PsyOP in Afghanistan Gone Too Far?

From the AP:

The U.S. military said Wednesday it was investigating a report carried on an Australian television network that claimed American soldiers in Afghanistan burned the bodies of two Taliban fighters and then used the action to taunt other Islamic militants.

The SBS television network broadcast video footage that purportedly showed U.S. soldiers burning the bodies of the suspected Taliban fighters in the hills outside the southern village of Gonbaz, near the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

The network said the footage was taken by a freelance journalist, Stephen Dupont, who told The Associated Press he was embedded with the 173rd Airborne Brigade of the U.S. Army earlier this month. Dupont said the burnings happened on Oct. 1.

In the footage, which was seen by the AP, two soldiers who spoke with American accents later read taunting messages that the SBS said were broadcast to the village, which was believed to be harboring Taliban soldiers.

Dupont said the soldiers responsible for the taunting messages were part of a U.S. Army psychological operations unit.

The U.S. military said the Army Criminal Investigation Division had opened an investigation into alleged misconduct that included "the burning of dead enemy combatant bodies under inappropriate circumstances."

We don't have all the information right now, so let's not jump to conclusions about criminal conduct.

If true, this is pretty nasty, but I don't know if it is a crime. Any military lawyers out there want to chime in?

10/21 Update

Col. Hunt weighs in on the subject here.

My only point of contention with the Colonel is about the Geneva Conventions. I don't think they apply to terrorists...in fact, as I recall it, the GC was put together to prevent terrorist action during war. I believe that applying the GC to terrorists is a step in the wrong direction and that going that way prevents us from doing things that we could do to win.

But the Colonel is absolutely right. I'm all for using psy-ops of this nature right up to the point where we actually mutilate the enemy. The question remains as to whether or not this was actual mutilation (some Islamic cleric says yes, but who didn't see that coming) and if so, whether or not the guys who actually did this (if they actually did - I know there is video, ever see a Hollywood flick?) knew it to be a mutilation.

One of the strengths of our military is that we rely heavily on the lower ranks. Seems to me that that can also be a weakness. 99% of our military can be trusted to do the right thing, but that 1% scares me a bit...