Stench Prompted U.S. Troops to Burn Corpses - Oct. 21, 2005

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1125699,00.html

There simply wasn't enough room on the rocky hilltop above Gonbaz village in southern Afghanistan for the U.S. platoon and the corpses of the two Taliban fighters. The Taliban men had been killed in a firefight 24 hours earlier, and in the 90-degree heat, their bodies had become an unbearable presence, soldiers who were present have told TIME. Nor was the U.S. Army unit about to leave—the hilltop commanded a strategic view of the village below where other Taliban were suspected to be hiding. snip

"We decided to burn the bodies," one American soldier recounts, "because they were bloated and they stank." News of this cremation might have remained on these scorching hills of southern Afghanistan had the gruesome act not been recorded on film by an Australian photojournalist, Stephen Dupont. Instead, when the footage aired on Australian TV on Wednesday, it unleashed world outrage. A Pentagon spokesman described the incident as "repugnant" and said that the army was launching a criminal investigation into the alleged desecration of the corpses, which is in violation of the Geneva Convention on human rights.

Fueling the furor was the fact that the TV report showed that after the bodies were torched, a U.S. Psychological-Operations team descended on Gonbaz in Humvees with their loudspeakers booming: "Taliban, you are cowardly dogs. You are too scared to come down and retrieve the bodies. This just proves you are the lady-boys we always believed you to be."

[OwnedByFerrets]

1. That "spin" makes NO sense at all n/t

[ShortnFiery]

2. OH yeah, that will help ...

:( Nothing like stoking the fires of racism (Arab Taliban Dogs) with sexism (lady-boys).

:wtf: Did we employ "A Special" PsyOps team?!? :shrug:

[MADem]

3. Well, to be totally honest, both of those themes play really well over

that way. It sounds goofy when translated, but it hits the mark in the original tongue.

A popular curse is "seed of the dog" and they rather foolishly ascribe all sorts of craven and wicked behaviors to dogs. So calling someone a dog is a pretty decent insult.

I'm sure you've read news reports on how they treat gay men over that way, too, and that's where they were going with the lady boy business.

[me b zola]

4. Pretty lame spin

Using the corpses to taunt the taliban into a fight negates their spin. When their verbal taunts didn't work they desecrated the bodies.

Operating by the standards of the Geneva Conventions is about who we are, not about who we are fighting.