Do you know how old the average soldier is? 18-20 years old. So they ARE a group of high school boys making jokes. Dude, seriously, this is how they cope. How would you cope with seeing friends killed day in and day out during war. You cope by making jokes of things that are less sick then watching a friend die.
The mental state is that they're over in a shit hole country doing whatever they can to stay alive in case some IED blows up and kills them or a friend. The only other option would be to outright shoot the dog. Instead, they chose to have some fun with it. The ONLY reason this is even an issue is because todays soldier has access to cheap, easy to carry video cameras that he can use to upload the video to the Internet.
This would have been a non issue in Vietnam or any other war because you wouldn't have known about it. Since you know about it though, it suddenly becomes an issue.
I don't believe what's needed is better training though. What's needed is better screening for what these guys are accessing on the Internet. I think you'll find any commander hard pressed to come down on his subordinates over shooting a dog that was probably going to die anyway. This is just one more case where the guys in combat should not have access to the Internet or should have anything they end up filming screened.
Poor excuse. I don't buy it. The military leadership does not condone or excuse that type of animal abuse action, and I don't ether. But it seems a few of you do. It's that old "boys will be boys" mentality. I wonder why the Marine Commander did not come out with an excuse like Lordjedi's for his men? Could it be because it's nothing more than a bullshit excuse? I think so.
People had more of a problem with the U.S. killing innocent children and burning down villages in the Vietnam War, and rightfully so. Like it or not, the strong public outcry and protesting of the publicized U.S. miss-actions in that war thankfully ended it. The type of animal abuse shown on the Internet last week has been a strong issue for a heck of a lot of potential voters judging from the media's reported responses. Like it or not that puppy video got a lot of media attention, animal rights groups got lots of support, money, and people motivated. It also got a lot of people re-questioning the U.S. mission and competency of our fighting men in Iraq. And like it or not, people looking at what our military does and exposing it via the Internet is not going to go away. Now, let's be clear. I feel the abuse that the U.S. military did in the area of human rights abuse, torture, sodomy and homicide of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was much much worse then the puppy killing video last week. But thankfully no more videos of that magnitude have come to light. For you who need to be reminded of that issue, you can see a video at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz7UNxnOI3M
And yes, people are still making moronic uneducated excuses for that horror story as well.
I for one feel the Internet is a great tool in an age where political leaders (such as Bush) have tried to curtail the media from telling negative stories from behind the lines. Public opinion has been very strong with this issue of the killing of a puppy, and that alone makes it a valid subject to report on. Some of you will get your over inflated patriotic panties in a twist about any ridiculing of wrong doing by our fighting boys in uniform, but that's just tough.
FF