For Marine who urinated on dead Taliban, a hero’s burial at

>Richards’s mother, Cate, a senior sales executive for IBM, hugged him and rested her head on his shoulder. When Richards was a sniper team leader in Afghanistan, she sent him regular care packages with items he and his Marines most needed. Her weekly shopping list included clean socks, cans of Chef Boyardee and six packs of Red Bull to help them stay alert in their hide sites while they watched for the enemy.

>“Sniper den mom,” they called her back then.

>The bar was filling up with Marine snipers telling war stories. “Remember that Mark 12 gunner who got three head shots at 1,000 yards,” one of the Marines was saying.

>Richards’s mother was showing her brother a memorial photo album — set out next to the ammo can — that told another version of her son’s life. “That was his first pony ride when we were in the Philippines and his dad was an Air Force pilot,” she said. School photos gave way to snapshots of Richards’s boot camp graduation and then Richards’s tours in Afghanistan.

>“That’s his first deployment,” she said. “He lost so much weight.”

>On the next page, Richards was shirtless and hobbling down a hospital corridor after his second tour, which was cut short by a buried bomb. Shrapnel from the blast tore through his legs and punctured his neck, leaving him unable to speak for weeks. He was still recovering at Walter Reed when he learned that one of his Marines, Josh Desforges, had been killed.

>“That was the only time I heard him crack,” his mother said. “He was begging to go back to Afghanistan, even though he had a hole in his throat.”

>A few pages later Richards was hugging his wife goodbye as he headed off for tour No. 3.
...

>Several Marines gathered around Richards’s mother. It was late, and everyone had been drinking. His platoon commander started to tell the story of the video — a story that he has told dozens of times over the past two years. This time he picked it up at the moment when they were all standing over the Taliban fighters’ blood-stained corpses, just before the camera began recording. “Someone said, ‘Piss on these guys,’” he was remembering. “And someone else was like, ‘Yeah, you know what, let’s piss on them.’”

>Richards’s mother dropped her eyes, and he stopped telling the story.

>“I’ve always been proud of you boys,” she said.

>The platoon commander took a gulp of his whiskey. “You had the pleasure of raising ...” he said, searching for the right words.

>Another Marine finished the thought: “the baddest Marine ever.”

>The next morning, a Marine in a dark overcoat held the ammo can with Richards’s remains in two white-gloved hands and marched slowly toward the grave site. On one side of the metal box was a stencil of crossed rifles, superimposed over a skull that’s been pierced by a sniper’s bullet. On the other was a favorite Hemingway quote that his family had put there because it seemed to sum up Richards’s life and his eventual death: “There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.”

>The Marine set the box down on a small riser in front of Richards’s mother, his wife and his grandfather, an 83-year-old combat veteran, clad on this day in his Army dress uniform. Behind them about 300 mourners had gathered.
...

> A Navy chaplain stepped to the front and delivered another version of Richards’s life. “He served with honor ... gave so much ... and bled for our freedom,” the chaplain said. “Today we lay him to rest in a fitting place.” A volley of rifle fire delivered a salute followed by a lone bugler who sounded taps. An honor guard of Marines then folded an American flag that had been suspended over the ammo box into a tight triangle. Their movements were perfectly choreographed, precise and controlled; nothing like Richards’s war.

>Most Marines in Afghanistan rarely saw the enemy, who fired at them from behind walls or blasted them with pressure-triggered land mines. Snipers, such as Richards, were the exception. They stalked the Taliban, watching them for hours through their scopes as they planned attacks, shared meals and went about their day. “Every single mission we came back with multiple kills,” said former Sgt. Edward Deptola, Richards’s platoon sergeant. “There would be two, three, four, five, sometimes 15 kills.”

>There was a relentlessness to their war. But, on some days, there was also a joy to it. After shooting a Taliban fighter, Richards and Deptola would often slap hands. Sometimes Richards would do a little celebration dance. “To the average guy, you’d look like a complete psychopath,” Deptola said. Over there, he said, “It made perfect sense.”

