[Prometheus The Supremo]

Two Marines disciplined for puppy-toss video: military

Thu Jun 12, 11:29 AM

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Two US Marines have been disciplined for their role in an Internet video that showed a puppy being thrown off a cliff by a soldier in Iraq, the military said in a statement Thursday.

A press release from the US Marines Corps base in Hawaii said Lance Corporal David Motari, who was seen in the video hurling the puppy into a rocky ravine, faced expulsion for the incident.

Motari, part of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment at Kaneohe Bay, is "being processed for separation," the statement said. He also faced unspecified "non-judicial" punishment.

Another Marine, Sergeant Crismarvin Banez Encarnacion, whose role in the incident was unclear, received non-judicial punishment the Marines said.

"The actions seen in the Internet video are contrary to the high standards we expect of every Marine and will not be tolerated," the Marines statement read. "The vast majority of Marines conduct their duties with honor and compassion that makes American people proud."

The video in question surfaced on Youtube in March and drew outrage from animal-lovers before later being removed.

In the footage, a Marine identified as Motari can be seen smiling and dangling a small black and white puppy before launching it off the cliff, where it can heard yelping as it plunges to its death.

"That's mean. That's mean, Motari," an unidentified voice off-camera is heard saying before sniggering as the video ends.


http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/080612/usa/us_iraq_military_animals_puppy&printer=1

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[buildup]

"Others such as your kinsfolk throw animals over a cliff, concoct photo-ops of simulated sex orgies of Iraqi (brown) prisoners and train attack dogs to physically maim and pierce the flesh out of the victim-of-the-week"

Let's not get into some perverse contest about the capacity for any racial group to produce sociopaths because its an endless debate. I did read a book written by a Marine doctor who talked about psychological desensitization tools used to reduce the aversion most people have to kill. Research showed that when 30-40year-olds are in combat like in the WW2, most are faking combat - they're are shooting high and not attempting to kill anyone. About 2% of soldiers are doing most of the killing. So the task is to increase this ratio and the US has been very successful. Nothing wrong with that, once you're in a war, the point is to win. The desensitization apparently does wear off afterwards. the tools work best on soldiers in their 20s for obvious reasons. But that's another story.

IMO, US soldiers are probably more humane and professional in their treatment of the enemy - definately no worse. How quickly we sanctimonios Canadian's forget our troopers' torture & murder of that Somalian teenager. So lets forget about anecdotal story - psychopaths exist everywhere; they just have more opportunities to bloom in certain environments.

I think this is really about our reactions to the visual. Let's face it - its one puppy! I read stories in 2005 out of Iraq about entire busloads of civilians being pulled over by Al-Q posing as police checkpoints with all occupants being strangled one by one. But the power of the video, makes more of an impression. Strangely, pehaps we allow the horror to affect us because its strangely comprehensible - we've seen animal cruelty before. Whereas the story I mentionned about the busloads is to awful we (or I) suppress it.