Col. Allen West on the Marines Incident

[Niner Delta]

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a former Army lieutenant colonel, sends THE WEEKLY STANDARD an email commenting on the Marines' video, and has given us permission to publish it.

“I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.

“All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?

“The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.

“As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.”

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I'm not sure about you Robert, but I saw a lot worse things than this done in Nam.
These types of things are not that hard to do after watching your friend die. Trust me.

Vern.

[DuncaninFrance]

Good points all. Why not throw in atrocities committed by the Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Cypriots, Jews, Palestinians, Irish...the list is endless and the reactions of troops on the receiving end of such things is understandable BUT...........WHY HAVE THESE IDIOTS GOT TO FILM IT It is obvious to me and anyone else with an ounce of sense that some one will publish it somewhere...............
Some people have benefited from it anyway

[Niner]

When I first heard about this I saw Hillary on the news making a "heartfelt" official apology about how deplorable it was that some kids of the few, the trained, and the proud to kill, would do such a thing. The day before I saw Hillary making a "categorical" denial of US involvement in killing Iranian scientists. But we know if the US didn't knock off any scientist they know who did and gave them the means as well. Shalom.

I think that the internet video calling attention to these kids who pissed on some corpses ......that there is no evidence weren't armed combatants previous to their demise....... should not give cause for the US to officially blush nor for Hillary to express outrage and tears. If anybody thinks these boys deserve punishment, just send them on to Iran when Obama....or the next war good Republican..... sends them there to continue the perpetual war. That'll be punishment enough, I'd think.

There are a lot of things more evil in this world than pissing on a few dead bodies....like those Wall Street housing bubble crooks that both Obama and most of the Republicans have not noticed at all. I like Duncan's cartoon about the Standard And Poors rating.....the same S&P that never noticed the junk bonds issued just before Wall Street pissed on the whole US and world economy.

Vern, as to Vietnam, I never saw any bodies abused. The most Alpha company did was to leave an Ace of Spades on the bodies. The CO had a deck of just Ace of Spades he got somebody to make just for the purpose. And....contrary to popular myth...we only killed people that were armed and trying to kill us. We went out of our way...in 1970...to avoid hurting any civilians even when we lost casualties from mine fields and other events when doing so.

[Niner]

The Ace of Spades was the company symbol. It was like leaving a receipt. Patches were made and later a pin.

[Niner Delta]

We also avoided harming civilians, I was referring only to armed, dead enemies.
And I wasn't meaning severe mutilations and such, just worse than pissing on them.

Vern.

[Niner]

I didn't think you did anything evil back forty plus years ago, Vern. This particular news topic came up on my other site in the chat the other night. We Vietnam Vets have a chip on our shoulders still from long years ago from the actual civilian murdering and the occasional body desecration .....like cutting off ears and such. Those things did happen in Vietnam from time to time. William Calley was a real person and the murdering deeds his men did were real enough. The real crime was that none of them, all of them up and down the chain of command, got much more than a slap on the wrist for doing what they did while the rest of us who took great pains to do no such evil got spit on in airports on our way home and heard about it over a number of years after the fact.

And, while I'm on my rant, I knew there would be a scene in Platoon, the award winning movie, that would echo the kill civilian thing even before I saw it. I wasn't disappointed. It was the times and the public perception that required it....and probably that perception still continues.

[Niner Delta]

Ahhhh.... Platoon. A Hollywood movie, given Hollywood awards by people that had no idea what Nam was like.
The movie was a load of crap, a large load.

Vern. (part-time movie critic )

[DuncaninFrance]

The movie was a load of crap, a large load.

As are probably 90%+ of War films and Westerns. They are not made to be factual but to be either entertaining or moral building I would say.
I can think of quite a few - Where Eagles Dare, The Great Escape, Tobruk, Rio Bravo, The Magnificent Seven.................................

[Niner]

The Magnificent Seven was really a remake of a Japanese film called Seven Samurai. The Seven Samurai, with subtitles, seemed to me to be a better movie in some kind of odd way too. And the Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now, we all know was a knock off of a book that had nothing to do with the Vietnam war....Joseph Conrad's the Heart of Darkness.

I haven't seen a really good Vietnam movie. There isn't such a thing. There never likely will be either. Probably never be a true one about whatever America did, or does, in the perpetual Moslem wars either.

Speaking war movies.....Bataan...made in 1943 with Robert Taylor as Sgt. Bill Dane of the 31st Infantry was one of the last stand combat movies that was pretty good as a movie and there was the actual last stand on the Bataan Peninsula and there was an actual 31st Infantry that was wiped out doing it. And considering when the movie was made Bataan had only fallen the year before in actual time, it wasn't expected to be anything but war propaganda by anybody. But if you like light daring and doing and noble jestures, and lots of shooting bad guys, this movie has it.

While the thought strikes.....I met a guy who was in the real "Blackhawk Down" Mogadishu operation in 2001. He claims that at one juncture when some actor is making a radio call they would have been talking to him......if it had been a true to life movie. That's the only thing I remember him ever saying about it. I never asked him if he liked it or if it seemed real enough to him. Maybe I already knew what he would say.

[Niner Delta]

Saving Private Ryan............. The opening sequence on the beaches is the only movie that is hard for me to watch.
What we went through in Nam was nothing compared to what those men endured on the beaches, but it is still difficult for me to watch.
All the other war movies are so phony, that to me, they are no different than watching Star Wars.


Am also interested in the new movie coming out about the Tuskegee Airmen, "Red Tails". I don't really care how true the story is, have already read quite a bit about them, I'm just excited to see a new WWII avaition movie.

Vern.

[Aughnanure]

A bit OT but for me Audie Murphy in 'Red Badge of Courage' has always been my favorite war movie.

[Niner]

Eoin, you know a lot of that Red Badge of Courage movie was removed by direction of the studio to reduce the film running time. The director had expectations of adding back the edited footage one day. However, all that addtional film was eventually lost. And more significantly to me than what was missing , people tend to not notice that Bill Mauldin was in that movie too. Mauldin is a lot more interesting to me as a person than Murphy, and he was a lot more creative and important as a historical figure. And GI's that served in WWII in Europe all knew who Mauldin was and probably a lot fewer had ever heard of Audie Murphy at the time the movie was made.

And another ironic thing to me about that movie is that Murphy and Mauldin were two of the most famous non generals to come out of WWII and they played in a movie based on the Civil War story written by Stephen Crane, who not only wasn't even born when the Civil War was fought, he had never been in a war of any sort.

[Niner]

So the end of the world is coming for Marines who piss on bodies of men that may or may not have deserved their death. But how about this latest disgrace? A group of Marines who murdered 24 civilians in a killing rampage, including women and children, get off scot free although one NCO is made the symbolic scapegoat...but get this....is punished by no prison time and just a reduction in rank. And nobody in the government expresses any shame at the outcome.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/201 ... -jail-time

[DuncaninFrance]

Well they had better get themselves organized cos Iran is coming up soon