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U.S. Marines Urinate On Dead Bodies In Afghanistan

MarineTpartier said:
I got a few thoughts on this, seeing as how I'm a Marine who was in Afghanistan with those guys (not serving in the same unit) and they are on the same base as I am.

A) Why film it? Dumb
B) There are very few people on this website that have actually been to combat. I have numerous times. While I never thought of doing something like this, the lives of your enemy can become very cheap to you. Especially after you see guys you have known and served with for 3-4 years blown to bits by the IED's these cowards put out. While I don't condone it, I can understand where it comes from. I've given less than satisfactory medical care to terrorists that just killed 2 and wounded 1 of my buddies.
C) These guys are snipers. So, the already low level of pity held by them for their enemy is magnified by the fact that they were probably watching these guys put an IED in and they got a close look at them. That is one of the main missions of snipers right now in Afghan. Deter IED emplacers. When you see a guy doing something like that, it infuriates you even further.

I don't condone the actions of these guys. However, I understand where it comes from. Take all of the political crap out of it. All the "we shouldn't be there in the first place" or "thats what we get for being the aggressive occupiers we are". That stuff doesn't matter to the grunt on the ground. All he knows is he's away from his family, his buddies have been killed, mauled, and maimed for 6 months (that's about how long they've been there) and you just don't care about this Taliban puke laying on the ground in front of you. To be honest, if I caught my guys doing this, I would chew them out and that would be the end of it. There would be no paperwork involved. 3rd Battalion 5th Marine Regiment took 45 KIA, 140 loss of eyesight or limb in 6 months in the Sangin River Valley. They deployed with 600 guys. Those are just the dead and traumatic injuries. I'm not counting the concussions and flesh wounds received. Think of that, 200 out of 600 guys that you will never see again, or who will never see you or be able to walk up and shake your hand again. Thats traumatic. I'm tearing up typing this. Marines are in the best shape of any service, bar none. Sure, some high level special ops guys are better, but we are the best out of the conventional forces. When you see guys around you, combat athletes, titans of physical fitness, great Americans, patriots, being helo'd off with out their legs and arms, you're damn right some piss on a terrorist isn't a big deal to us.
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Thanks for the post. Made me tear up a bit too.
With that said...I think they were dumb to do what they did AND film it. But I understand the whys and wherefores of what they did.
 
Enola said:
Thanks for the post. Made me tear up a bit too.
With that said...I think they were dumb to do what they did AND film it. But I understand the whys and wherefores of what they did.
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I agree, filming it was dumb. I tried to deter my guys from filming stuff in country, but, if they want to do it they'll find a way.
 
ThePlayDrive said:
I never said you did. But when you go on a tirade that aims to educate me on what war is really like and throw in little sarcastic remarks about "apple pie" and other nonsense, you're treating me like an idiot. So like I said, you can save your preaching and sarcasm for someone who actually believes what you assume I do.


I don't doubt this which is why I've said, several times now, that their actions are understandable.


I'm sure a lot of this goes on and I know that we don't see hardly any, if any, 'real war' on the news. And sure, we should be paying attention to manning the country and letting soldiers get the job done. But this thread is about soldiers who chose to piss on corpse and then chose to film it, so my attention is naturally on the topic at hand. Their actions were arrogant, a poor representation of the United States, potentially something that could exacerbate tensions in the region and something that a lot of soldiers seem to be able to avoid doing in spite of going through the same stuff.
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"God, mom and apple pie" or "Country, mom and apple pie" or variations thereof didn't start with me. It's been around for quite a while. Google it, and you will quickly discover that it was not intended sarcasm. As to the action of the Marines, their mistake was in filming it. I can assure that 99.5% of their time in-country is NOT thinking about being representatives of the United States. For Christsakes, Marines are not deployed to be nice and make friends. Those bastards live like animals, get the ****tiest missions and are continually short supplied, with, more often than not, not the latest of weapons. They are expected to outfight and outlast every enemy they encounter and they almost always do, at great personal sacrifice. That is SOP for Marines. If they want to pee on dead people, go ahead on. If anyone has a problem with it it should only be other Marines.

My best friend, 3/3, was chopped up like hamburger on Hill 881. Read some Marine history and tell us about standards of conduct.

Read some Marine history.
 
If there is anything I have learned from working with Marines, it is that they pride themselves in being the best and most professional organization in the military. A video like this spits in the face of that tradition.
 
So what? They were Taliban. I'm sure they deserved it.
 
Moderator's Warning:
Let's tone things down a few notches. This is getting out of hand.
 
MaggieD said:
That was the chant of Marines in Viet Nam (or something close). That war wasn't sanitized. This one is!! It had rules of engagement, too. It was double ugly; and we heard all about it....if not from the news, then from our soldiers as they cried themselves to sleep after they got home.

