Col. Allen West on the Marines Incident

[Aughnanure]

A bit OT but for me Audie Murphy in 'Red Badge of Courage' has always been my favorite war movie.

[Niner]

Eoin, you know a lot of that Red Badge of Courage movie was removed by direction of the studio to reduce the film running time. The director had expectations of adding back the edited footage one day. However, all that addtional film was eventually lost. And more significantly to me than what was missing , people tend to not notice that Bill Mauldin was in that movie too. Mauldin is a lot more interesting to me as a person than Murphy, and he was a lot more creative and important as a historical figure. And GI's that served in WWII in Europe all knew who Mauldin was and probably a lot fewer had ever heard of Audie Murphy at the time the movie was made.

And another ironic thing to me about that movie is that Murphy and Mauldin were two of the most famous non generals to come out of WWII and they played in a movie based on the Civil War story written by Stephen Crane, who not only wasn't even born when the Civil War was fought, he had never been in a war of any sort.

[Niner]

So the end of the world is coming for Marines who piss on bodies of men that may or may not have deserved their death. But how about this latest disgrace? A group of Marines who murdered 24 civilians in a killing rampage, including women and children, get off scot free although one NCO is made the symbolic scapegoat...but get this....is punished by no prison time and just a reduction in rank. And nobody in the government expresses any shame at the outcome.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/201 ... -jail-time

[DuncaninFrance]

Well they had better get themselves organized cos Iran is coming up soon