Posted on 03/04/2008 6:36:57 AM PST by yankeedame
Last updated at 13:49pm on 4th March 2008
The U.S. military are investigating a shocking video of a smiling Marine throwing a puppy off the top of a steep hillside in Iraq into a gully below.
The video gained widespread attention and condemnation after appearing on the web site YouTube, where it has been viewed over 8,000 times.
The footage shows two Marines, in combat gear and smiling, as one holds a white-and-black puppy by the scruff of its neck.
Scroll down for more...
Sickening: The grinning soldier holds the puppy aloft
and then throws it off a hillside
Read more...
The small dog seems to be about eight weeks old and is motionless as it is held.
"Cute little puppy, huh?" says one Marine as he smiles broadly.
"Oh so cute, so cute, little puppy," says another in a child-like voice.
The Marine holding the puppy then turns and hurls the animal overhand into a desert-like gully below.
The puppy can be heard yelping in terror until it thuds to the ground at the bottom of the gully.
"That's mean," one Marine says after, in a sickening understatement.
"The video is shocking and deplorable and is contrary to the high standards we expect of every Marine," a spokesperson revealed.
Marine spokesman Major Chris Perrine believed the culprit is based in Hawaii.
"We do not tolerate this type of behaviour and will take appropriate action," he said.
The 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment of about 1,000 Hawaii Marines recently replaced a sister unit in Iraq, the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment.
Marine Corps Base Hawaii said the vast majority of Marines "conduct their duties in an honourable manner that brings great credit upon the Marine Corps and the United States."
"There have been numerous stories of Marines adopting pets and bringing them home from Iraq or helping to arrange life-saving medical care for Iraqi children," said Major Chris Perrine.
"Those are the stories that exemplify what we stand for and how most Marines behave."
Great anecdote. Let’s base all modern military jurisprudence on it.
Sorry, bud, but you ain’t out there with these nuts shooting at you. I said war does different things to different people. Thank God it didn’t screw up your old man. It royally screws some guys up. You want to pretend it’s their fault and throw these soldiers under the bus, then I’ll be in your face every minute.
I’m not making excuses, I’m telling you what happens to men and boys when you ask them to do and see the unspeakable for their country, and some of the crap these boys see is un-freaking-speakable. Some guys crack. Of course you wouldn’t, because you’re not there. You have the convenience of knowing how tough you are without having to be tested.
We don’t even know if this thing is for real and y’all are ready to scream and holler.
Here is a link to a Honolulu article that tells us that the Marine Corps is all over this guy, and is investigating the story.
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080304/NEWS01/803040352/1001/NEWS01
OTOH, there are some odd things about this video, so I'd like to know its provenance before giving it credence.
According to a later post, the Marines are already looking into this, so we should learn more soon.
Hmmm.
Oh no! More good news about our troops (that didn’t recieve over 200 posts)
U.S. Navy Corpsman Saves Iraqi Village from Blindness
Medic Identifies Contagious Eye Disease
-
AN NUMANIYAH MILITARY TRAINING BASE, Iraq, Sept. 8, 2004 Just southwest of here lays the village of Al Bulha, one of many surrrounding the base in Iraq’s Wasit Province. A U.S. Navy medical corpsman recently helped save villagers’ eyesight by identifying a contagious eye disease — Trachoma.
“The worst case scenario for the disease is blindness in one year,” said Petty Officer 1st Class Richard Sayers, a Fleet Marine Force corpsman with the Multinational Security Transition Command - Iraq, Health Affairs Section, speaking on the brutal disease “Trachoma.”
Trachoma is a communicable disease afflicting a victim’s eyes and is transmitted through eye-to-eye contact, spread commonly by sharing of contaminated articles such as towels, or by flies that carry the disease from person to person.
The disease, one of the earliest recorded eye diseases dating back to the 27th Century B.C., is the leading cause of blindness worldwide, and afflicts more than 400 million people. Primarily found in underdeveloped countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, the prognosis is excellent if treated early with simple antibiotics. Untreated cases, however, result in corneal scarring and sure blindness.
“It’s correctible in the ‘blue haze’ stage,” Sayers said, “but once it turns to scar tissue, you’re blind,” he added, also relating that the ‘blue haze’ attacks the cornea by surrounding it with the disease before working its way in.
So it was with great fortune that Coalition contractors identified a potential problem sometime in May and turned the issue over to Sayers.
Sayers, a corpsman formerly involved in many civil action program projects in the area along with the 10 other base advisory team members, unsure of the ultimate diagnosis, took digital photos of the villagers’ eyes and forwarded them to doctors in the United States. The doctors confirmed the early suspicions of the contractors - one whom had formerly been through a class on Trachoma, nearly 40 years ago - and armed with the professional confirmations, Sayers went into action.
“We were able to get a hold of 47,000 antibiotic tablets for the village,” Sayers said. The effort was coordinated with the Iraqi armed forces’ surgeon general’s office. The Coalition released $7,000 and the Iraqi’s purchased the antibiotics locally and then delivered them to Sayers.
“But the big thing was we had to manage the distribution,” Sayers said. “Imagine the last time you were given a prescription for only seven to 10 days and actually followed through on the directions. And now we’re looking at 28 days.
“If only one patient does not comply,” Sayers said, “re-infection will occur. So we made up explicit instructions and had them translated into Arabic and gathered the leaders around and said, ‘Look, when the ‘meds’ get here, I have to have your help. So you’re going to have to listen and take care of this,’” he said.
