The USS Quad Damage

Dateline is super the shit!

George Negus is a little bit full of himself, and a pretty crappy interviewer, but boy has he got a great show. Whenever I watch Dateline I'm always impressed, and think "I've really got to start watching this show regularly". This is something I tend to forget easily, which always shits me the next time I see Dateline or an ad for it on SBS. In any case I made a point, eventually, to start taping it... err... HDDing it...

Lucky me, the first episode I taped was the one which showed the photos that other news sources reported on. I mean, imagine a story so good that news programs report it as a news item, and there are newspaper articles about it. These photos aren't supposed to be shown in the U.S., but I think they're out now. Before you click that link, I'd like to say that these soldiers are really fucked up (even by my standards), and these photos are pretty disturbing. There's more photos on the show itself, as well as video, among which is a guy with his head half blown off, and someone else who's been shot in the arse (sounds funnier than it is). There was also someone who covered himself in shit (probably to keep the guards away from him). One of the videos is of the shit guy repeatedly beating his head on the wall.

Worse, the story implies that the directives (which low level officers have been charged for) were given by much higher ranking officials. I reckon even WW2 people would've been treated better than that. Anyway, kudos to Dateline for showing this stuff. The rest of the stories were really good too (one about political movies and another about Hamas' victory in Palestine).

PS: In case George Negus is reading this: "super the shit" is a good thing.