Another Abu Ghraib?

The US military has begun an investigation into military personnel desecrating Taliban bodies in Afghanistan. The Australian Dateline program aired a film of two soldiers burning the bodies of the Taliban soldiers and then the US army psychological operations unit blasted offensive messages over loudspeakers.

According to a transcript of the program, the soldiers faced the bodies towards Mecca in a deliberately provocative move and set them on fire. One said: "Wow, look at the blood coming out of the mouth on that one, fucking straight death metal."

A message was then broadcast over a loudspeaker in the local dialect which, according to the freelance cameraman, Stephen Dupont, embedded with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, said: "Attention, Taliban, you are all cowardly dogs. You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to come down and retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be."

The government of Afghanistan has demanded an investigation and punishment for those responsible. And again, we are guilty of breaking Geneva Conventions:

Under the Geneva Conventions, soldiers must ensure that the "dead are honorably interred, if possible according to the rites of the religion to which they belonged."

Furthermore, the rules state that bodies should not be cremated, "except for imperative reasons of hygiene or for motives based on the religion of the deceased."

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

posted by Sarai @ 10:58 AM