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January 13, 2012 in Nation/World
U.S. investigating video
Relations with Afghanistan at risk
WASHINGTON – Pentagon leaders scrambled Thursday to contain damage from an Internet video purporting to show four Marines urinating on Taliban corpses – an act that appears to violate international laws of warfare and further strains U.S.-Afghan relations.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called Afghan President Hamid Karzai to offer assurances of a full investigation and the top Marine general promised an internal probe as well as a criminal one.
Investigators moved quickly to identify and interview at least two of the four Marines. They were members of a battalion that fought for seven months in former Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan.
Their unit, the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, returned from Helmand province to its home base at Camp Lejeune, N.C., last September. Marine officials said that a battalion officer confirmed to investigators on Thursday, based on his examination of the video, that the four men depicted urinating had been members of the battalion. Two have since moved on to other units.
As the video spread across the Internet in postings and re-postings, U.S. officials joined with Afghans in calling it shocking, deplorable, inhumane and a breach of military standards of conduct. It shows men in Marine combat gear standing in a semicircle urinating on the bodies of three men in standard Afghan clothing, one whose chest was covered in blood.
It’s not certain whether the dead were Taliban fighters, civilians or someone else.
The incident will likely further hurt ties with Karzai’s government and complicate negotiations over a strategic partnership arrangement meant to govern the presence of U.S. troops and advisers in Afghanistan after most international combat troops withdraw by the end of 2014.
Panetta said the incident could endanger U.S.-Afghan-Taliban peace talks.
“The danger is that this kind of video can be misused in many ways to undermine what we are trying to do in Afghanistan and the possibility of reconciliation,” Panetta said at Fort Bliss, Texas, adding it’s important for the U.S. to move quickly to “send a clear signal to the world that the U.S. will not tolerate this kind of behavior and that is not what the U.S. is all about.”
The emergence of the video comes at a delicate time in relations among the United States, Afghanistan’s elected government and the Taliban insurgency fighting for both territorial control and cultural and religious preeminence in Afghanistan. The U.S. is trying to foster peace talks between the Karzai government and the Pakistan-based Taliban high command, and has made unprecedented offers to build trust with the insurgents, including the planned opening of a Taliban political office to oversee talks.
Pentagon officials said the criminal investigation would likely look into whether the Marines violated laws of war, which include prohibitions against photographing or mishandling bodies and detainees. It also appeared to violate the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs conduct. Thus, some or all of the four Marines could face a military court-martial or other disciplinary action.
Karzai called the video “completely inhumane.” The Taliban issued a statement accusing U.S. forces of committing numerous “indignities” against the Afghan people.
© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Salmonella linked to chicken handling 
nslopeofw on January 13 at 12:41 a.m.
Yeah, this is way worse than jumping on the American corpses, dragging them through the streets, and then hanging and burning their body’s. Or even much worse than beheading people with dull swords on video.
The Talib’s live to get a hold of dead or wounded Americans, so they can show the world just how humane they are. (not)
Time to quit worrying about stupid crap like this. I’m all for prosecuting rapists and murderers, but this is a waste of time, money, and the moral of our fighters in Afghanistan. They are mostly kids who are getting shot at every day. PTSD is a big issue. If they make stupid mistakes like this, and are not raping and killing civilians, I DONT CARE!
I mean how ridiculous is it that our government is actually trying to negotiate with people that believe in stoning people to death, in keeping women out of schools and jobs, in bombing their own people to create terror, in sentencing a woman to death for being raped. Dont forget the fathers that kill their daughters because after being raped, she humiliated the family, so its OK to kill her.
Backwoods, scummy, control freak, nutbags that think its either their way, or you die. Why would we ever consider negotiating with human rights violators that are no better than the Nazi racists that Hitler controlled?
Jeffrey_Grey on January 13 at 4:54 a.m.
You just don’t get it, do you?
Yeah, all those things are barbaric and disgusting. They are what brand our enemies as thugs and brutes.
And that’s why we can’t descend to their level. If we become like them, even a little bit, what in hell is the purpose of our fighting them? What in hell are we bleeding and dying for?
Or if morality and principle is too subtle to break through all your swagger, how about simple pragmatism?
