Quote Originally Posted by bigric09
I honestly feel as though the military should work in secrecy. The less we are in the public eye, the more we can carry out. It has only been since Iraq kicked off and the media being embedded has their been so many issues with things. Its war... and when you are the only one playing by the geneva conventions rules, things get a little lost in translation.
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What about the press in Vietnam? Lots of news footage from that time shows soldiers shooting heroin and even worse. And Vietnam was also a war where the other side didn't follow the Geneva convention. Scrutiny of the press is nothing new, and I am told that the Army limits press access now much more than it did in Vietnam.

The difference is that now we live in a world of viral media. Pretty much everything we do is under some kind of surveillance, and nowadays everyone has camera/video/etc and the means to post to the web. You-tube videos get spread around like wildfire, and a bunch of people see some guys ****ing with a dog and don't have any context to put it into. It does blow things out of proportion a bit sometimes but it also helps expose stuff like this that happens and helps those involved get the help they need or the punishment they deserve.

And I do think that civillians should be able to scrutinize events like this, but should take the conditions of combat into consideration. We expect our soldiers to re-integrate into society as healthy citizens (and even to be leaders in their communities as civillians). So there should be transparency in how the military deals with events like this so civillians can be sure that the soldiers coming home are mentally fit for civillian life.