Many here think pissing on a dead body is soooooo horrible. Give me a break. Get off your high horses and get down in the trenches with the soldiers. It's been too long and we are too far removed from the realities of war.

Have one family friend who was a gunner on a rescue helicopter. He was sent in to rescue trapped soldiers who were hoping and praying help would come because they were hopelessly outnumbered and surrounded. Holding their breath...hiding in the jungle...waiting for that wop-wop-wop that might mean they'd make it out alive. Many times, they saved them. Sometimes, they'd land and find U.S. soldiers' bodies in pieces strewn up against barbed wire walls...their heads cut off and their penises cut off and stuffed in their mouths.

Another friend watched as six of his buddies were blown to pieces before his eyes as a little boy came up to them...and exploded. Guess what they did to the next little boys who came out of nowhere??

Pissing on dead bodies. OMFG. Give me a break. What an absolute shame that someone was foolish enough to post it on YouTube. As another poster here said, "That was their sin."
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Two wrongs don't make a right. The fact that war is full of atrocities doesn't make urinating on a dead corpse excusable.

Second, while I feel for our soldiers, emotion shouldn't play any part in this.

The Marines were correct to denounce this. American Marines are expected to follow a standard of conduct. They knew the rules, and they broke them. While I do feel sympathy for them, it doesn't change the facts of the case.
 
Peter Grimm said:
Two wrongs don't make a right. The fact that war is full of atrocities doesn't make urinating on a dead corpse excusable.

Second, while I feel for our soldiers, emotion shouldn't play any part in this.

The Marines were correct to denounce this. American Marines are expected to follow a standard of conduct. They knew the rules, and they broke them. While I do feel sympathy for them, it doesn't change the facts of the case.
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"They knew the rules" LOL!

"No pissing on dead people! You may not piss on them or fart on them. If when killing them you want to shoot them in the head, have at it. Just don't pee on them. For Godsakes be decent. Dammit people! We just want you to slay the bastards. Shoot them in the nuts, make them die, kill them. But for the love of God, don't pee on anybody."

This gets more and more ridiculous. "Standard of conduct" my pink Irish ass.
 
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TacticalEvilDan said:
I thought the whole point of having a code of honor and being one of the few and the proud was that you're above this sort of thing.

Oh, well. Used to be that Americans were all about being the best, but I guess the new paradigm is that we're settling for not being as bad as "that guy over there."
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Jeez, are you people actually serious? Do you think this is something new? Have any of you read any accounts of the war in the Pacific and what both sides did to the dead - and the living - of the other? War is ugly and it's difficult to work up a hell of a lot of sympathy for those who are trying to kill you and would have no compunction about cutting your head off if they caught you.

Americans were all about 'being the best'? Really? Did you ever hear about the Union Prisoner of War camp in Andersonville? About the treatment of American Indians during the Indian wars? The afore-mentioned Pacific war? Stop watching silly old war movies, where the soldiers don't even swear.
 
Temporal said:
All of which has nothing to do with filming a distasteful act. The presence of the U.S. in Afghanistan is an information campaign just as much as it is a fighting based one. If you are so naive that you think this is "harmless" then you obviously know nothing about foreign policy. You don't win over the hearts and minds of a foreign culture by comitting acts like this. I can see why you might not think it's that big of a deal, but it's not about you. It's about the success level of our operations and maintaining that.



I'm really amazed at how some posters can be so cavalier. The same people showed up to excuse the wikileaks footage of helicopter fighters shooting down innocent civilians. They were just soldiers who were blowing off steam too, I guess. :shrug:
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What in the hell are 'helicopter fighters'? There are helicopters and their are fighter jets. There are no 'helicopter fighters'.
 
Risky Thicket said:
"They knew the rules" LOL!

"No pissing on dead people! You may not piss on them or fart on them. If when killing them you want to shoot them in the head, have at it. Just don't pee on them. For Godsakes be decent. Dammit people! We just want you to slay the bastards. Shoot them in the nuts, make them die, kill them. But for the love of God, don't pee on anybody."

This gets more and more ridiculous. "Standard of conduct" my pink Irish ass.
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I understand that this is an emotional topic, but trying to ridicule me isn't helping you make your point. What I've laid out is a simple, logical case.

Furthermore, I have great respect for our troops. I believe that 99% of them would never behave this way, and it would be a disservice to them to say that this is the manner in which we expect our marines to behave.
 
I guess I don't really understand what there is to applaud here. Nor do I understand the intense hatred some have for the enemy. I mean, these guys are already dead. While they held a horrible ideology, they are still human beings. Why not show them dignity in death? You've already won. I'm also incredibly sick of the bull**** macho posturing that condones this kind of behavior. I sincerely hope that the morons responsible for this heinous act are held accountable. See, we are supposed to be the good guys. We are supposed to be held at a level above the enemy, which is why our military has a code of honor. No, instead the usual tough talkers of DP come along and applaud it (boner and all) and also talk tough to the people who are disgusted by behavior. Your schtick is incredibly old and tired.
 
