the practice is still continuing. Gerardo Huertas, the society's Latin America regional director, said: "Abuse of animals by the military has been going on in Peru for decades and we believe that it is also happening in other countries in Central and South America and elsewhere.
"These images of young soldiers mutilating dogs until they die are grotesque, a chilling reminder that we have to redouble our efforts to fight against animal crimes all over the world.
"People who are trained to protect the civil, religious or democratic acts of a nation should never be required to behave in such a way. It's frightening to think what kind of people those soldiers will be when they come out of the army."
Armando Lecaros-de-Cossio, Peru's ambassador to Britain, said that he was shocked by the video. "No civilised person could condone what is happening in that video," he said. Mr Lecaros-de-Cossio described himself as "an animal-lover".
He had kept dogs for many years and was about to buy one for his 11-year-old daughter Louise.
"Louise has been begging for a puppy from Scottie [a colleague's golden retriever] and we hope that will be happening shortly. She adores dogs," he said.
The Peruvian army is currently being investigated in connection with atrocities committed during 20 years of fighting between security forces, civilians and the brutal Sendero Luminoso - Shining Path - guerrillas.
Investigators belonging to a "Truth Commission" have exhumed the bodies of dozens of villagers said to have been massacred by government troops and guerrillas between 1980 and 2000.
The armed forces have so far failed to respond to the commission's inquiries, even though 13,000 people have testified.
Wonderful. I don't know if militarization per se is the right answer, but certainly some means of stopping illegal immigration is needed. What does that have to do with a discussion of the state of Latin America?
If the communist insurgents anywhere in the world lost their income from the drug trade, communist 'Red China' and the Soviet Union of the past would have just made it up for them using their Cuban, NK, NV, etc. lackeys. Or, they'd concentrate on robbing banks, holding people for ransom, bomb threats, etc..
But you see, that's the thing. It turns out that with their Soviet backers gone, and neither Cuba nor China being willing to offer a great deal more than training, spare weapons, and "moral support", Latin American insurgent movements continue to be amply funded by the drug war. My position is not one that is inherently pro-legalization; at the very least, I don't think the US should legalize from a position of weakness as we would be doing at this point (ie like surrendering).
However, the fact remains that the war on drugs has huge costs in the countries outside the US (and in our own taxpayer dollars, DEA lives, etc). Whatever incredibly expensive measures we have taken up until now have done nothing to stem the flow, only to artificially inflate the price and create an international culture of crime. The United States needs to either find an effective way to fight drugs, or a well-regulated means of legalizing them. I have seen many possibilities for the latter and none for the former that do not involve massive costs.
They didn't earn or work their way there by themselves.
Sounds like Ayn Rand applied to foreign policy. I don't know how much the analogy of a self-made man applies here; the vast majority of Latin Americans face a poverty line that really means something (unlike here in the United States, where poverty means only 1 car in the garage), and I would say they know a thing or two about survival and hard work. Perhaps the place your analogy would be most apt would be in analyzing the leadership of the countries, but they are there for reasons largely unrelated to the wishes of the populace. For example, the self-perpetuating cycle of the lack of education...
These 3rd worlders doubt they can get their 'fair share' of the Earth's natural resources, that the communists/socialists have convinced them they are entitled to by birth, any other way than by force.
At the moment you are still referring to a vocal minority. It is as if you took the liberal American media or any of the jackass Democrat celebrities as the viewpoint of the nation as a whole...
Irradicate all illegal, recreational narcotics from our society and let these 3rd worlders try to eat that garbage they grow instead of food crops.
How do you propose to do that? Given the track record prohibition has had thus far, you must have some radical plan I have not yet heard. Would you also advise the prohibition of alcohol? It too is a stupor-inducing drug that alters people's behavioural patterns, and no doubt is a great source of this "pliable mental state" you think is such a threat.
Personally, I think ideology is a far greater threat than chemicals. I don't think Americans are so weak or stupid that they would turn to drugs en masse simply because they would be legally available, and I do think a legal, well-regulated trade would be a profitable means of keeping drugs out of the hands of children. It is still easier for a kid to buy pot in a big city than a beer, and every time you send a drug user to prison you are sending him both to an education as a criminal and (nowadays) education as an Islamic terrorist.
Force these 3rd worlders to clean up the mess they've made of their own countries.
Of course, I am in complete agreement with that point. There is little doubt that much of the disasters that occur in Latin America are caused by the inhabitants.
However:
It is absolutely absurd to posit, as you appear to be doing, that the people of Latin America are any more prone to such behavior simply because they are not American. All it took was Pinochet a few years and he cleaned Chile up and put in such good shape that even the pseudo-socialist abuse that has taken place since then, it remains in fairly good shape.
"...neither Cuba nor China willing to offer a great deal more than training,..."
That's an assumption on your part. Thanks to our open borders policy, China hasn't had the need to provide significant financial assistance to Latin American, communist insurgents. That doesn't mean they wouldn't, if they were asked, because we closed down our borders to illegal narcotics.
"Sounds like Ayn Rand applied to foreign policy."
When I said that the people of these 3rd world countries didn't work or earn their way into the 'Space Age' themselves, I wasn't implying that they hadn't worked hard or weren't capable of doing hard work. On the contrary, while our country was innovating labor saving devices and incorporating mechanization into every aspect of agricultural and industrial production and our lives at home, these 3rd world folks were doing it the 'old-fashioned' way. If there was too much manual labor for the existing family members to do, they made more babies.
Now we're being swamped with their over-population to perform tedious manual labor instead of our continuing to eliminate it through invention.
I contend that if not for the influx of all of this cheap, 3rd world, labor, we would have invented mechanized ways to pick lettuce, strawberries, etc. long ago.
"I don't think Americans are so weak or stupid that they would turn to drugs en masse..."
Right now, for example, only 5% of the population admit to smoking pot on a regular, almost daily basis. I believe that if pot was legalized, that percentage would increase to somewhere around 30% to 35%. That would be significant and a detriment to the country.
"However: It is absolutely absurd to posit..."
I posited no such thing. Other non-American, 1st world countries of both the East and West have been successful in increasing their citizen's standard of living, as well. Without dumping 50% of their populations illegally on the United States over our open borders.
Do you see the Japanese having 6 to 8 children per family?
Are their soldiers knifing, helpless, live pets to death? Were they not able, as a people, to rise above their violent past?
Are the Japanese smuggling their catastrophically ill or any of their citizens over our borders ILLEGALLY for free healthcare at U.S. Taxpayer's expense?
Does Japan have anywhere near the natural resources or space that most of these 3rd world countries do?
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