Hi 120 and CPT Holzbach,

Quote Originally Posted by CPT Holzbach View Post
There are undoubtedly many who would say that this is barbaric and not good "strategic corporal-ing". I would wager many of those people oppose the war in general, and live in the USA or Europe. But Im certain (unless there is already some religious principle that clears this up - Im no Imam) things like this will give the zealous insurgents pause.
I wouldn't say it was "barbaric", but I would say it's crude - it is about the same level of sophistication as burning Mickey Mouse in effigy, and about as effective as that would be on American troops. Part of the problem is that while pork is "unclean", the concept of ritual pollution requires intent on the part of the individual. Furthermore, many of the proscriptions in Islam are relaxed in certain specified situations, travel, jihad, etc. (check out al-Ghazali's Revivification of the Religious Sciences with an imam, notably the book on travel.)

Quote Originally Posted by CPT Holzbach View Post
The bad guys could also spin it to their benefit, I suppose. Go around telling people - relatives of the dead - that their loved ones are in hell because of the Americans and have been robbed of their martyrdumb. Im sure that would put the fire in them.
Their relatives wouldn't be "in hell"; their bodies would have been desecrated, but that wouldn't affect their souls. Probably the closest analogy for a Christian would be to find that one or two of the people in your patrol had been killed and had inverted crosses carved into their foreheads. Their reactions would probably be the same as yours would be - a bit of fear and a lot of hatred and anger.

Marc