This story from NPR (every outlet is covering it) focuses on the shock! shock! of generals, diplomats and the Secretary of Defense over this story in the LA Times, where they find that soldiers take pictures of themselves with their "kills." The photos are a couple of years old and were given to the paper by an unnamed soldier in the 82nd Airborne to blow the whistle on what he said was a breakdown in the military which endangered the troops. Pardon my sangfroid, but my only surprise is that I thought it was considered bad form to pose with "kills" which aren't your own, as appears to be the case here.
Panetta apparently asked the LA Times not to publish the photos and expressed "disappointment" that they did it anyway. The problem, of course, is that Afghans will see the photos, not that the killing is celebrated in this way, right? But that's probably accurate, since U.S. soldiers (and most likely their Afghan adversaries) have been taking photos like this throughout the hostilities there and in Iraq. See reports from the Winter Solider hearings held in March 2008, not too far from the Pentagon, but roundly ignored by politicians and vastly underreported by the mainstream U.S. press.
