WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS AGAIN

US soldiers in Afghanistan burnt the bodies of dead Taliban and taunted their opponents about the corpses, in an act deeply offensive to Muslims and in breach of the Geneva conventions.

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....

The burning of a body is a deep insult to Muslims. Islam requires burial within 24 hours....

--Sydney Morning Herald

Oh, that's brilliant. Yeah, in order to show a few enemy fighters that we're bad-ass, let's offend all Muslims worldwide, including the ones who haven't yet concluded that they hate the United States. And let's do it while TV cameras are rolling, so the whole world can eventually see the footage.

You know, if our goal were to rule the region by brute force -- and we were actually capable of doing so -- this might make sense. But our selling point is that we're the good guys. And then we do this.