An Australian TV crew has filmed US troops in Afghanistan burning dead Taliban soldiers in violation of their religious customs and the Geneva Conventions and broadcasting taunts about it into a village suspected of housing more Taliban.
Wasn’t Rumsfeld supposed to do something about this? What the fuck is going on with these troops? These guys are going to be coming home eventually and I am worried for their sanity… and for anyone they run into before or after they get back. My god people enough is enough. How much longer can the American public stand for this? Vietnam all over again all over the fucking place.
An investigation by SBS’s Dateline program, to be aired tonight, filmed the burning of the bodies.
It also filmed a US Army psychological operations unit broadcasting a message boasting of the burnt corpses into a village believed to be harbouring Taliban.
According to an SBS translation of the message, delivered in the local language, the soldiers accused Taliban fighters near Kandahar of being “cowardly dogs”. “You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burnt. You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be,” the message reportedly said.
“You attack and run away like women. You call yourself Taliban but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion, and you bring shame upon your family. Come and fight like men instead of the cowardly dogs you are.”
The burning of a body is a deep insult to Muslims. Islam requires burial within 24 hours.
Under the Geneva conventions the burial of war dead “should be honourable, and, if possible, according to the rites of the religion to which the deceased belonged”.