I was watching CNN yesterday as they were covering this story. They had a Marine captain on whose unit was deploying today to Afghanistan. The commentator asked him why this was a big deal. First of all, the captain pointed out that this kind of behavior is a direct slap in the face to the Marine Corps’ Core Values - the principles that every Marine believes defines who and what they are, or at least claim to be. Core Values that - as I say - are supposedly what raise them above the filth they are fighting.
But beyond that, he said this kind of behavior is going to lead directly to Marines getting killed and injured. Do you CARE about that?
It’s going to get Marines killed and injured for several reasons. First of all, desecrating corpses IS right up there with beheading and torturing - if it’s the corpses of your people being desecrated. So while you might not CARE, the Taliban do because even murderous thugs care about that kind of thing. To see things like that makes them that much more motivated and that much more brutal. A more motivated enemy is a more dangerous enemy.
Second, it’s going to be a strong recruiting tool. A more numerous enemy is a more dangerous enemy.
And a more dangerous enemy gets more Marines killed and injured.
Finally, it’s going to make it harder to get cooperation - read; intel and support - from the average Afghan. The kind of cooperation that is absolutely vital if we’re to have any chance of success at all with this kind of counter-insurgency operation.
Less intel, less local support equals more Marines killed and injured.
More Marines killed and injured for the sake of some totally unnecessary behavior. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why you wouldn’t care about that.
And it’s not me saying this. It’s a young Marine commander who has to lead his men and women into that situation. So if you want to argue the validity of these points, head over to Afghanistan and take it up with him. Okay?
-shrug- I don’t know if there’s any point in making these arguments. I suspect you and folks like you will still stomp around and bluster and do your macho posturing thing, and then congratulate yourselves on your righteousness and moral superiority. But be aware that out there ‘on the ground’, the lives of the troops we send into harm’s way have gotten just that much more dangerous and difficult because ‘a few good men’ decided they had to do a little macho posturing of their own.
Diana on January 13 at 6:57 a.m.
So according to nwslope, Americans should be just as vile, inhumane and disgusting as the Taliban.
Do I have that right?
v1grwil on January 13 at 7:20 a.m.
Oh ya diana you’ve got that right….I know you want to serve them tea and have them wear something nice, like a desert mauve turbin or….you fool, this is war..scorched earth. We don’t partly kill them, we end their existence. period. Get real.
monarch on January 13 at 9:33 a.m.
It’s the very barbarity of war that transforms nice decent young men into soldiers that urinate on dead bodies. Life becomes cheap. That’s why we should be prudent in our use of force and use it only as a last resort. A war scars a significant part of an entire generation. We who send our soldiers to war bear the responsibility for what our soldiers become. The movie Thin Red Line, about the depravities of World War II pacific island fighting has a good quote. “War doesn’t ennoble men, it turns them into dogs.” And no I’m not saying our soldiers are dogs, but that to be able to kill you have to leave behind the core values of civilization that value life.
Jeffrey_Grey on January 13 at 9:59 a.m.
Hey, v1grwil - if that’s the case, why not just nuke Afghanistan and be done with it? I’m sure we’ve got one or two TRIDENT II’s coming up on their end-of-life point. Why let those expensive birds go to waste? We can even get some valuable live-fire training time for a boomer crew in the bargain! Win/win, baby!
When will you people understand? It’s NOT about THEM. It’s NEVER been about THEM. It’s about US. It’s about OUR principles and our morality. It’s about US making the effort and paying the price necessary to actually live up to the standards we say we stand for - not just hypocritically sneering while we stoop to the level of those we claim to be defending the world from.
greenlibertarian on January 13 at 11:29 p.m.
Well said Jeffrey. These cretins like Nslope and v1grwil couldn’t care less about our Marines and soldiers in harms way that will be killed or injured in retaliation for this heinous and cowardly act by these miscreant Marines.
I hope they identify these Marines forthwith, give them a FAIR and SPEEDY Court Martial, and if convicted, punished to the fullest extent of the UCMJ. I believe you can still get “hard time” in Military confinement, they should get their “fill” of that.
Rogue, illegal actions like this GET OUR GUYS KILLED!