I support the troops, our President and the mission, but not unnecessary desecration of bodies. I do not feel these Taliban are protected by any International agreements. If our troops feel one might know some information that they need to know, I don’t mind if one of our troops fires a shot NEAR OR INTO that Taliban member to force answers out of them! If some troops enter a building and see an enemy that they even suspect is playing dead, I don’t mind that soldier firing into that enemy’s body as many times as the soldier deems appropriate! It is WAR not a game of hopscotch! So I’m all for our troops doing what they must to protect themselves and their fellow soldiers. But I am not for the burning of bodies just to show off in the face of the enemy!

Euphoric Reality is of the opinion that these soldiers had a legitimate need to burn the bodies and mentions:

I have to disagree. Even as an expert had to admit last night on Foxnews’ Hannity and Colmes. There was no risk of the dead bodies causing any sort of disease or issues to our troops. Just as the bodies in New Orleans did not cause medical issues for anyone there. Nobody got sick from any of the dead bodies. So there was no reason to burn the bodies for hygiene purposes. And the effort to “smoke out” the Taliban with the burning did not work. It was simply a bad idea and did nothing to help anything. The heat of battle can cause someone to do things they feel are necessary, that they might not usually consider doing. I am sure the troops tried this because they felt it was a good idea at the time, but it was a bad idea. It did nothing to help them and did nothing to help our war effort. This went totally against the ages old Art of War.

I know many of my fellow Conservatives are seeing this as another move by the media to trash our troops. And it seems the media does spend way too much time focusing on the negative and not on the much more frequent positive acts by our troops. But the burning of the bodies was simply wrong. If those bodies smelled they could have been rolled into a grave, or wrapped up, or put in a body bag if available or laid somewhere else. There was no good reason to burn them. And trying to stir up the enemy like that was not a good idea. It did more to turn sympathizers of the effort against our troops, than to help draw out Taliban for a quick kill. And I’m all for our troops killing them all quick, but this was a bad idea and it should be called just that.

Now the Taliban that were burned were already dead. So I don’t think any of those involved should be locked up. It is a war and those Taliban were the enemy. But there probably should be some sort of demotion in rank or reprimand of some sort outside of legal prosecution.

update (10/23/2005 4:13PM ET): Euphoric Reality has discovered an incident that is an example of how barbaric our enemy can be. His post cites this Washington Post article which mentions the following:

Why isn’t this being blasted across every news media outlet in America? Another example of obvious bias!

I hope our troops blow away every individual involved in that act and I’ve got no problem with them administering the death penalty to anyone under 18!

Now having said that, I still see no need to burn their bodies for show or bring them to the USA to drag them up Pennsylvania Avenue while American children toss kindling on a flaming corpse or living terrorist! The enemy is the savage, not our troops! So we have no need for unnecessary barbaric acts! I have not seen how burning bodies helped our troops’ efforts at all. It was not the right thing to do.

Now here’s some good news from that same article that I enjoyed reading!

Each one of those items deserves to be it’s own separate headline! Oh but then people might actually realize the effort is going better than some claim!

update (10/23/2005 9:07PM ET): Colonel David Hunt offers his take. And he should know, having seen the evils of war for himself. I highly recommend reading his blog.