Army to Investigate Sheep-beating Video
Update: Thanks to an anonymous supporter, PETA is now offering $5,000 for information leading to the identification of the men responsible for this beating. The U.S. Army has now determined that the uniforms worn in the video belong to the U.S. Air Force, and the Air Force has launched its own investigation.
The following was originally posted on January 18, 2012:
Update: After much public outcry, Army investigators are looking into the video that depict soldiers beating a sheep with a baseball bat. “We are aware of a Live Leak video depicting the killing of a sheep,” an Army spokesman said. “The actions of those involved are not condoned or supported in any way. We are currently assessing the situation to determine more information.”
The following was originally posted January 13, 2012:
Last year, a scandalous video emerged of a U.S. marine throwing a puppy off a cliff. Now there is this video of a soldier repeatedly beating a sheep with a baseball bat to the whoops and laughter of other soldiers who are looking on. I would say “beating to death” because that is probably what happened, but we do not know the upshot. We only know, from watching the video and seeing the mood of the soldiers — and what appears to be a local lad who arrived with the animal — that the sheep could only have come to a very nasty end. He or she tries to rise several times but the soldier continues to thwack away amid the laughter.
PETA did what it always does when someone blows the whistle on these incidents of gratuitous cruelty: We wrote to Secretary of the Army John McHugh and then, when no answer was forthcoming, to other high-ranking officers, including Chief of Public Affairs General Stephen Lanza and Commanding General of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command David E. Quantock. No one — not PETA and not the thousands of people who have seen this video and are rightly disturbed by it — has received any acknowledgment, not even a single comforting word, that an investigation has been started.
Click here to read the full article at Huffington Post
Written by Ingrid E. Newkirk