>The down time between missions — recuperating and waiting for another assignment — was often the hardest part. “We’d be like crack addicts,” Deptola recalled. “We were on that adrenaline drug. We’d get our high when we killed people, and the only way to get our high was to kill. We were honestly addicted to killing people.”
...

>The more Taliban they killed, the more praise they received from the top brass. The commandant of the Marine Corps set aside a morning to have breakfast with them and laud them for their work. Richards’s commanders recognized his battlefield valor by nominating him for a Bronze Star.

>On the day the video was filmed, the snipers had pushed out farther than ever before from their patrol base, searching for a cell of fighters who had killed one of their Marines and then hung one of his limbs from a tree, Deptola said.

>The snipers were about 50 yards from the Taliban when they shot them. Seconds after the enemy fighters fell, a boy, who was standing with the men, grabbed a rifle and pointed it at the Marines. Richards shot the boy one time in the chest, wounding but not killing him. Usually, the Marines left the bodies of the Taliban fighters for the locals to bury. This time, perhaps because they were already so close, their commanders ordered them take the bodies back to their base so Marine Corps intelligence could search them, Deptola said.

>The snipers were buzzing with joy, anger and adrenaline as they approached the enemy dead. Then came the moment just before the video. Then came the 38 seconds, and now several years later, Deptola was explaining why they decided to urinate on them.

>“Because killing them wasn’t enough,” he said. “That wasn’t enough justice.”
...

>After the funeral, the mourners gathered at a bar in Georgetown. Richards’s wife, Raechel, was talking with his company commander from his last Afghanistan tour. The Marine officer wasn’t with Richards on the day the video was recorded, but it still ended his career. Richards often said that his only regret from the day was that his actions had compromised the careers of his superior officers.

>“He’s where he deserves to be,” the officer told Raechel, before thinking twice about how his words must have sounded to a grieving widow. “That’s not what I meant. I wish I could have done more.”

>She touched his arm to let him know it was okay.

>Raechel was still in high school when she met her future husband, who had just graduated and was drifting half-heartedly through community college. He was restless, outgoing, romantic and impulsive. “Going to war was his purpose,” she said. “It’s what he was meant to do.”

>More than anyone else, she had seen the toll that combat had taken on her husband. After he was wounded during his second tour, Richards suffered from sleeplessness and night terrors. On a short vacation in Tampa, Fla., he had mistaken a sudden loud boom for an enemy attack and fired his pistol through a mirror in their hotel room.

>Nine months after the incident, he turned down an instructor position at Marine sniper school and volunteered for his third tour. His wife begged his platoon commander to make him stay home and heal. “He may look like he’s ready,” she recalled saying. “But as his wife, as the person who sees him when he sleeps at night, I don’t think he’s ready.”
...

>The video appeared on the Internet a few weeks after Richards returned home from tour No. 3. “Well it looks like I’m going to be famous,” he said a few hours after the video first surfaced on the TMZ gossip Web site. At that moment, Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigators were waiting to interview him.

>As the months passed, Richards worried that the 38 seconds would follow him for the rest of his life. The investigation and court-martial took nearly two years before the Marine Corps offered Richards a plea deal that reduced him a rank to corporal and allowed him to leave the military with an honorable discharge. Richards felt abandoned by the Marine brass who had heaped praise on his unit when they were killing Taliban. He had hoped to get into defense contracting after the military, but he worried that no one in the industry would ever hire him.

>“He felt backed into a corner,” his wife recalled. “He always said, ‘It’s all I’ll ever be known for.’”

>After the military, Richards fell into a depression and became addicted to opiates. Eventually, he went through drug counseling. He and his wife separated briefly and then reunited after he had finished treatment.

>Their last few months together were some of the best of their marriage, Raechel was now telling his former company commander. “He was coming to terms with the fact that he was not going to be a Marine anymore and was going to have to be something else,” she said. Nearby a Marine was passing out sniper rounds filled with locks of Richards’s hair and gunpowder.

