U.S. Marines Urinating on Taliban Corpses Video: Anti-Muslim Blogger Says, 'I Love These Marines'
Pamela Geller, the executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), is also called the Queen of the Muslim Bashers, and it seems she doesn't care about being known like that.
In her blog Atlas Shrugs, Geller has written that she loves the four U.S. Marines, who were seen in a recent video urinating on three Taliban corpses.
I love these Marines. Perhaps this is the infidel interpretation of the Islamic ritual of washing and preparing the body for burial, Geller wrote.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who condemned the video, issued a statement criticizing Geller's comments. It called her blog a hate blog, the Huffington Post reported.
However, Geller shot back in a later post on her blog.
So let me be perfectly clear. I DO love those Marines. We are at war with an enemy that means to slaughter us and overthrow the United States of America. I don't CAIR that these Marines wee wee'ed on murderous savages, she wrote.
The shocking video footage, first appeared online Tuesday, has created much controversy forcing the law enforcement arm of the Navy, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), to launch a probe on the matter.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Marines, also doing its own internal investigation, said it has identified the men in video seen urinating on the corpses of insurgents in Afghanistan.
A senior American military official said on condition of anonymity that the Pentagon had identified them and their originating base in the United States.
U.S. Marines spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Plenzler said that although the troops in the video had been identified, we cannot release the name of the unit at this time since the incident is being investigated.
However, CNN quoted an unnamed U.S. Marine official, who said the military branch was confident that the troops in the inflammatory video were from the 3rd Battalion 2nd Marine Regiment, based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
According to the CNN report, the unit was deployed in Afghanistan, particularly in Helmand province, in early 2011 and returned to the U.S. in September or October.
The footage, posted on YouTube and other Web sites, shows four men in camouflage Marine combat uniforms urinating on three dead Taliban fighters. One of them says, Have a great day, buddy while another makes a vulgar joke.
According to a report by The Telegraph, the NCIS, which reportedly interviewed two of the four Marines on Thursday night, is expected to evaluate evidence of violations of the U.S. military legal code as well as the international laws of warfare.
U.S. defense secretary Leon Panetta denounced the footage as utterly deplorable and has promised a full investigation by the Marines and the Kabul-based International Security Assistance Force. He personally telephoned the Afghan President Hamid Karzai to promise a full investigation.
President Karzai said he was deeply disturbed at desecrating dead bodies of three Afghans.
This act by American soldiers is simply inhuman and condemnable in the strongest possible terms. We expressly ask the U.S. government to urgently investigate the video and apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime, Karzai said.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced the act as a deplorable behavior and said it was absolutely inconsistent with American values, with the standards of behavior that we expect from our military personnel, the National Post reported.
If the content in the video is verified, the accused men could face prosecution not only under the U.S. military code but also for war crimes, as the Geneva Convention specifically proscribes the desecration of enemy remains, according to the Telegraph.
The footage was posted on YouTube under the username semperfiLoneVoice that apparently refers to the Marine Corps motto semper fidelis or always faithful.
The user said in the caption that the men showed in the video were members of a sniper scout team. I thought Marines were supposed to do the right thing when no one is watching, the user wrote.
© Copyright IBTimes 2024. All rights reserved.