A boy from the village of Al Bulha, Iraq, exhibits the telltale bluish margins of the eye disease Trachoma. Correctible in the blue haze stage, the blinding disease attacks the cornea by first surrounding it, then working its way in. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Frederick Thomas
A boy from the village of Al Bulha, Iraq, exhibits the telltale bluish margins of the eye disease Trachoma. Correctible in the blue haze stage, the blinding disease attacks the cornea by first surrounding it, then working its way in. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Frederick Thomas
The instructions included every age, demographic, male, female, old, young, pregnancies, everything, to make it happen. And it did.
Residents, over the age of eight, received two doses of Doxycycline a day for 28 days with the balance of the infected villages of Al Bulha given a similar amount relative to age and condition. And from the outlook some 60-plus days after the first treatment with the drug on June 29, the Trachoma attack has been thwarted.
Indeed, though, the medical civil action programs, otherwise known as “MEDCAPS,” in the Wasit Province areas surrounding the new base that will be the home to three Iraqi Intervention Force battalions, an army Brigade Headquarters, and an Iraqi Police Service Regiment, does not stop there.
They have also included the treatment of Iraqis for various illnesses, including Leishmaniasis cases, chronic eye and sinus problems, stomach problems, intestinal parasites, and a host of other maladies. To that end, Sayers estimates he and the local team have handed out roughly 13,000 tablets of Motrin and Sudafed, a couple hundred bottles of Afrin, Visine, 10 cases of Mylanta, while administering various shots and 60,000 antibiotic tablets.
“And as many multi-vitamins as we can get our hands on,” Sayers said. “We’ve even spent our own money at the post exchange,” he added before relating a final story of a mammoth effort from family and friends in Birmingham, Ala., who filled 31 boxes with medical supplies from the local St. Vincent’s Hospital where his mother works before convincing United Parcel Service to ship the supplies to Iraq for free. The local manager for the shipping company even kicked in his own funds to get the balance of the shipment, not covered by the company, onto the aircraft and into the country.
“These kinds of efforts mean a lot to the people here,” said Sayid Ali, an influential leader from the neighboring town of An Numaniyah familiar with the base advisory team’s efforts to reach out to the local citizens, “because it shows that Americans are not here to destroy but to help the Iraqi people.
“Especially here, because we are a peaceful town,” Ali said.
Sayers is glad to help, but modest about his efforts.
“Treating kids is where you make your money,” Sayers said. “It’s the key to this thing.
“And I was told a long time ago, if you’re looking for medals or awards, don’t get into this business,” he said. “Because the best thing you can ever have is for a patient to tell you ‘Thank you.’”
Look at the link in post 242.
Also check out the video at this link below, scroll past the now dead youtube screen to the blogger screen below it and click to watch the video (short version).
http://theprogressivetruth.blogspot.com/2008/03/us-marine-murders-puppy.html
My posts keep getting pulled without explanation, so I would check it out quickly.
Nobody here doubts that the overwhelming majority of servicepersons are doing great things. It’s just that your thread spamming is annoying as hell. You’re preaching to the choir, bro.
God expects you to treat your dog as well as you want him to treat you.
“Nobody here doubts that the overwhelming majority of servicepersons are doing great things. Its just that your thread spamming is annoying as hell. Youre preaching to the choir, bro.”
I agree, spamming us veterans like this is annoying.
A freeper trying to interfere with a thread is in bad taste.
Me too. I know you are trying to support the troops, but you are just annoying this one.
Sounds like you are already blaming some "Marines" when we don't know if they're real or fake like these.
Yes, very, very, annoying when information about our troops Delivering 600 lbs of food by foot.
Friday, December 21, 2007......Service members assigned to Joint Task Force - Bravo cross a stream en route to a local village in Comayagua, Honduras to deliver approximately 600 pounds of food.
Such a pain in the neck to have to read obout our troops helping with.......Flooding in Bolivia this past week came from rains similar to the El Nino storms last spring that caused this flooding in Trinidad, Bolivia, last March 5. On Monday U.S. Army South sent a team to Bolivia to asses the humanitarian response needed to help displaced families.
You put yourself on a pretty high horse when you decide to keep spamming a thread because it annoys you.
How about you show some respect for FR and your fellow freepers and let us discuss the topic at hand.
Military topics are important to some of us and constantly spamming us with your girlish feel good nonsense is childish and condescending behavior directed largely at veterans and some active duty, show us some respect and allow the thread to proceed without you spamming us.
Oh, I saw this earlier today and was ignoring it because of all the overreacting drama queens that came out of the woodwork.
My first thought was also that it does not look like any part of Iraq that I have seen. Not at all. They'd have been more credible with this hoax if they'd said it was Afghanistan, but it really looks more like the southwest US.
The dog has got to be a toy and the sounds were clearly not real.
In fact, Freedom Poster put a picture up on another thread of a toy that looks exactly like this "puppy."
It's a fake...but whoever perpetrated it counted on enough people falling for it without question...and the perp certainly seems to have gauged the public correctly.
The other thing that struck me was there are no markings on the guy’s uniform.
Also, isn’t the camo being worn obsolete for Marines? I thought they all wore the new pixilated camo. This looks like an older pattern.
As in the last post. I've been assigned to JTF-B. I participated in humanitarian efforts. I never once wondered if I would be in the papers.
Now back to being outraged by the stupid and cruel action of one young man and a young dog.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.