No action against US troops who urinated on dead Afghans

Three US marines who were videoed in Afghanistan urinating on the bodies of dead Afghans will not face criminal charges, the US military has announced.

In a video of the incident you can hear one marine looking at the corpses and saying, “Have a good day, buddy.”

Six US soldiers discovered burning copies of the Koran will also not be charged. At the time the US military said it was an accident. But many Afghans and Muslims saw it as a conscious insult.

There was no mistake—a whole library of hundreds of books was first loaded onto a truck and taken to a burn pit where rubbish is incinerated. As they were being thrown into the fire an Afghan interpreter and Afghan soldiers pleaded with them to stop.

The US soldiers ignored them. Eventually the Afghans intervened and shut down the incinerator and put the fire out. The marines and soldiers will face only “administrative punishments”.

The war on Afghanistan

Occupying Nato forces in Afghanistan are in the process of handing over to the Afghan military. They want to get out of the ten year war and occupation which has achieved nothing except thousands of civilian causalities.

Night raids and drone attacks by Nato mean that Afghan civilians have suffered many more casualties than the US side.

Bitterness against the brutal occupation has led to increasing attacks on Nato troops by Afghan soldiers and police. They have been responsible for 40 deaths of Nato soldiers this year alone, more than in all of 2011.