The Southern Scholar

Well, that was quick. The U.S. Army's brief inquiry into the now-infamous porn/dead Iraqi site has "failed to determine whether U.S. soldiers provided grisly photos of people killed in the Iraq war to a porn Web site in exchange for free access to it."

The Army Criminal Investigation Command in Iraq conducted the preliminary inquiry within the past week but closed it after concluding no felony crime had been committed and failing to determine whether U.S. soldiers were responsible for the photos and whether they showed actual war dead, Army officials said.

Col. Joe Curtin, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said there currently was no formal investigation into the matter.

"We're not blowing this off," Curtin said. "If the Army thinks it's in its interest to investigate something, we will. There are multiple challenges here. One is the anonymity of the sources, dates, times, locations, units, anything that is reasonably identifiable that we can work off of."

You don't have to be a left-wing crazy like me to be disturbed by how flippantly this issue is being tossed aside. It's not just about pure human compassion for the suffering of others; it's about the danger of soldiers carelessly -- if inadvertantly -- expediting erosion of support for their mission. If the troops want support for their mission, which is, we're told, all about liberating an oppressed population of fellow humans, they've got to get their act together and stop mistreating, abusing, and desecrating those they are fighting -- living or dead. It is imperative that the U.S. take the moral high road and be serious and diligent about it, or else we are no better than the depraved factions we battle against.

Doesn't it seem odd that the military can't figure out how to ID the soldiers and places in the photos in question? You're going to tell me that the RIAA can track down 12-year-olds sharing music files but the military can't track down soliders uploading photos to the web from Iraq, where, let's face it, not everyone has a laptop?

Curtin said the military was examining policies, procedures and legal implications of how soldiers transmit photos from the battlefield, and could consider limiting troops' use of their own personal computers or cameras in a combat zone.

"The military must be very careful in not violating an individual's First Amendment rights," Curtin said, referring to the constitutional right of free expression.

"Soldiers encounter the horrors of war, and they are able to record it," Curtin said. "You mix it with the porn site, now you muddy the waters."

I won't pretend to know much about soldiers' First Amendment rights (I'm sure they remain intact to a point, and there are probably unwritten but understood rules against heavy public criticism of your mission and the President, for example), but it's safe to say that soldiers are strongly discouraged from actions that would jeopardize the safety of themselves, their peers, and their country. Why is posting degrading, offensive photos of dead people for ridicule not considered highly dangerous to the mission? Does the Military really think that actions like this by their soldiers are less harmful to the public perception of the war than the day-in, day-out explosion reporting going on now?

The best part? These images are only truly offensive because they're on a porn site. Sure, it's sick and twisted. But shouldn't the outrage lie in the gory photos and the disrespectful way they are displayed -- NOT just that the photos share a URL with some porn? That sort of says it all about the people running the Pentagon, doesn't it?

One dim, dim ray of hope from the story:

Curtin said the Army was not ruling out the possibility of opening a formal criminal investigation. "Any time new information becomes available that's credible, yes, they potentially could reopen the case," he said.

...

Officials said that while the Army's preliminary inquiry had determined no felony act had taken place, soldiers potentially could be punished for conduct unbecoming a soldier, which generally brings administrative sanctions.

Without confirming the authenticity of the photos or who took them, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said, "This does not represent the values of the United States military, and doesn't represent the vast majority of the actions and behavior of our men and women in uniform. It is a despicable practice. It's unacceptable. And the department is going to address it."

So yes, if some new information comes to light, they can pursue it. You know, if they feel like it. And maybe a few soliders will be reprimanded for unbecoming behavior. But the damage will have already been done.