What I find amusing is the outrage of those who have never experienced the absolute terror of combat. Nobody applauds this kind of behavior. But some of us understand it.
 
Wiggen said:
What I find amusing is the outrage of those who have never experienced the absolute terror of combat. Nobody applauds this kind of behavior. But some of us understand it.
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Many soldiers also experience the terror of combat, however, they aren't also urinating on the corpses of the enemy.
 
Wiggen said:
What I find amusing is the outrage of those who have never experienced the absolute terror of combat. Nobody applauds this kind of behavior. But some of us understand it.
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I would really appreciate it if you could provide one example of a respected military leader who has ever condoned this kind of behavior.
 
Of course nobody condones it. Nobody applauds it. But some of us understand it. Do you people live in never never land, where American soldiers have always behaved with honor and treated the enemy with dignity and respect? Do yourselves a favor. Rent the HBO series 'The Pacific' and spend a few days watching it. You might get some understanding of why soldiers do what they do.
 
Wiggen said:
Of course nobody condones it. Nobody applauds it. But some of us understand it. Do you people live in never never land, where American soldiers have always behaved with honor and treated the enemy with dignity and respect? Do yourselves a favor. Rent the HBO series 'The Pacific' and spend a few days watching it. You might get some understanding of why soldiers do what they do.
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Nobody applauds or condones it? Have you even read some of the replies in this thread? What is the point of having a code of honor if this type of behavior is "understandable"? **** it, why have any rules at all? Let's just be careless chaotic assholes and **** everything up!!
 
Wiggen said:
Of course nobody condones it. Nobody applauds it. But some of us understand it. Do you people live in never never land, where American soldiers have always behaved with honor and treated the enemy with dignity and respect? Do yourselves a favor. Rent the HBO series 'The Pacific' and spend a few days watching it. You might get some understanding of why soldiers do what they do.
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Poor excuse. Tens of thousands of our soldiers have experienced similar or worse stress and terror than what these men experienced. Most do not piss on corpses.
 
Who is making excuses? I don't excuse anything. I understand why it happened. And people are acting as if this is something new - something strange in the annals of warfare. What in the hell do you think war does to people?

American mutilation of Japanese war dead - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But if it makes you feel superior to be morally outraged by this, knock yourself out.
 
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Wiggen said:
Who is making excuses? I don't excuse anything. I understand why it happened. And people are acting as if this is something new - something strange in the annals of warfare. What in the hell do you think war does to people?

American mutilation of Japanese war dead - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But if it makes you feel superior to be morally outraged by this, knock yourself out.
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So do you feel that the soldiers who did this should be punished?

For me, it has less to do with morals and more to do with the macho bull**** posturing that condones this type of behavior.
 
Dr_Patrick said:
So do you feel that the soldiers who did this should be punished?
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Yes. I'd want the court marital board to be made up of men who had actually seen combat, however. As I said, I don't condone it, I don't excuse it, but I also don't react like this is something brand new as far as warfare is concerned. The more brutal the fighting, the more brutal the conduct.
 
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Wiggen said:
Probably. I'd want the court marital board to be made up of men who had actually seen combat, however.
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Why should that make a difference? The code of honor is there for a reason and has nothing to do with how much combat one has seen. And like CriticalThought said earlier, many soldiers have seen far worse and managed to avoid pissing on the corpses of the enemy. Why should these particular soldiers be given special consideration?
 
Wiggen said:
Who is making excuses? I don't excuse anything. I understand why it happened. And people are acting as if this is something new - something strange in the annals of warfare. What in the hell do you think war does to people?

American mutilation of Japanese war dead - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But if it makes you feel superior to be morally outraged by this, knock yourself out.
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Morally superior? To people who have reduced themselves to pissing on dead people and joking about it? Clearly that is a perfectly healthy and respectable way of dealing with traumatic stress.
 
Wiggen said:
Yes. I'd want the court marital board to be made up of men who had actually seen combat, however.
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The correct response should be "Yes, but the military should hand down the punishment, not some bureaucrat in DC." It should have nothing to do with who makes up the board. That's like saying that a person on trial for murdering his cheating spouse should have a jury made up of those who have also had their spouse's cheat on them. The military doesn't work that way. I would hope that those pissing on the corpses get punished. While I understand why they did it, it doesn't make it right that they did it.
 
Dr_Patrick said:
Why should that make a difference? The code of honor is there for a reason and has nothing to do with how much combat one has seen. And like CriticalThought said earlier, many soldiers have seen far worse and managed to avoid pissing on the corpses of the enemy. Why should these particular soldiers be given special consideration?
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Because I believe people should be tried by a jury of their peers. I suspect their judgement might be just as harsh. I realize that you might prefer the trial to be held in San Francisco and judgement rendered by a jury composed of Code Pink members. I don't.
 
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