As Agence France-Presse reports, Lance Corp. David Motari, who everyone thought was the guy who'd tossed the puppy, actually was. Motari and another Marine are being disciplined, and a Marine press release says that Motari was being "processed for separation."
Why it took three months to "investigate" whether Motari was responsible for the video (his name was used in it, after all) is not clear. You'd think they could have closed the case in one day and saved the Marine's family a world of terror and harassment. But when it comes to unflattering situations involving personnel, the Armed Forces are not generally known for their speed or transparency.
Now that the facts are all in, we can wonder about what it would take not just to commit such a brutal act but to record it, and then to let the tape get posted online. The Marines like to invoke support-our-troops-type rhetoric to insulate themselves from criticism ("The vast majority of Marines conduct their duties with honor and compassion that makes American people proud"), but what they're really doing is calling Motari an isolated sicko and sweeping the bigger issue under the carpet.
All you have to do is look around for 10 minutes and you can find a dozen videos of wartime cruelty to animals, so to pretend this is a one-in-a-million situation is disingenuous. Let's be honest: Terrible things happen in a war -- to humans, to animals, to everyone. If more men in uniform had video cameras and posted their wartime footage to YouTube, it might not be so easy to ignore that fact.
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