Panetta to troops: Stop posing next to corpses

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta personally addressed the troops at one of the main U.S. Army posts in the country in an attempt to prevent any more of the embarrassing incidents, such as the recent episodes of soldiers desecrating Afghan corpses.

“These days it takes only seconds — seconds for a picture, a photo, to suddenly become an international headline,” Panetta said today in Fort Benning, Ga. “And those headlines can impact the mission that we’re engaged in . . .They can damage our standing in the world, and they can cost lives.”