America the beautiful

His name was Scott Thomas Beauchamp, AKA the Baghdad diarist. When he began writing his anonymous dispatches from Iraq for the New Republic, journal entires which detailed numerous accounts of every day cruelty on the part of U.S. soldiers fighting overseas, a firestorm erupted from the right. The tales he told of soldiers killing dogs for sport, and mocking disfigured women could not possibly be true, we were told, and so Beauchamp was clearly a liar. The right-wing blogosphere went into overdrive trying to prove their case. The idea that noble and gallant U.S. soldiers could engage in such infamy was not just untrue. It was pure calumny, aimed at undermining our purely altruistic military endeavors abroad.

One wonders, then, what the right-wing is going to make of the video clips that are now circulating which show American soldiers killing farm animals, torturing a dog that has been run over by a vehicle but is still alive, and perhaps most disgusting of all, holding up a live puppy for the camera and then tossing it to its death off a high cliff and delighting in its yelping as it tumbles a hundred or so feet to its death.

The videos, particularly that last one, are horrendous and disgusting. They can be found at the blog Valleywag, if you have the stomach for such things. Me, I'm still trembling as I write this, having just viewed them.

Actually, you don't have to wonder much what the right-wing thinks. You need only waltz over to Michelle Malkin's site and see for yourself. The answer is simple: denial. Malkin is sure that the puppy is dead before the soldier even throws it into the valley. How does she know? Why, because it isn't squirming around as the soldier holds it for the camera. Never mind that it's head is upright, and its hind legs are not drooping as would be the case for a dead animal. Never mind that he's holding the puppy by the scruff of the neck, the way its mother would hold it were she to carry it from one place to another. Never mind that we only see the puppy for a brief moment before it is hurled off the cliff. No, it must be dead already because American soldiers just wouldn't do that.

Well dream on Michelle. And wake up people. This is the new face of America to the world. This is what Bush and the Neocons have done to our image. We are a land of murderers of women and children and we kill defenseless puppies for amusement and sport.