Zapatistas

What's up with this?

The U.S. military is investigating whether Marines were justified late last month when they detained a convoy of security contractors working for a Charlotte-based company in Iraq, officials said Wednesday.

The military jailed 16 employees of Zapata Engineering and three interpreters for three days after the contractors were accused of firing shots at U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

The contractors deny the allegations, and several say they were abused and humiliated while in custody at a site in Fallujah, company officials say.

…

Several Zapata workers say they were physically abused and humiliated while being detained.

They were stripped to their underwear, blindfolded and roughhoused by Marines, said Mark Schopper, a Nevada attorney who said he represents two of the Zapata employees detained in Iraq.

"Marines put their knees on the backs of their necks and ripped off religious medallions," Schopper said.

"They asked for attorneys, they asked for Amnesty International, they asked for the American Red Cross. All three requests were denied."

Do the Marines hate America? Were these American defense contractors trained to disassemble? I sure hope someone gets to the bottom of this.