Sunday, Jan 04th
Last update03:05:19 AM GMT
Military Glance
Can being an atheist in America get you killed? If police in the small Texas town of Petrolia are to be believed, the answer to that question is yes.
It is also not yet clear if Ramirez really was an atheist, or if that was the real reason for the killing. The two nameless tipsters told police that’s what Green said to them to justify him actions, and claimed that Ramirez had reached for a gun as well. It is possible that the two had a separate disagreement leading up to the alleged murder.
The UN special rapporteur on torture has formally accused the US government of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment towards Bradley Manning, the US soldier who was held in solitary confinement for almost a year on suspicion of being the WikiLeaks source.
Juan Mendez has completed a 14-month investigation into the treatment of Manning since the soldier's arrest at a US military base in May 2010. He concludes that the US military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment in keeping Manning locked up alone for 23 hours a day over an 11-month period in conditions that he also found might have constituted torture.
The US Marine Corps has discharged the man convicted over the killing of Iraqi civilians in Haditha, a spokesman said. Former Sgt Frank Wuterich, 31, was given a general discharge under honourable conditions and completed his service on Friday, he added.
Wuterich avoided imprisonment after reaching a plea deal, but had earlier faced several counts of manslaughter. Twenty-four people died in the 2005 killings, including women and children, after a roadside bomb killed a Marine.
TVNL Comment: A general discharge, and no other penalites for a man responsible for kiling 24 unarmed civilians. Oh yes, they hate us for our freedom...
A U.S. Marine sniper team in Afghanistan posed for a photograph in front of a flag with symbols representing Adolph Hitler's notorious SS unit, the Pentagon confirmed to The Associated Press.
After a long-delayed review that had been ordered by Congress, the Defense Department said it would open about 14,000 combat-related positions that women had previously been excluded from — but would continue to prohibit them from serving in 238,000 other slots, nearly all of them in the Army and Marine Corps, as well as special operations forces. The changes will take effect in spring unless lawmakers intervene.
Neither the Department of Defense (DoD) nor the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), though, was prepared with the same cutting-edge treatment for the one in three women soldiers in those same wars - an estimated 70,000 - who were sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers.
One of the Marines shown urinating on three corpses in Afghanistan in a widely distributed Internet video was the unit's leader, two U.S. military officials have told McClatchy, raising concerns that poor command standards contributed to an incident that may have damaged the U.S. war effort.
Even before the unit deployed to southern Afghanistan last year, it suffered from disciplinary problems while the troops were based at Camp Lejeune, N.C., the officials said.
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