US military taking a flawed leaf out of Soviets handbook?

[Konovalov]

Probe into film of troops burning Taliban fighters
October 21, 2005 - 11:26AM

Freelance journalist Stephen Dupont made the film while embedded with the 173rd Airborne Brigade of the U.S. Army.



The United States expressed concern today about film of US soldiers burning the bodies of two suspected Taliban militants which comes as a new blow to the image of the US military.

"From our point of view, these are very serious allegations, and if true, very troublesome," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

He said that an investigation would be held "and if there is, in fact, wrongdoing that was found, then those who are responsible for that wrongdoing will be held to account."

The United States is still struggling to overcome damage its reputation by the sexual humiliation of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and allegations of mistreatment of inmates at the Guantanamo Bay 'war on terror' camp in Cuba.

The New York Times and Washington Post said senior US officials were worried about the impact of the new video shown by the Australian SBS network's Dateline program on the US image in Muslim world.

"The Department of Defence has said that it is the policy of the United States to treat all remains consistent with the Geneva Convention and with the utmost respect," McCormack said.

"Our military personnel receive clear instructions to this effect," he said.

McCormack said however that the alleged actions of a few US soldiers should not in any way hinder the work of the US military and the values that it represented.

A report broadcast on SBS yesterday showed footage of the bodies being burnt, which is deeply offensive to Muslims and contravenes the Geneva Convention.

The US military in Afghanistan had launched a criminal investigation and would take "corrective action" should it prove to be true, Major General Jason Kamiya said in a statement.

"This command does not condone the mistreatment of enemy combatants or the desecration of their religious and cultural beliefs," he said.

Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak was "deeply shocked" and had ordered an independent inquiry, ministry spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi said.

The soldiers said they burned the bodies for health reasons after they had been left out in the open for more than 24 hours, according to the Dateline program.

The suspected militants had died during an ambush of a US patrol near the village of Gonbaz in southern Afghanistan, the report said.

One American and one Afghan army soldier were also killed in the clash ahead of Afghanistan's elections last month.

Afterwards the US troops used the incident to broadcast inflammatory messages, it said.

"Attention Taliban, you are all cowardly dogs," one message reportedly said.

"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 Australian photojournalist who took the footage, Stephen Dupont, told SBS the troops apparently wanted to enrage the Taliban so that they would attack.

A US-led coalition of about 20,000 troops has been in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001 and has been battling loyalists who have vowed to overthrow the new Afghan government.

The Taliban were removed from power in a US-led campaign after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States organised by Al-Qaeda from bases in Afghanistan.

Rights groups have heavily criticised the US military for abusing militants detained in Afghanistan, at least eight of whom have died in custody.

Two US soldiers were this year sentenced to up to three months in jail for the abuse of Afghan detainees held at Bagram air base near Kabul, that lead to their deaths.

After the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq last year, much attention has since been focused on Afghanistan and the Guantanamo detention camp.

Fifteen people died in Afghanistan in widespread protests after Newsweek magazine reported accusations in May that the Koran holy book had been thrown into a toilet by a US guard at Guantanamo.

Though Newsweek later retracted the article, the US authorities later said that there had been five incidents at the camp, including one where a guard had "accidentally" urinated on a Koran.

The US administration insisted that the cases were isolated and that abuse was not tolerated.

AFP

I doubt that these kind of images will endear the US soldiers to the Afghani people. It certainly didn't help the Soviets during the 80's. I hope that this is nothing more than a few soldiers taking it upon themselves regarding these actions which are in breach of the Geneva convention not to mention immoral.

[Konovalov]

And this, again taken from www.smh.com.au

Karen Hughes seems to have a mighty task ahead of her.

US in damage control over Taliban burns
October 21, 2005 - 2:55PM


The United States is trying to limit damage from images broadcast on Australian television appearing to show US soldiers burning the corpses of two Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

US embassies around the world were told to explain that what people saw in the tape did not reflect the actions of most of the US military or of US values overall, the State Department said.

"I saw the news reports and the video myself. These are very difficult images to see," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, but he insisted they should be seen as isolated incidents.

The footage was broadcast on SBS' Dateline program on Wednesday night.

Muslim-American groups feared the incident could worsen anti-American sentiments in Muslim countries where many people perceive the United States as being culturally insensitive.

The television report quoted US soldiers as saying they had burned the bodies for hygienic reasons - an act which could be expected to deeply upset Muslims, whose faith prohibits cremation and demands respect for the dead.

After the burning, according to the TV report, a US psychological operations unit broadcast a propaganda message on loudspeakers to a nearby village thought to harbour Taliban fighters, taunting them to retrieve their dead and fight.

The US military has said Army criminal investigators were looking into the incident and that if wrongdoing was identified, the perpetrators would be prosecuted under US military law.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said: "Clearly this is not something that is consistent with their (the US military command in Afghanistan) procedures because they immediately launched an investigation."

The US image abroad has been battered by a series of human rights scandals, from the abuse of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to the detention without trial of foreign terror suspects at a US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

More than 100 detainees have died in US detention in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US military consistently pins the blame on individuals and has denied there is any institutional tolerance of such behaviour.

In June, the US military detailed five incidents in which US jailers at Guantanamo Bay "mishandled" the Koran. It said that in one case a US guard's urine splashed through a vent onto the Islamic holy book and in others the Koran was kicked, stepped on and soaked by water.

The airing of the latest videotape coincided with a trip this week to the predominantly Muslim states of Indonesia and Malaysia by US Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes, whose role is to try to improve America's image.

"I think certainly Undersecretary Hughes is fully prepared to address this issue on her trip," said McCormack of the videotape.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based civil rights group, urged the Pentagon to conduct a review of policies and training related to personnel in Muslim countries.

"Given the growing number of such incidents involving American military personnel worldwide, it is imperative that the Pentagon launch a top-to-bottom review of policies and training to help prevent the war on terror from being perceived as a war on Islam," CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a statement.

Awad said reports of abuses of Muslim prisoners and disregard for Islamic sensitivities in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, were harming the image of the United States and serving as recruiting tools for terrorist groups.

© 2005 AAP

[Type941]

*sigh*

Obviously once again, the command fails to control the soldiers who are living in a war, and not in a civlized Krispy Kream before work world. When will the US stop mocking around with Iraq and phoney revolutions in some Georgia and Ukraine and start taking care of its own people...

[Kapitan]

give them enough rope they hang