>“He was finally coming to terms with it,” she said again.

>A few days before he died, Richards and his wife had put in an offer on a house near Orlando, where they both had attended high school. They had already begun to box up their possessions for the move from their home in Camp Lejeune, N.C.
...

>On his last morning alive, Richards ordered books for the community college courses that he planned on taking in Florida. As his wife was rushing out the door to work, he playfully asked her to dance with him. She noticed that his hands were clammy and his skin was pale.

>She came home from work that evening and found his body on the floor outside the kitchen. Later doctors would speculate that his weakened liver had been unable to metabolize the prescription painkillers that were slowly building up in his system.

>There are many reactions to seeing death: Raechel’s was disbelief. “Not like this,” she would remember screaming as she stood near her husband. “Not like this.”

This is why we have to be careful about knee-jerk reactions.

The guy spent 3 combat tours being hunted by and hunting the Taliban, of course he's going to be resentful towards them.

I am glad this based Marine got his honors and was laid to rest in a place of honor.

>>115494
>Richards, 28, died at home and alone from an accidental painkiller overdose.

good riddance to this POS

>>115518
I will definitely piss & shit on his grave lol

>>115523
The real honor belongs to the afghans trying to protect their homeland from jew mercenaries

>>115494
>The guy spent 3 combat tours being hunted by and hunting the Taliban, of course he's going to be resentful towards them.
Maybe we shouldnt have such cowardly weak minded people there for so long. I mean he killed himself, he should of never been given a honorable burial in the first place.

>>115522
What do you expect of people?

Men are just men. Even heroes aren't perfect.

>>115494
Even so, one shouldn't disrespect the dead like that. It's not healthy, in addition to being considered bad juju.

The guy is dead so he's entitled to a grave like everyone else, but the military desperately needs to bring some professionalism back to this professional army.

>>115485
Whoa. Karma sure works in weird ways.

>>115489
>“Because killing them wasn’t enough,” he said. “That wasn’t enough justice.”

Exactly what I think about libtards and other degenerates.

>white guy dies
KARMA BITCH LOLOLOL :D
>muslim's bible gets pissed on
OMG THAT'S SAD :(

>>115485
>“Total dismay” were the words then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
You mean the woman that laughed that she got a rapist off the hook? In his victims face?

>>115598
/pol/posting is getting really tiresome. I can't even make an argument from the right now without some obnoxious nazi attaching himself to it and shitting all over it with crazy.

>>115610
Out of that entire article, the only thing you got from that is Hillary's quote. This kind of thing is exactly why people hate partisan fanatics.

>>115612
Most /pol/posters seem to behave themselves and realize they aren't on /pol/ when they post here. But there are always bad apples spoiling the bunch...

>>115485
Rapist and killer cops get the same treatment. One "detective," after twenty-five years with the same partner, somehow never "detected" it.

Even firefighters who are pyromaniacs get this treatment, and none of his genius fire buddies can tell.

>>115610
She was a lawyer.
That was literally her job to find a pathway to freedom for her client from within the parameters of the law.
She could have let a guilty man go but that's not personally her fault; that's a failure of a system that's still the best we've got even for its occasional failure. And lawyers are an essential cog in that system.
It's more important in the long-run to set a precedent to follow the law than it is for society to make exceptions at will when it's certain someone should be found guilty but isn't.

>>115556
I generally agree, but I also accept that it's easy for us to try and dictate what peoples' actions "should" be in a warzone. At the same time, it's important not to give the impression that anything should be acceptable as long as people are tense enough, and the enemy can use footage like this to help frame us as the aggressors to others.

>>115612
>I can't even make an argument from the right now without some obnoxious nazi attaching himself to it and shitting all over it with crazy.
The "alt-right" are the new SJWs, have fun with that.

>>115675
I don't believe in party platforms, so I'm a lefty on some things, and conservative on others. So I get to deal with both flavors of stupid.

