NORTH COUNTY TIMES – MILITARY: Ethics ‘stand-down’ coming to Camp Pendleton

Selected Article Excerpts:

• Hit with a string of ugly incidents, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos on Thursday ordered a timeout for the service’s 200,000 troops so they can stage a one-day war on unethical behavior.

  Lapses in recent months include units sporting Nazi-style flags, a hazing that led to a Marine’s suicide in Afghanistan, troops urinating on dead Taliban fighters and a continuing problem with sexual assaults in the ranks.

• Two groups of Marines from Pendleton also were charged with war crimes arising from civilian killings in Iraq, including the slaying of 24 men, women and children in Haditha in 2005. Those incidents led to a tightening of the rules of engagement on the battlefield.

  And last week a Marine Corps sergeant in his ninth year of service, Gary Stein of Murrieta, was drummed out of the Marine Corps under other-than-honorable conditions for labeling President Barack Obama “the enemy” and similarly inflammatory remarks he posted on Facebook.

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