Respect Authority

Anyone out there wishing they could watch all their favorite Abu Ghraib torture videos without the clutter of dogs trying to ride skateboards and deranged teenagers humping furniture getting in the way is in luck. The U.S. Military and Delve Networks have recently teamed up to produce TroopTube, a video-sharing web site for troops, their families and supporters. Registered members can add their own videos from anywhere with an Internet connection, so that pretty much rules out any of the bombed out craters most of our troops are stationed at anyway, but Pentagon employees screen all new additions for taste, copyright violations and national security issues.

So no, I’m afraid Leave Britney Alone won’t be available — that fucking pantywaist endangered countless American lives with his thoughtless rants. Britney’s most well-known secrets must never be revealed to our sworn enemies! Also, if you haven’t heard, all gays are terrorists.

Reportedly, The Landlord is also under review for its negative portrayal of authority figures.

The new site can’t come soon enough for some military personnel, who have been itching for funny videos of cats for well over a year. In May 2007, the Defense Department banned employees and soldiers from accessing sites like YouTube and MySpace due to security and bandwidth issues. Indeed, it is a little known fact that friend requests are one of the most dangerous threats to the American public today.

Thankfully, now there will finally be a place on the Internet where “waterboarding” will be searched for more often than “Halle Berry sex scenes,” and not the other way around. Can’t find those juicy clips of American G.I.s clubbing Iraqi children to death that you and your friends were really into last summer? Welcome to TroopTube, fellow patriots.

Delve’s CEO, Alex Castro describes TroopTube as a “retention tool,” hopefully appeasing a new generation of soldiers who bring laptops with them to war so they can masturbate to actual pornography instead of the piles of scorpions they routinely find in their boots. Really? A retention tool? Ah yes, because shitty home videos are what’s going to keep soldiers in the army amidst a trifecta of boredom, bombs, and bloodshed. Sure, you might not have a hand to type the URL in anymore, but hey, that’s what guns are for!

I suppose this is a “when life gives you lemonades, watch online video” sort of situation — however, no volume of lemonade could possibly quench your eternal thirst in the blistering fires of Hell, and similarly, no number of reassuring General Petraeus web cam pep talks are going to make languishing in the desert for the sake of some fat politician’s greed any more bearable. Come on, you’re not even going to be able to watch old episodes of Family Guy on it, so really, what’s the point?

[The 33 TV]