>>115677
Nobody agrees with their party 100% dipshit

>>115677
>>115612
and we feel like cuckservatives spoil for the rest of us

to be a true conservative is to be passionate. true conservatives do not think, they act and they fight. you may call us extreme, but this is a war, and people willing to fight totally are those who are the winners.

>>115680
Ugh what's really tiresome is lefty false flagging

And THIS is why you constantly see /pol/ posts. These faggots are constantly spewing their fucking propaganda and trting to manipulate every discussion toward commie bullshit

>>115681
leftist false flag because they have nothing. their points are all shitty, so all they can do is try to undermine us and create some strawman to point to. they know that we speak truth, and in the face of truth, they are nothing.

also, fuck communist.

>>115682
>right wingers dindu nuffin! dey good bois!
Do you ever get tired of blaming leftists for shit your side does?

>>115687
your reckoning is soon you communist apologist

>>115690
Blame something//anything on the right wing of the populace. Go ahead. I dare you. Just one thing.

>>115692
You're so retarded, neutrality is not something to strive for. What if one party is worse than the other? Fyi it is possible to figure out the best and worst party.

You leftists are do delluded i honestly dont know where to begin.

>>115718
who wants free helicopter rides for the left?

>>115668
>abuse a legal loophole to destroy perfectly valid and already tested evidence
>just doing her job :^)

>>115721
They need Jesus, and so do you.

>>115668
The issue with Clinton isn't that she did her job, its that she celebrated afterward despite knowing the guy was utterly guilty. Woman has no soul.

>>115718

Better and worse in what way?

First we need to determine what exactly better or worse means, and what categories of thought we're applying these meanings to.

If you're on the right side of the political spectrum, then you probably will think that right-minded ideas are better.

If you're on the left side of the political spectrum, you will probably think that left-minded ideas are better.

>you leftists are so deluded

And I hear the left say the exact same thing of the right.

How can anything be taken seriously from either side when there's nothing but people screaming "I'M RIGHT, YOU'RE WRONG, THE LEFT/RIGHT IS THE BAD, AND WE ARE THE GOOD"

Provide me examples to support your side. Provide me examples to discredit the opposition.

And if you tell me to do my own research, then why even bother saying anything at all? If you're going to make a claim but don't have the integrity to defend it, then it's clearly not a very strong claim.

You can't say "The truth is obvious", regardless of whether you're on the right or the left. All that does is beg the question. It's circular reasoning, which is a fallacy.

I want hard, objective data. I want truth. Not some subjective "truth", either, I mean something that can be proven to have happened, I want to be swayed. Not insulted. Not belittled and treated like I'm too stupid to learn.

Should have been dishonourably discharged.

I'd piss on Hillary if it makes her feel better.

>>115754

Watch the video clip and read the full interview article if you're that obsessed with this story and you'll see how moronic your mischaracterization is. Her "laughter" was clearly a nervous/anxious laugh, and the documentation from the time was all about how much of a struggle the whole situation was for her. It was the complete opposite of a celebration.

You care about the story, right? It's all there. Read it.

>>115485
>pissing on the dead bodies of your enemies
>crazy fanatics who more than probably raped and killed innocents, whether their own or foreign, as is their tradition in "We-hate-gay-people-but-we're-gay-ourselves-and-totally-rape-other-males-regardless-of-age"-stan.
Those american soldiers are HEROES and have contributed to a safer world and safer community in that country.

How in the fuck did this thread become about Hillary Clinton?

>>115556
I had a discussion about that with a few former vets a while back. They were pretty pissed because the military feels like a giant daycare for adults that can't make it in a normal life now, a place you go when you have no other options. For a better stock of people, there's nearly no incentive to join; the pay is shit, there's a ton of danger, and you're either loved or hated by people everywhere you go because of the uniform. When you fight wars no one wants to sign up for, you're not getting patriots, and when you dump your dregs of society into the army, you wind up with a force lacking in any sort of decorum or morals.

>>115556
>>115523
>>115535

Conventional decorum is for conventional wars.

COIN is dirty. Dirty as fuck. Read a book.

