By now, most have heard about the video of U.S. marine throwing puppy off a cliff in Iraq. This sort of behaviour isn't new to war. There was a Vietnam veteran in Cahill 3 with me. He told me a story that seems now eerily similar to this.

The guys in his unit called the orangutans "rock apes", because they would catch rocks you threw at them and then throw the rocks back. They had fun playing catch with the orangutans until one day one of the guys in the unit decided to pull a pin out of a grenade and throw it at an orangutan . Of course the orangutan caught the grenade and was blown to pieces. That ended the fun they had with the orangutans. The difference is that they didn't have camera phones then.

Should we be surprised by this sort of behaviour? These soldiers have been sent to kill people. Most humans view other animals as less than human. If they're killing people left and right, what's the odd puppy or orangutan ? Who is more evil then: the marine that killed the puppy or the politicians sent him over there to kill?

Just for fun, I decided to look at the edits made from the United States Department of state using wikiscanner. I only looked at a fraction of the over 2,500 edits, but here are the ones I thought were interesting:

Laura Bush thinks Condi would be a great president

We're being invaded by Mexicans!!

"...the World Bank is one of the most highly-regarded financial institutions in the world..."

Tiawan is a pseudostate

"The statements about events in 2007 are clearly written by a Russian."

State Department predicts what issues will be contentious at the next Intergovernmental Conference of the European Union

The Department of State knows a lot about science and technology in China.

Somewhere in the world, humans can marry non-human animals

Delete – Who said the 2003 invasion of Iraq was illegal? No one said that

Delete – You can't say that the U.S. officials should have know that Bin Laden would turn his attention to the west after the Soviets were out of the way

Delete – Text on the United States Interests Section in Havana

Delete – A large chunk of the Missouri United States Senate election, 2006 article

Delete – Part of the discussion on the Agent Orange talk page