The Military: Walking Among the Dead (Marine of Year Snapped)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9024782/site/newsweek/

On the roof of an old airplane hangar outside Fallujah, spelled out in sandbags arranged as crude letters, is the Marine Corps credo, NO ONE LEFT BEHIND. In all wars, U.S. Marines take extraordinary risks to get their dead and wounded off the battlefield. Inside the hangar, the mortuary unit tries to honor that spirit as they carefully reassemble the bodies of dead Marines ripped apart by roadside bombs or shot up in fire fights.

It is grim work. Before they do their best to clean up the dead, they must find them, or what's left of them. Traveling into combat zones, the Marines of the mortuary unit must crawl along, sifting through the dirt and blood-soaked debris of blast areas to find every piece of their fallen comrades. It takes a strong man or woman to do this work night and day. By many accounts, among the steadiest, most conscientious and duty-bound was Sgt. Daniel Cotnoir.

The senior enlisted man in the unit through most of 2004, Cotnoir, 33, visited more than 20 battle scenes, and his unit brought back the remains of 184 dead Marines, as well as numerous Iraqi civilians, policemen and some independent contractors killed in action. Last month he was named Marine of the Year by the Marine Corps Times.

But last week Cotnoir stood in a Massachusetts courtroom accused of attempted murder. He was charged with firing a shotgun out his apartment window at some unruly late-night partyers, wounding two of them. After pleading not guilty to armed assault with intent to murder, he is undergoing a psychiatric evaluation.

[Imagevision]

1. Thats fair, how many marines came home and killed loved ones?

what are they sipposed to do after killing 24/7 for who knows how long and slipped back into society with a smile and a pat on the freegin back?!! One of my closest friends came back from nam and would look at me as though I was the viet cong!

[riverwalker]

2. the real criminal is on a hog farm in Crawford

"(Cotnoir) The father of two girls, he was hit hard by finding the sonogram of an unborn child on the torso of a Marine who had been torn into many pieces."

He picked up the hamburger pieces of remains of over 200 people.