New Controversy For U.S. Troops; New Controversy for U.S. Troops
KAYE: Welcome back and thanks for starting your morning with us. I'm Randi Kaye. Bottom of the hour now. And here's a look at our top stories this morning. As world leaders scramble to stop the escalating violence, an additional 300 unarmed U.N. monitors are heading to Syria. The U.N. Security Council authorized the move with an unanimous vote on Saturday just hours after a small group of U.N. monitors toured the besieged Syrian city of Homs. The mission is meant to hold Bashar al Assad regime accountable and to push troops to uphold a cease-fire. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, had this warning.</s>SUSAN RICE, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: In the United States, our patience is exhausted.</s>KAYE: But despite recent efforts, the opposition group says 40 people were killed on Saturday alone. Back at the U.S., John Edwards' trial is set to begin tomorrow, Monday, but the first order of business will be selecting the final 12 jurors and four alternates. The former Democratic presidential candidate is accused of misusing campaign funds to cover up his affair with Rielle Hunter and the child that he fathered. Edwards is charged with six felony and misdemeanor counts. In Peru, environmental experts are investigating a disturbing mystery washing up on its beaches. At least 877 dead dolphins have been found. Peru's deputy environment minister says the dolphins may have died from a virus. Official test results are expected next week. A new controversy for the U.S. military in Afghanistan as a new picture has surfaced showing troops posing with the bodies of suspected insurgents. And I want to warn you that the image is disturbing. The picture was published by "The Los Angeles Times." It's reportedly been taken -- was taken in 2010. Afghan President Hamid Karzai called the picture, quote, "inhumane." "The L.A. Times" says the soldier came forward with 18 pictures, just like that one, to draw attention to the breakdown in leadership and discipline. The military has promised an investigation. Joining me now to talk about this and other incidents is journalist and filmmaker Sebastian Junger and CNN military analyst General Spider Marks. Good morning to both of you. Sebastian, I'd like to start with you. You spent three years with troops in Afghanistan. You've chronicled it in your book "War." What's your impression of what's happened here? I mean did this kind of thing happen with the troops that you were with?</s>SEBASTIAN JUNGER, JOURNALIST AND FILMMAKER: I never saw anything like that personally. My impression, in a strange way, is that we've been in two wars for 10 years, hundreds of thousands of troops involved. I think the impulse to sort of gloat over the dead body of an enemy fighter is a very ancient, human impulse. And I'm surprised it hasn't happened more, actually. The fact that the U.S. military has kept that kind of activity to the occasional incident that we hear about, I think is actually pretty amazing.</s>KAYE: You know, we showed the picture once. I don't really want to show it again because it is that disturb. But it seems like they're posing, you know, with trophies. That that's how they're treating these body parts. Why do you think they do that? I mean what's going on up there?</s>JUNGER: I'm not a psychologist, but I think killing people is psychologically very, very difficult. I think the only way to do it for soldiers is to dehumanize the enemy. Otherwise it's hard not to think of it as murder. Once you've crossed that line, once you take that step into considering the enemy not fully human, I think it's very easy to do things like that. This country has been doing some very questionable things with enemy fighters for about a decade -- waterboarding, the forceable rendition to countries that torture suspects, so soldiers listen in on that conversation. I think it leaves them very confused about how to consider the people that we're fighting.</s>KAYE: General Marks, I want to ask you, I mean, what kind of role do the commanders play with this kind of behavior?</s>SPIDER MARKS, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Randi, the commanders' role is absolutely critical. The senior officer and the senior noncommissioned officer, they're the conscience of the unit, and when you think about what your conscience does for you individually is it guides you, and in moments of chaos and when no other guidance is there, you'll make a decision based on that, your learning, your experience, your culture. So the commanders set the tone. That's the climate that exists within that unit and soldiers who'll do what they're told to do, they'll act within the intent, within the bounds established by the commander. So, it's an absolutely critical role and it needs to be reinforced as a matter of routine.</s>KAYE: You know, all this great technology isn't so great on the battlefield when you see something like this happen. I mean, we've seen these pictures taken on camera phones and devices like that, but really, General, can the military stop the troops from carrying them, or are they actually a part of the necessary equipment nowadays on the battlefield?</s>MARKS: I think it's the latter. In my personal experience, cell phones were in many cases -- we told soldiers you have to put those things away, but you can't check that, and so if a soldier feels like he or she wants to take that cell phone with them, they can take them. Now, access to the Internet is something entirely different. Certainly that's established and can be turned on and turned off, but in many cases, these types of very small miniturized camera capabilities are in phones and that they have individually are part of the kit. They do biometrics exams. They can take retina exams, and in fact that's what these soldiers were charged to do is to get fingerprints and to do some retinal pictures of, sadly, these severed parts. So, that is something that is really part of the enviornment and needs to be adjusted, needs to be accommodated, really.</s>KAYE: Yeah, because it can be shared so easily as well, and then here we are. Sebastian, what about the negative publicity? I mean, how do you think that affects the troops there? I mean, you've spent time with them, so how do you think this is affecting the team there?</s>JUNGER: Well, I mean, anything like this, I think, is horrifying to a lot of soldiers and should be. This is not good behavior. It's interesting in that photo, from what I could see, there were also Afghan security personnel posing along with American soldiers, so I'm not sure that there really is a kind of Afghan-American cultural divide here, at least in this instance. The worst thing you can do as a soldier is do something that increases the risk to yourself and others on the battlefield, and what we saw with the burning of the Korans was a huge sort of backlash in public opinion in Afghanistan that may have helped some young Afghans join up with the Taliban. I'm not sure that that's happening with these pictures. Afghans hate suicide bombers, because they are the primary casualties of them, so it would be interesting, actually, to be in Afghanistan right now to know what the opinion on the street is of this.</s>KAYE: General, I'd like to ask you on this final question -- we've been reporting about this increased drug use among troops in Afghanistan, heroin and prescription drugs. We've had eight soldiers have died from overdoses in the past two years, apparently, and the Army's also investigating more than 50 soldiers for possessing or distributing heroin and other drugs. Does any of this surprise you?</s>MARKS: Frankly, that is surprising, but I think it's important to note that this is a form of abberant behavior. It's illegal. It'll be corrected. None of that kind of surprises me in conditions like this. You'd hope that there would be sufficient discipline within the organizations down to the individual soldier, where this would be eliminated and they'd know not to do that. You can't correct all bad behavior, as Sebastian has indicated, so it is surprising kind of, but you see incidences like this when soldiers are deployed for this type of time, and clearly it's access. I mean, it's available, so you've got to weed those guys out immediately so the entire unit is not affected.</s>KAYE: Spider Marks, Sebastian Junger, thank you so much. It was a great conversation, and we have a lot of troops watching from around the world, so it's an important conversation to have as well. Thank you both.</s>MARKS: Thank you.</s>JUNGER: Thank you.</s>KAYE: And fans of Ted Williams will soon have a chance to own a piece of the baseball legend's personal life. Reynolds Wolf shows us how next.