Apocalypse des animaux

One thing for a human to consent to fight a war. But forcing animals to do our dirty work is cowardly, immoral, and indefensible:

This sprawling base's K-9 teams, which consist of one dog and one Marine, are a mainstay in Iraq's once restive Sunni Muslim Anbar province.

More than four dozen teams are working in the province with dogs that are trained to attack and subdue detainees and track insurgents. Nowadays, the dogs are used primarily to detect explosives, either on or off a leash and as much as 500 feet from their handlers.

"Nobody had ever utilized dogs in a real combat offensive since Vietnam ," said Staff Sgt. Joseph Evans , of the Provost Marshals Office at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, based at Twenty Nine Palms, Calif. "A lot of the knowledge and a lot of the know-how has slipped away through time, so we really had to reinvent the application of our jobs on the fly."

Since the beginning of the war, two handlers from the kennel have been killed in action and four dogs and seven handlers have been wounded, said Evans, 28, of Heavener, Okla. , who trains dogs and handlers at the al Asad kennel.

They use them to track explosives not only because they can smell, but also because they are considered expendable. The dogs never had a choice:

In addition to the Belgian Malinois, there are German Shepherds and Labrador Retrievers at the al Asad kennel.

The Department of Defense buys them from breeders in Germany , Holland , the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Europe when they're around 18 months old. They cost $3,000 to $7,000 each.

New recruits are immediately flown to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex. , where handlers and dogs train together for three months before they're deployed abroad.

"That is their sponge period," Evans said. "When they're really inside their learning phase."

German Shepherds and Belgian Malinois are used primarily as attack dogs. Labrador Retrievers have several inches of olfactory membranes in their noses, and their highly developed sense of smell helps them detect explosives. A human's olfactory membrane, in comparison, is the size of a postage stamp.

"The one thing that keeps us in business is that these dogs don't know that we can't do what they do," Evans said. "If they ever figure out the truth of the game, they'll never work for us again."


[...]

The dogs have the same rights as Marines do, although wounded humans always take priority over wounded dogs, Evans said.

I'll bet they do...if they're Americans, that is...