Tuesday, September 04, 2007
The Pig of God Open Thread
I have too much busy work for my usual dawn posting, so this can be an open thread - ie say what you like about anything. Well, all right, let me start you off - the Pig of God. What's that all about?
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Poor pig. I hope their god is pleased.
ReplyDeleteYes, poor pigs. The addition of sand and bits of lead to their diet would surely rule them out of the Fat Pigs Class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show. On the other hand, perhaps they'll get their revenge by poisoning anyone who tries to eat them, a joke that many deities would find extremely funny.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if they have names. Yesterday, for example, William Shakespeare "who was very well known in the area" was fatally run down by a driver in Cumbria. William Shakespeare was a water buffalo.
A US Marine was ordered to execute a room full of Iraqi women and children during an alleged massacre in Haditha that left 24 people dead, a military court heard Thursday.
ReplyDeleteThe testimony came in the opening of a preliminary hearing for Marine Sergeant Frank Wuterich, who faces 17 counts of murder over the Haditha killings, the most serious war crimes allegations faced by US troops in Iraq.
Marine tells of order to execute Haditha women and children
A US Marine was ordered to execute a room full of Iraqi women and children during an alleged massacre in Haditha that left 24 people dead, a military court heard Thursday.
The testimony came in the opening of a preliminary hearing for Marine Sergeant Frank Wuterich, who faces 17 counts of murder over the Haditha killings, the most serious war crimes allegations faced by US troops in Iraq.
Wuterich, dressed in desert khakis, spoke confidently to confirm his name as the hearing to decide if he faces a court martial began at the Marines' Camp Pendleton base in southern California.
The 27-year-old listened intently as Lance Corporal Humberto Mendoza recounted how Marines had responded after a roadside bomb attack on their convoy in Haditha on November 19, 2005 left one comrade dead.
Mendoza said Marines under Wuterich's command began clearing nearby houses suspected of containing insurgents responsible for the bombing.
At one house Wuterich gave an order to shoot on sight as Marines waited for a response after knocking on the door, said Mendoza.
"He said 'Just wait till they open the door, then shoot,'" Mendoza said.
Mendoza then said he shot and killed an adult male who appeared in a doorway.
During a subsequent search of the house, Mendoza said he received an order from another Marine, Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum, to shoot seven women and children he had found in a rear bedroom.
"When I opened the door there was just women and kids, two adults were lying down on the bed and there were three children on the bed ... two more were behind the bed," Mendoza said.
"I looked at them for a few seconds. Just enough to know they were not presenting a threat ... they looked scared."
After leaving the room Mendoza told Tatum what he had found.
"I told him there were women and kids inside there. He said 'Well, shoot them,'" Mendoza told prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Sean Sullivan.
"And what did you say to him?" Sullivan asked.
"I said 'But they're just women and children.' He didn't say nothing."
Mendoza said he returned to a position at the front of the house and heard a door open behind him followed by a loud noise. Returning later that afternoon to conduct body retrieval, Mendoza said he found a room full of corpses.
What's that got to do with the Pig of God, dsfg???
ReplyDeleteIt's an open thread, Nige, a chance to say what you like. That will make a big change
ReplyDeleteThose Marines were pigs of war, no doubt about it. But though the writer wants to make a point about the heinousness of crimes committed by American soldiers, he is also revealing that they are being tried in a court of law: They will be court-martialled and imprisoned, perhaps executed.
ReplyDeleteSomething does seem to happen to a fair number of soldiers during wartime -- bloodlust. One of my uncles who served on Guadalcanal during WW II would never talk about the war, but he had a chest full of medals and other stuff. Once, while he was living with my grandmother in Miami trying to recover from a drinking binge, he went out and we kids went through this chest. There were medals galore (he'd won everything you could win for bravery) and also other, stranger, things: Tons of bayonets, a couple of Japanese rifles, and pictures galore of Japanese families. Later I realized he had killed soldiers and taken their wallets. Creepy, but apparently not unusual.
My mother said he, her much older brother, came back from the war mentally damaged. He was a pretty serious drunk, with three failed marriages and a string of kids all over America by the time I knew him.