I can't believe the stuff that gets posted on YouTube.

For the past several days, a large number of people have been outraged by a video purporting to show an American soldier throwing a live, screaming puppy off a cliff:

WARNING: It is very disturbing.

How the video came into being I don't know, but it has caused extreme and emotional reactions, including a club dedicated to attacking the Marine said to be depicted.

And numerous outraged videos like this one, which include commentary identifying the soldier:

Im being serious for once...

Some sick Soldier throws a poor puppy off the cliff and kills it. I needed to get it off my chest, I won't have this video up for long, I just think the world should know what our soldiers are doing in thier spare time...

The man who threw the dog was...

It hasn't even been established that this happened, much less that it's what our soldiers do in their spare time. The unverified video is encouraging extreme anger, and statements like this and worse:

This piece of garbage needs to be burned alive and have sulfuric acid poured on him to put out the flames.

I hope his fellow Marines beat the ever living shit out of this DISGRACE to the Corps and the ASSHOLE who did nothing to stop him. They both should be shot in the back of the head and their corpses defecated on.

They have brought dishonor to the finest people in the world - those who fight against cruel scum like this. They are not Marines; I don't even consider them human.

I pray each night for the protection of our men and women in Iraq, but as far as these two asshats go, I hope they're BEHEADED on camera by insurgents. THERE - I SAID IT!

The Marines are investigating the video, said Linda Yokoyama, an office assistant at the Kaneohe Bay Marine Base in Hawaii.

"It will take a bit of time. Considering we've only known about it for 24 hours, we're moving as fast as we can," she said. "It's been a nightmare. The video is just horrible. Horrible."

Once again, anyone can make a video. And while cruelty to animals is a crime, pretending to throw a puppy off a cliff is not.

It does look real, but I'm not alone in speculating that it could have been faked.

The video has also raised questions among those who have watched it. At The Herald's request, veterinarians at Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine agreed to review the video.

They cannot determine whether the puppy was real. One did note that it appeared to leave the frame of the video for a second and the people in the video could have switched it with a fake dog.

"If this is something legitimate, it's one of the most egregious acts of animal cruelty I have ever seen, if not the most," said Dr. Matt Mickas, chief of Community Practice Services at WSU's veterinary college.

He said it did not appear fake to him, because of the way the animal went slack by being held from the neck.

"To me, the sound on the YouTube clip sounded like a puppy in distress -- the same sound we hear when the puppies come into the hospital," Mickas said.

Regardless of whether the video is fake (hope so) or not, this Marine gave the enemy a moral victory here at home. His chops need bustin'

If the guy committed this despicable act of cruelty, he really ought to be nailed, and there are legal ways to do that. But in addition to the anti-military publicity this has generated, to me there's something very unsettling about seeing how quickly an online lynch mob can just appear out of nowhere. They are threatening this man's family, condemning the military, demanding the man be tortured and killed -- all before his guilt or the authenticity of the video have even been established. Even professionals who ought to know better are offering anti-war explanations about why soldiers "do" things like that.

So, I am outraged, but I am also skeptical. Just because the video is outrageous does not make it authentic. It strikes me as either stupid or insane that anyone would have himself filmed committing a crime and then put it on YouTube. But if it was faked, it's a good way to get a lot of attention without committing a crime.

(There are a lot of fake videos on YouTube; not long ago I linked this one purporting to depict a man setting himself on fire.)

It will be interesting to learn what the investigation turns up.

I hope they act fast, as this is generating a lot of media attention and way too much public hysteria.

A stubborn problem is that there is no way to criminalize fake depictions of things.

(Otherwise most of Hollywood would be in prison, and so would many reporters.)

UPDATE (03/06/08): One of my biggest concerns about the reactions to this video is the way it is generating and fueling anti-military bigotry. I worry that the military is being unfairly held to a higher standard than other members of society, and that whenever misbehavior or criminal activity by a soldier occurs, it activates all the classic signs of bigotry which would never be tolerated had the same individual not been a member of the military -- to say nothing of being a member of some other identifiable group.

This unfairly places the military (and, unfortunately, its defenders) in the position of having to say what amounts to "we're not all sadistic puppy killers" -- something they should not even have to say.

Via Glenn Reynolds, Winds of Change's Marc Danziger highlighted the reflexive way this happened in The Atlantic's coverage of a rape case in Okinawa -- which condescendingly noted that "most [soldiers] are not sociopaths" and then (with a classic "yes but") threw in the gratuitous argument that maybe our soldiers shouldn't be there:

Yes, the overwhelming majority of U.S. military personnel aren't sociopaths. Moreover, downtown Baghdad or Falluja likely won't be sprouting outlets like Okinawa's Club Fujiyama. But the impact of these kinds of episodes on the U.S. image, not to mention on our strategic relationships, is one more reason to weigh carefully the hypothetical benefits of a long-term U.S. military presence against their very real costs. And for the Okinawans, at least, the price of Pax Americana has been very high indeed.

It would be considered gratuitously insulting, and it is.

Whatever the assholes in the video did (and there's more speculation in the comments below), if it turns out they did violat the law, they'll likely be punished more severely than a typical civilian would in a typical criminal court. To see their conduct in any way as an indictment of the military constitutes anti-military bigotry.

(When such bigotry are carried to extremes, there can be predictable consequences, as we're seeing in New York today.)

MORE: Ace and his commenters are generally leaning toward the theory that the video is fake, and that the puppy was either dead or stuffed.