US soldiers desecrating Afghani dead.

Reuters broke this last night:

Australian television on Wednesday broadcast footage of what it said was U.S. soldiers burning the corpses of two dead Taliban fighters with their bodies laid out facing Mecca and using the images in a propaganda campaign in southern Afghanistan.

The television report said U.S. soldiers burned the bodies for hygienic reasons but then a U.S. psychological operations unit broadcast a propaganda message on loudspeakers to Taliban fighters, taunting them to retrieve their dead and fight.

A U.S. military statement released in Afghanistan said Army criminal investigators had launched a probe "into alleged misconduct by U.S. service members, including the burning of dead enemy combatant bodies under inappropriate circumstances." ......

The footage showed flames licking two charred corpses, their legs and arms outstretched, and a group of five U.S. soldiers standing watching from a rocky ledge.

Footage showed two U.S. soldiers reading from a notebook two messages that they said had earlier been broadcast.

"Attention Taliban you are cowardly dogs," read the first soldier, identified as psyops specialist Sgt. Jim Baker.

"You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be."

The other unidentified soldier read a second message, part of which said: "You attack and run away like women. You call yourself Talibs but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion, and you bring shame upon your family. Come and fight like men instead of the cowardly dogs you are."

And from the AP version this AM:

Dupont said the soldiers responsible for the loudspeaker broadcasts were part of a U.S. Army psychological operations unit. .....

The video did not show the messages being broadcast, though it did show some military vehicles were fitted with speakers and playing loud music.

Dupont told the AP the messages had been broadcast in the local dialect but were translated into English for him by members of the Army psychological operations unit.

I have a position on this kind of thing that's not always popular. If actions in war, however horrific, are the actions of a few soldiers in the field who just "lose it," I tend to be pretty forgiving of those soldiers. I cannot imagine myself in that situation, and can sort of see how one could lose bearings amid the violence of war.

BUT. If events like these are condoned, premeditated, or committed to policy, as appears to be the case here, everyone involved, all the way up the chain should be nailed to the wall. I think the presence of psy-op troops and the presence of "military vehicles fitted with speakers" shows that this was not a moment of insanity by a few troops.

That's one of the things that has so frustrated me about Guantanamo/Abu Ghraib. Those were not the actions of a few lower level soldiers who "lost it." The evidence seems to show that those actions were policy, some formalized, some unspoken, that stretch pretty far up the chain. And it appears that those up the chain are willing to cowardly let a half dozen grunts pay for their crimes.