Something that didn't make the news

An interesting article about media, iraq and the marines that are risking their lives there

That was an interesting article.

Good thing America has <i>wonderful</i> sites like these which put on display the brave actions of a man, except with <i>so much emphasis on the killing</i>, as if it was a fucking novel, a story in which the bad guys are bad, and probably deserved to die. Disgusting.

Onethinks he is the epitome of Marine badassness.

Cless is absolutely right, this is fucking repulsive. I’m not angry at the guy being described. I’m angry at any piece of shit who can write with such simpering admiration about wasting Iraqis in their own country.

Granted, but it as the comments have mentioned: people give an article thier own slant. An unbiased article is impossible. And if he was against the war, we probably owuldn’t be hearing abotu this. Of course, he might still report it, but it would be less likely.

I still say he’s pretty badass.

Well, good for the man who managed that, his life was at risk either way, regardless of whether he agreed to the war or not. But the article is definately rather… stupid. Way to go glorifying the death of 20 Iraqi soldiers who are defending their’ homeland.

“Hi. I beat up people who beat up other people. I’m a hero! And naturally, I endorse peace and come from a peace-loving nation.”

No, he’s not “pretty badass”. He’s a killer, and although he saved his men from certain death, the article put the emphasis on the killing. That’s not a pro-war slant, or an anti-war slant, that’s just a <i>disgusting</i> slant. It’s not even that the article wasn’t well-written (well, only if you like short, fragmented sentences that place emphasis on every other phase, like how most propaganda chain-letters are written), it’s <i>moronic</i> lines like this:

And he ran down the trench.

With its mortars and riflemen, machineguns and grenadiers.

And he killed them all.

What the hell kind of a sentence is “And he killed them all”? And by itself, in a single paragraph, almost screaming “Look at me!” Are we supposed to be proud that he killed 20 surprised and confused men? Yeah, <b>he killed them all</b>. Hoo-fucking-ray. God bless America, where men can kill twenty of those damn foreigners without breaking a sweat!

What Chontosh did was very brave, but this article makes me want to throw up.

Dude, in this case the article <i>is</i> the slant. The author’s purpose here is supposedly to bring up the “good news” that “the media” supposedly doesn’t report. The <i>only</i> news in this incident (assuming that it actually happened) that can be considered “good” is that the Marine didn’t die, though if the only “good news” from Iraq we can find is that not every Marine there has died yet, that’s really not much. But apparently, whoever wrote this thinks that lots of dead Iraqis is automatically “good news” that can be viably counterposed against “bad news.” That’s fucking obscene.

Lol. He didn’t kill 20 men and injure as many more. Do you believe everything you read? He probably did something to deserve the medal, but he certainly didn’t dive into a trench and not get shot dead within seconds, meanwhile killing 200 yards of their line.

This is everything everyone else has said it is, plus absurdity. Let’s use the fish in a barrel analogy again. This article is the equivalent of a fish leaping out of a barrel and decapitating the 20 men trying to shoot it and landing safely back into the water.

Nah man, it’s entirely possible. You just DON’T expect a guy to suddenly jump down from one of your own machine gun nests with guns a-blazing. The trenches were probably angled every so often so as not to feel the full effects of an explosive thrown into the trench. This also cuts off line of sight though, so it’s fully possible that he could have emptied a trench by himself. Let’s not forget that this is a highly-trained fish armed with a M16.

Give the guy a fucking break. I’ve similar stories, in fact 3 Marines recently got Navy Crosses for doing simlar things. The story is true and you don’t hear about it. If you’ve read anythign about Medal of Honor recipients, they’ve done similar things, but you don’t doubt it since it is a favorable war. If that story took place in WWII, and it said that the guy took out 20 Japanese soldiers and such, you guys would be like “wow, that guy is pretty tough, good for him.” However, no one likes the Iraqi war so you doubt any good. Yes I said good. It is good because the guy risked his life to save his friends. You are forgetting that we are only fighting people fighting us. You’re disbelief proves one of the articles points about any good being thought of as propaganda. I’ve heard some good stories of what guys in my unit have done too. Gettign that kind of award is very difficult and you have to do a lot to earn it. A Navy Cross is very high. It emans that what the person did went up for Medal of Honor, but wasn’t quite enough. You are forgetting that in war it is kill or be killed. If he didn’t kill them, they would have killed him and other Marines. It’s liek you are saying ti is ebtter for our troops to die who don’t have say in whether they go or not die. That stuff does happen, just yesterday I heard of a story where a Marine charged a bunker and killed Iraqis in there and survived. People love watching war movies and speak highly of troops in them for sticking together and saving each other, but when it happens in real life it is discredited. You guys fucking sicken me. Hoorah for the 1st Lt.

EDIT: If it wasn’t for guys like this, America wouldn’t be what it is today. America wouldn’t have the most powerful military in the world and we may not even be America because we would ahve lost wars without guys like him.

Dude, everyone who criticized the article <i>explicitly said</i> that they weren’t criticizing the Marine in the story. And no, I wouldn’t gloat about the deaths of 20 Japanese soldiers either. Don’t put words in people’s mouths.

No, but you are cricising the validity of it and if he really did do what the article says. You are basically mocking his sacrafice and heroism.

No. I, for one, didn’t say that the story couldn’t have happened or didn’t happen. But even besides that, it’s not a crime to be unsure about a story when it’s posted on someone’s personal website, without a link to a credible source. And for the last fucking time, <i>no one</i> was mocking the Marine. I <i>explicitly said</i> that my anger upon reading the “article” wasn’t directed at him. Cless said, “What Chontosh did was very brave.” IonMage said, “Well, good for the man who managed that, his life was at risk either way.” How the hell is that “mocking” him?

No, I’m mocking the absurdity of it. Wanna hear a real hero story? There once was a famous Canadian officer whose name I forget, who went missing for a few days. When they finally found his body, he was surrounded by four enemy corpses killed in hand to hand combat by bayonet wounds. That’s a real, believeable hero story.

The article that was posted was just a fucking hollywood movie script.

Cless does have a point about the zig-zag shape of the trenches, it was a common tactic in WWI. But it’s simply too farfetched to believe a single man took 200 yards of it. He’d have been killed a thousand times.

I’m not saying he isn’t a hero or that he didn’t do heroic things that day, but he sure as hell didn’t do everything that article claimed he did.

And I just find it completely hillarious that you’d call WWII a “favourable war,” considering what America did the the japanese was the equivalent of over a hundred 9/11’s. And let’s not forget the six million jews who were humiliated and killed. Boy am I ever glad they’re gone.

Well, it is documented on the Marine Corps’ site if one looks it up:
http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/lookupstoryref/200456162723

When a Marine following him found an enemy rocket propelled grenade launcher, Chontosh used it to destroy yet another group of enemy soldiers
This clears things up. He wasn’t alone.

I think Infonick’s post was really directed at Hades, but it got confused somewhere along the way.

If anything, this is <i>less</i> believable. Multiple enemies on a single man, and he killed four, while facing presumable more than four simutaneously. About the trench, I think you’ll find that a lot of confusion will occur when a man comes from one end of the trench, shielded by your comrades, and fires an automatic assault rifle. I don’t know why you don’t believe this article; it’s not like he was surrounded in an open field by twenty men who were aware of him. In fact, it’s the very opposite. Those twenty Iraqis were in their own trenches and probably a little hesitant to fire immediately and blindly into a direction where their own people were.