>>115794
>Better and worse in what way?
Ugh

I couldn't have made that post more simple. But you just don't get it.

Your philosophy where all opinions are valid is bullshit. Its insane. You can't understand anything because you're obsessed with denying objectivity.

>>115485
You mean people were actually mad some soldier pissed on a Taliban body?

Who the fuck cares? THEY'RE TALIBAN!

Beyond that, pissing on a corpse is babby-tier war shit, does no one fucking understand what happens in a combat zone anymore?

We're in a world of goddamn children, squalling and screaming.

>american soldier celebrated for pissing
Trump truly is the president of murrikans.

>>115963
>We're in a world of goddamn children, squalling and screaming...
...and pissing

Juvenile army for a juvenile country.

F

>>115680
> true conservatives do not think

That's one of the stupidest fucking things I've ever heard, as someone who holds conservative views. You are a REACTIONARY, not a conservative. Big difference there.

I don't care if you are a reactionary, but don't go around passing yourself off as conservative when there are a wealth of good conservative scholars, teachers, and philosophers throughout history. Not saying that fighting and acting are not important, but doing those without thinking/being deliberate is stupid as fuck.

>>115938

>I couldn't have made the post more simple

You claimed there is a way to verify that one party is better than the other. I asked you to clarify on that statement and provide examples. You provided neither.

You're implying that I should just take your word for it, and accept your opinion without question, and to do otherwise means I'm too stupid or opposed to objectivity to understand. Really it's the opposite, I'm being objective in my reasoning. You're the one that is refusing to provide me with any evidence or facts to support your opinion. The burden of proof is on you to convince me that your opinion is more or less aligned with the truth.

>You can't understand anything because you're obsessed with denying objectivity

No, I simply refuse to accept your opinion based solely on the fact that you tell me to. Give me a reason to accept it, or I'm not going to be swayed. Calling me stupid and acting condescending will just push me towards the opposite side of the fence.

>>115680
>true conservatives do not think

I hope you're just larping.

>>116134
>>116047

>Fascism combats ... not intelligence, but intellectualism... which is... a sickness of the intellect... not a consequence of its abuse, because the intellect cannot be used too much... it derives from the false belief that one can segregate oneself from life.

>-Giovanni Gentile

>To counter the "passive intellectual" who used his or her intellect abstractly, and therefore was "decadent", he proposed the "concrete thinking" of the active intellectual who applied intellect as praxis—a "man of action", like Fascist Benito Mussolini or Adolf Hitler, versus the decadent Communist or liberal intellectuals. The passive intellectual stagnates intellect by objectifying ideas, thus establishing them as objects. Hence the Fascist rejection of materialist logic, because it relies upon a priori principles improperly counter-changed with a posteriori ones that are irrelevant to the matter-in-hand in deciding whether or not to act.

I don't think he's really a "true conservative" (at least in the American tradition), but a fascist, and they were definitely into "men of action" or "passion".

>>115522
>>115523
>>115535
>>115577
When did /news/ turn into edgy summer /v/?

>>116167
They come in packs like wolves.

>>115556
this

>>115485
I would have strung up their corpses in the same tree they hung the arm

>>115967
Oh boy, you think any other army in the world acts any better? Go learn some history.

>>115556
It's not something that SHOULD happen, but it's understandable to lose your mind a bit in that situation, and pissing on a corpse is way better than shooting some civilian or something. Baby-tier stuff, as I said.

>>116167
>implying that /news/ isn't the newest incarnation of /n/ and /new/

>>115812
>"she was nervus guys, serious!"
Then that means she has shit nerves. Old witch should have had a different job.

>>116226
You can keep saying this but it doesn't make it true. Go back to the chon if you want old /new/. There are no stormfags or lolbertatians here.

>>116298
>There are no stormfags or lolbertatians here.
Was that sarcasm, or are you just that blinded by your leftism.

/news/ needs post ids

>>116398
Flags too.

