Panetta assures Afghans of full probe into video

Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton expresses her dis­may at emerg­ing reports of U.S. Marines allegedly des­e­crat­ing the bod­ies of Tal­iban fight­ers killed in Afghanistan Thurs­day dur­ing a news con­fer­ence with Alger­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Mourad Medelci, at the State Depart­ment in Wash­ing­ton. (Asso­ci­ated Press | J. Scott Applewhite)

PAULINE JELINEK

ROBERT BURNS

Asso­ci­ated Press

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.

Anti-American sen­ti­ment is already on the rise in Afghanistan, espe­cially among Afghans who have not seen improve­ments to their daily lives despite bil­lions of dol­lars in inter­na­tional aid. They also have deplored the acci­den­tal killing of civil­ians dur­ing NATO airstrikes and argue that for­eign troops have cul­tur­ally offended the Afghan peo­ple, mostly when it comes to activ­i­ties involv­ing women and the Quran, the Mus­lim holy book.

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 Afghan Defense Min­istry called it “shock­ing.” And the Tal­iban issued a state­ment accus­ing U.S. forces of com­mit­ting numer­ous “indig­ni­ties” against the Afghan people.

U.S. offi­cials said a mil­i­tary crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion was being led by the Naval Crim­i­nal Inves­tiga­tive Ser­vice, the law enforce­ment arm of the Navy. The Marines will do their own inter­nal investigation.

Panetta said the actions depicted in the brief video were inexcusable.

“I have seen the footage, and I find the behav­ior depicted in it utterly deplorable. I con­demn it in the strongest pos­si­ble terms,” Panetta’s state­ment said. “Those found to have engaged in such con­duct will be held account­able to the fullest extent.”

The chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Mar­tin Dempsey, said he was deeply dis­turbed by the video and wor­ried that it would erode the rep­u­ta­tion of the entire mil­i­tary, not just the Marine Corps.

A vet­er­ans group, the Iraq and Afghanistan Vet­er­ans of Amer­ica, noted the video was the act of a small num­ber of Marines and said it did not reflect the behav­ior of the mil­lions who have served honorably.

“Our troops and vet­er­ans are already fac­ing enor­mous chal­lenges and stereo­types both over­seas and at home, and we encour­age the pub­lic and media world­wide to refrain from rush­ing to stereo­types,” the group said in a statement.

Navy Sec­re­tary Ray Mabus, the top civil­ian exec­u­tive of the Marines and Navy, said it was “appalling and out­ra­geously offen­sive,” and Marine Com­man­dant James Amos called it “wholly incon­sis­tent with the high stan­dards of con­duct and war­rior ethos” demanded in the Corps.

White House press sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney said Pres­i­dent Barack Obama was aware of the story but may not have seen the video.

Asked how she thought the devel­op­ment might affect the Afghanistan peace efforts, Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton did not directly reply.

“The United States remains strongly com­mit­ted to help­ing build a secure, peace­ful, pros­per­ous, demo­c­ra­tic future for the peo­ple of Afghanistan,” she said. “And we will con­tinue to sup­port efforts that will be Afghan-led and Afghan-owned to pur­sue the pos­si­bil­ity of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and peace.”

On the streets of Afghanistan, the reac­tion was cool.

“If these actions con­tinue, peo­ple will not like them (the Amer­i­cans) any­more and there will be upris­ing against them,” Moham­mad Qayum, said while watch­ing a tele­vi­sion news story about the video that was air­ing in a local restau­rant in Kabul.

Ahmad Naweed, a shop­keeper in Kan­da­har, the birth­place of the Tal­iban insur­gency, said, “On the one hand, the Amer­i­cans present them­selves as friends of Afghanistan and … they also try to have peace talks with the Tal­iban. So we don’t know what kind of polit­i­cal game they are play­ing in Afghanistan.”

This kind of embar­rass­ment dis­persed over the Inter­net is not new for the Pentagon.

Over the years of com­bat in Iraq and Afghanistan, offi­cials peri­od­i­cally have been stunned by the troops’ pen­chant for tak­ing pho­tos or videos of them­selves in acts rang­ing from crim­i­nal to sim­ply stupid.

Out­rage spread instantly across the globe in 2004 over the release of pho­tos taken by a group of U.S. mil­i­tary police abus­ing pris­on­ers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The troops were grin­ning and pos­ing beside naked detainees stacked in a pyra­mid, held on a leash and so on.

In 2008, a Marine was kicked out of the ser­vice after being video­taped throw­ing a puppy off a cliff while on patrol in Iraq and jok­ing about it as the ani­mal yelped.

Posted by AP News on Jan 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.