Last week I reported on the
Gore for
Porn scandal that has transpired on the internet. Now the
Associated Press is reporting that the Army has launched an investigation
into it.
Army Probes Complaints of Corpse Photos
The Army is investigating complaints that soldiers posted photographs of
Iraqi corpses on an Internet site in exchange for access to pornographic
images on the site, officials said Tuesday.An Islamic civil rights group said it wrote to Defense Secretary Donald
H. Rumsfeld objecting to the practice, which it said may violate
international laws of war, and urging the Pentagon to bring it to an end.“This disgusting trade in human misery is an insult to all those who have
served in our nation’s military,” Arsalan Iftikhar, legal director for the
Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in his letter to Rumsfeld.Bryan Whitman, a spokesman for Rumsfeld, said the Pentagon had recently
become aware of Internet postings and is looking into it.“Obviously, it is an unacceptable practice,” Whitman said.
An Army spokesman, Col. Joseph Curtin, said the Criminal Investigation
Division recently began investigating the matter on behalf of Lt. Gen. John
Vines, commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq.Another Army spokesman, Paul Boyce, said later that the preliminary
criminal inquiry determined, based on available evidence, that felony
charges could not be pursued. But the matter, including the possibility of
disciplinary action, was being handled in coordination with other military
services, he said.Many of the photos depict dismembered Iraqi corpses and body parts. Some
also were submitted by soldiers in Afghanistan.
Hopefully this investigation will yield some results as this is truly a
horrible exploitation of those who have died in the Iraq war. Iraqi or not,
everyone is still human.