>>116398
>>116400
for what? It doesn't solve anything when people have phones and proxies.

this is some sad shit.


you have to put yourself in his shoes to truly understand. from the day of his birth, to his up-bringing and to his decision to join the military.

once you understand, you have your answer to all your questions.


now as for opinions.......well KEEP EM' COMING PEOPLE, LUL!

>>116398
REDDIT
GET THE FUCK OUT

>>116400
YOU DONT LIKE ANONYMOUS?

GO TO ANY OTHER WEBSITE

STOP RUINING THE INTERNET

>>115556
You're right, but do you think you wouldn't lose your professionalism after three tours and the experiences that cone with that? Only a minority few wouldn't. Body pissing is bound to happen.

>>116529
That's why these little breeches need to be punished severely, and result in shaming.

>>116516
I like Anonymous but would like flags ids are optional.

>>116538
Flags ruin anonymity. Look at /pol/ half the posts are shitting on each others flag.

>>116544
I guess it is amusing watching the flags yell at each other though.

>>116551
Newfag

Anonymity is everything

>>116552
I have been here since 2005 anonymity is great for trolling but inefficient for discussion sometimes.

>>116553
Fuck off pariah

>>116553
>anonymity is inefficient for discussions
>flags are part of the reason that all discussions turn to shit
kek

>pissing on a guy that tried to kill you

Beats murdering their family, raping their women, and plundering the country.

Guy earned his spot.

>>116601

ohh my gosh it like USA paying social care for neonazis!!

>>116601
Seriously.

If you're gonna do war, just do it right. Rape any thing that moves, plunder what you can and salt the earth. The next generation can't hate you because they don't exist.

>>116958
>How to solve Israel/Palestine conflict: the post

Seriously. If the full blown annex and conquering had been done, we wouldn't be hearing about their bitching today.

>>115522
You stupid fucking fuck...you have no idea what that man went through. Damn sure you will never sacrifice for your country. Fuck you bro. I hope fate pisses and shits all over you.

>accidental painkiller overdose
leave it to a marine to die to something retarded like that, at least he killed a couple rag-heads before he offed himself.

Shit happens during war. The Japanese raped babies when they invaded China. I don't see anything wrong with not respecting dead bodies that tried to kill you. I fucking hate these media cucks that always make a big deal out of nothing.

Do you guys even know the kind of fucked up shit ragheads do there?

You should ask a british or american soldier and see if they don't have any mental scars from what they've seen, many things which they were forbidden to stop.

>>115485
>Richards, 28, died at home and alone from an accidental painkiller overdose.
once a beta, always a beta

>>117070
It's a violation of the Geneva convention and against US military policy. He is at very least a bad soldier.

>>116973
*murder foreign peoples who didn't do anything to you for the benefit of capitalist bankers and corporations robbing their nations of their land, natural resources, labor and mineral wealth

FTFY

>>117203
>implying actual soldiers give a fuck about policy or the geneva convention

>dead arabs
I fail to see the problem

>>117581
Their COs' do and the soldiers care about not making their CO mad.

>>115522
Richards was a man who killed Taliban who became great at ridding the world of shitbags and as a result of an adrenaline-fueled impulse lost the job and honor that went with it.
Worthless neckbeards shitpost and love to heap criticism on something only a real warrior did.

>>116529
I've known several vets who did more than 3 tours, and corpse desecration never came up. If you're not a horrible human being or degenerate, the idea of pissing on a dead guy likely never crosses your mind.

>>119933
>I've known several vets who did more than 3 tours, and corpse desecration never came up
Well..humanity can have many far reaching avenues. Do you honestly believe if any one of those vets you had committed any sort of crime in war they would openly discuss it? Its all really very easy for so many who have never served in the military under combat conditions to do the keyboard messiah bit.

>>115485

sorry about your feelings kiddo, but there are no rules in war.

>>119933
i dunno m8, but priorities ?
i mean it's OK to kill the shit out of people but not to piss on their corpses ?

>>119933
you might be right in different situations, but you seem to forget that the dead guy was just trying to kill them.

>>116973
it was so terrible, so awful, he accidently signed up two more times in grief