U.S. Troops Take Pics With Afghan Corpses. Again.

An Army aviator flies over Logar Province, Afghanistan, at sunset. Photo: U.S. Army

In yet another unforced error by U.S. troops this year jeopardizing the Afghanistan war, photographs published by the Los Angeles Times show soldiers posing and grinning with the remains of an Afghan insurgent. Yes, again.

A soldier with the 4th Combat Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division provided the paper with grisly photographs of soldiers from his own unit, in what the Times described as an attempt to blow the whistle on a breakdown of command discipline.

The photographs are not new; they're from 2010. Two years after the pictures were taken ' and only because they were published by the L.A. Times ' the Army is only now investigating the incident.

The military was quick to condemn the actions shown in the photos. 'This behavior and these images are entirely inconsistent with the values of ISAF and all service members of the 50 ISAF countries serving in Afghanistan,' said the war's commander, Gen. John Allen, using the acronym for the NATO mission he leads. 'Anyone found responsible for this inhuman conduct will be held accountable in accordance with our military justice system,' added George Little, the chief spokesman for Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

There's a reason for their alacrity. Every month this year has seen another unforced error by U.S. troops in Afghanistan that jeopardizes the entire decade-long war. In March, it was the brutal massacre of Afghan civilians, mostly women and children, allegedly by an Army staff sergeant. In February, it was the burning of Korans at a detention center near Kabul, which set off nationwide riots. In January, it was more old imagery taken by U.S. troops as they disrespected Afghan corpses ' this time, Marines urinating on dead Taliban. Peppered throughout have been battlefield setbacks for the U.S., like the executions of U.S. troops inside Afghanistan's ministry of interior and Sunday's multicity, 18-hour Taliban assault.

But the military didn't just criticize the troops who photographed themselves with pieces of a Taliban suicide bomber. 'The secretary is also disappointed that despite our request not to publish these photographs, the Los Angeles Times went ahead,' Little said in a statement. (We're not publishing the photos because we don't own the rights to them.)

Unaddressed in Little's statement is the issue of command climate that the Times said motivated the soldier to provide the photographs in the first place. Around the time those photos were taken, a handful of disturbing incidents surrounded the brigade. A battalion leader and senior enlisted officer were stripped of their commands after creating racist and sexist PowerPoint presentations. And the wife of the brigade commander had to be barred from family morale activities on the brigade's home base of Fort Bragg after an inquiry found she had harassed soldiers' spouses.

The cumulative effect of all of these recent scandals has been to drain U.S. public support for the war, despite military spin that it's going well. A majority of typically hawkish Republican voters now say the war isn't worth fighting. That verdict isn't the result of big Taliban battlefield advances (although its decade-long resilience against a vastly more powerful adversary probably counts as such). It's partially the result of mistakes the U.S. inflicted on itself.