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Tharp case still makes me cry

I initially blogged about this case as it unfolded, then re-titled the blog and condensed my comments. As far as I know, nothing has ever ...

Monday, November 6, 2017

Siddiqui scandal: Amerika's military is a national disgrace

"Siddiqui's father is an auto-parts worker who was returning from his night shift when he first heard the news that his son was dead. He recalls seeing an ambulance parked in front of his home. Inside, first responders were attending to Siddiqui's mother, who had just received the news." - Eric London, in his excellent article, "20-year-old Muslim recruit killed by officers at Marine boot camp."

I just love it when Americans are confronted with uncomfortable truths about their inane love affair with the military. The usual response is a nervous chuckle as they put a dumb look on their faces, zip their lips, and tuck their cowardly tails. Big Brother has brainwashed his subjects well: musn't criticize Amerika's goon thug military, no matter how heinous the conduct. I blogged about the deafening public silence when the investigative report was released regarding the Marines drowning Jason Tharp, and the appalling lack of adequate public outrage has once again emerged, though not quite as deafening, regarding the alleged suicide of Muslim recruit Raheel Saddiqui, whose Arabic surname, ironically enough, means "The Truthful." One Muslim recruit was forced into an industrial clothes drier, got severely burned, and broke into tears. Saddiqui wound up dead. Jacob Weaver, a former Marine who was in Siddiqui's unit, decided to expose the horrors of boot camp "training," thereby prompting the current investigation.

It must have been a real shocker to the thugs who run Parris Island that someone dared to speak out so publicly about Marine Corps "training." The courageous Jacob Weaver is due a BIG round of applause. Fact is, the Marine Corps has an appalling history of scandals dating back at least to the 1950's.  .

Conspicuously missing from all the mainstream media accounts of Marine Corps brutality inflicted on recruits is any mention of the drowning of Marine recruit Jason Tharp.

Had it not been for the decades-long, cowardly public silence in response to previous instances of criminal military conduct, the racially-charged atmosphere of Marine Corps boot camp and the abuse of Muslim recruits would not have happened. The public has given America's military the go-ahead for any kind of barbarism imaginable, even when it's directed at hapless young recruits.

The death of Raheel Saddiqui features headline-grabbing visits by two politicians to Parris Island, both of whom are willing to accept the Marine Corps' word for it that Saddiqui - who had no history of mental problems until he entered the Marine Corp - committed suicide. Never mind that the Marine Corp was caught lying about the circumstances of Jason Tharp's drowning (initially claiming he entered the water voluntarily), and never mind that boot camp bigotry was exposed in 2006 (!) by no less of a veteran than a retired Marine sergeant who wrote an article aptly titled "Learning to be a Killer." Note that 2006 is the same year the Army got exposed for its pornographic torture of Muslims at Abu Ghraib. Based on my own experience, I wrote about how the Army indoctrinates recruits with sexual filth.

Siddiqui's family vehemently disagrees with the allegation of suicide, maintaining that there's insufficient evidence to warrant such a conclusion, and they have now filed a 100 million dollar lawsuit against the Marines. Their efforts are supported by Rep. Debbie Dingell, (D) Michigan.

Raheel Siddiqui was a personable young man, much like the accounts given of Jason Tharp, and Siddiqui's family is to be commended for challenging the allegation of suicide. The racially-charged circumstances of Siddiqui's death cry out for long overdue national honesty regarding Marine Corps. misconduct. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) apparently has a problem when it comes to drawing logical conclusions based on findings of fact. By what standard of Orwellian mumbo jumbo did the drowning of Jason Tharp amount to anything other than cold-blooded, first degree murder? It would have made just as much sense had the NCIS concluded that Jason too somehow committed suicide.

A country with a scintilla of fundamental decency would have protested in massive numbers at the gates of Parris Island when Jason Tharp's investigative report was released.

In addition to making racist thugs out of "the troops," when the US military burns Korans, tortures Muslim prisoners, and singles out Muslim recruits for racially-charged harassment, it fans the flames of America's illegal wars and helps keep profits flowing to the security-industrial complex. What better way to stoke up Amerika's war machine than verbal and physical assaults directed at Muslim recruits, not to mention the worldwide publicity that would surely result if one of those recruits wound up dead? Marine General Smedley Butler got it right, way back in the 1930's, in the title to his book, "War is a Racket." At the time of his death, General Butler was the most highly decorated combat Marine in US history.

How did Americans come to be so cowardly, so brainwashed, so spiritually dead that they tolerate anything a tyrannical government and its goon thug military dishes out? Dr. Paul Craig Roberts tells it like it is in his article, "Americans are a conquered people." They "live in a propaganda-fabricated world in which a brutal police state is cloaked in nice words like 'freedom and democracy.".

Update 3/13/2018 - Marine officer pleads guilty to charges associated with Siddiqui's death.

Update 11/11/2017 -It was announced yesterday that a drill instructor has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for abusing Muslim recruits, one of whom was Raheel Siddiqui. Here's a link to another article.