Defense Secretary Leon Panetta apologized today for the “foolish decisions” of the American soldiers who posed for photographs today with corpses of dead Afghans.

“My apology is on behalf of the Department of Defense and the U.S. Government,” Panetta said told reporters today. “I know that young people sometimes caught up in the moment make some very foolish decisions. I am not excusing that. That’s – I’m not excusing that behavior. But neither do I want these images to bring further injury to our people or to our relationship with the Afghan people,” he also said.