US soldiers defiling Afghan corpses again

This video from the USA is called Images of US Soldiers With Afghan Corpses.

By David Walsh in the USA:

Photos of US troops defiling corpses expose Afghan war’s savagery

19 April 2012

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times published horrific photographs of American troops in Afghanistan posing with dead and dismembered insurgents.

The grisly images expose Washington’s claim that the occupation of the country is aimed at liberating the Afghan people. They reflect the savage reality of the US-led operation, intended to crush popular opposition to foreign rule and establish Afghanistan as a base from which the US ruling elite can pursue its efforts to dominate the geo-strategically critical region.

The Los Angeles Times photos, recently supplied to the newspaper by an unnamed US soldier, were apparently taken on two separate occasions in 2010. Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were first dispatched to a police station in Zabul Province in southern Afghanistan in February 2010 to examine the remains of a suicide bomber for identification purposes. As the newspaper describes it: “The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held—and others squatted beside—the corpse’s severed legs.”

A few months later, in April 2010, the same platoon was sent to a morgue in Qalat, Zabul’s capital, to investigate the remains of three insurgents who had blown themselves up. The soldiers again posed with the body parts, “grinning and mugging for photographs.”

Describing this set of photos, the Times wrote: “Two soldiers posed holding a dead man’s hand with the middle finger raised. A soldier leaned over the bearded corpse while clutching the man’s hand. Someone placed an unofficial platoon patch reading ‘Zombie Hunter’ next to other remains and took a picture.”

The images are an indictment of the American political and military establishment, which has unleashed untold humiliation, death and destruction on the Afghan people for more than a decade. The soldiers involved deserve to be prosecuted, but the principal criminals are to be found in the White House, the Pentagon and the US Congress.

After the exposure of each US atrocity—including the slaughter of civilians, the abuse and torture of prisoners, the mutilation of corpses for trophies, Marines urinating on the Afghan dead, the desecration of the Koran—American officials express dismay and describe the incidents as the actions of “individuals” who have perverted a righteous cause.

This is a lie. First, considering the unprecedented level of censorship of the war in Afghanistan, the episodes that come to light are undoubtedly only the tip of the iceberg. It can be asserted without hesitation that these sorts of crimes occur on virtually a daily basis. The exposure of the Qalat desecrations depended entirely on one soldier’s courageous act.

Second, the incidents that have been publicized make clear a pattern of barbaric behavior on the part of US and allied troops. This flows inevitably from the predatory character of the war and the situation in which American and other occupying forces find themselves: resented and hated by the Afghan population (the brigade lost 35 members during the year-long deployment, 23 of them to homemade bombs or suicide bombers), the soldiers’ increasing demoralization finds expression in acts of brutality.

Photos showing American servicemen posing for mocking trophy shots with the bodies of Afghan suicide bombers drew expressions of revulsion from Afghans after the pictures’ publication Wednesday in the Los Angeles Times: here.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai demanded “an accelerated and full transition of security responsibilities to Afghan forces” on Thursday after leaked photos showed US soldiers posing with the bloodied remains of Afghan citizens: here.