WASHINGTON (AP) — Pentagon officials worry that outrage over a video purporting to depict Marines urinating on Taliban corpses will tarnish the reputation of the entire military. Some also fear it could undermine prospects for exploratory Afghan peace talks.

After roundly condemning the Marines’ alleged behavior, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and top military leaders on Thursday promised a full investigation and sought to contain the damage at home and abroad.

Panetta also said the incident could endanger the outlook for peace talks, although the Obama administration and the Taliban each voiced readiness Thursday to try peace talks while pledging to carry on the military conflict until their rival objectives are met. The separate statements by senior American and Taliban officials illustrated the improved environment for Afghan reconciliation efforts as well as the daunting task ahead.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the law enforcement arm of the Navy, is heading the main inquiry, which is expected to weigh evidence of violations of the U.S. military legal code as well as the international laws of warfare. Separately, the Marine Corps is doing its own internal investigation.

By Thursday evening, the NCIS had interviewed two of the four Marines appearing in the video. At the time they were filmed urinating on the bodies, the four were members of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, which fought in the southern Afghan province of Helmand for seven months before returning to their home base at Camp Lejeune, N.C., last September.

Two of the four, plus the commander of the battalion, had moved on to other assignments before the video appeared on the Internet, according to Marine Corps officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss an active investigation.

Even Thursday’s emergence of the Internet video depicting Marines urinating on what appear to be Afghan corpses didn’t seem to immediately set back movement toward exploratory negotiations with the Taliban. Asked about possible implications for peace talks, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. remained strongly committed to supporting Afghan efforts.

Panetta, however, said the incident could endanger the talks.

“The danger is that this kind of video can be misused in many ways to undermine what we are trying to do in Afghanistan and the possibility of reconciliation,” Panetta said at Fort Bliss, Texas, adding it’s important for the U.S. to move quickly to “send a clear signal to the world that the U.S. will not tolerate this kind of behavior and that is not what the U.S. is all about.”

Before he left Washington for his troop visit to Fort Bliss, Panetta called President Hamid Karzai to promise a full investigation of the video affair and condemned the Marines’ behavior as “entirely inappropriate.”

As the video spread across the Internet in postings and re-postings, U.S. officials joined with Afghans in calling it shocking, deplorable, inhumane and a breach of military standards of conduct. It shows men in Marine combat gear standing in a semicircle urinating on the bodies of three men in standard Afghan clothing, one whose chest was covered in blood.

It’s not certain whether the dead were Taliban fighters, civilians or someone else.

The incident will likely further hurt ties with Karzai’s government and complicate negotiations over a strategic partnership arrangement meant to govern the presence of U.S. troops and advisers in Afghanistan after most international combat troops withdraw by the end of 2014.

Anti-American sentiment is already on the rise in Afghanistan, especially among Afghans who have not seen improvements to their daily lives despite billions of dollars in international aid. They also have deplored the accidental killing of civilians during NATO airstrikes and argue that foreign troops have culturally offended the Afghan people, mostly when it comes to activities involving women and the Quran, the Muslim holy book.

Pentagon officials said the criminal investigation would likely look into whether the Marines violated laws of war, which include prohibitions against photographing or mishandling bodies and detainees. It also appeared to violate the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs conduct. Thus, some or all of the four Marines could face a military court-martial or other disciplinary action.

Karzai called the video “completely inhumane.” The Afghan Defense Ministry called it “shocking.” And the Taliban issued a statement accusing U.S. forces of committing numerous “indignities” against the Afghan people.

Panetta said the actions depicted in the brief video were inexcusable.

“I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior depicted in it utterly deplorable. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms,” Panetta’s statement said. “Those found to have engaged in such conduct will be held accountable to the fullest extent.”

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, said he was deeply disturbed by the video and worried that it would erode the reputation of the entire military, not just the Marine Corps.

On the streets of Afghanistan, the reaction was cool.

“If these actions continue, people will not like them (the Americans) anymore and there will be uprising against them,” Mohammad Qayum, said while watching a television news story about the video that was airing in a local restaurant in Kabul.

Ahmad Naweed, a shopkeeper in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban insurgency, said, “On the one hand, the Americans present themselves as friends of Afghanistan and … they also try to have peace talks with the Taliban. So we don’t know what kind of political game they are playing in Afghanistan.”

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Associated Press writers Pauline Jelinek in Washington and Deb Riechmann in Kabul contributed to this report.

Robert Burns can be reached on Twitter at

ATLANTA (AP) — Those cute mail-order chicks that wind up in children’s Easter baskets and backyard farms have been linked to more than 300 cases of salmonella in the U.S. — mostly in youngsters — since 2004.

An estimated 50 million live poultry are sold through the mail each year in the United States in a business that has been booming because of the growing popularity of backyard chicken farming as a hobby among people who like the idea of raising their own food.

But health officials are warning of a bacterial threat on the birds’ feet, feathers, beaks and eggs.

NEW YORK (AP) — Leo Dillon, the groundbreaking illustrator who collaborated with his wife, Diane, on dozens of books for kids and adults and became the first African-American to win the Caldecott Medal for children’s books, has died. He was 79.

Dillon died May 26 at Long Island College Hospital from complications after lung surgery, publisher Scholastic Inc. announced Wednesday. Harlan Ellison, a close friend, wrote on his website that “Half my soul for 50 years went with him.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is moving to impose stiff new tariffs on wind-energy towers made in China, the latest strike in an escalating trade war over clean energy.

The Commerce Department said in a preliminary decision Wednesday that Chinese companies have received government subsidies on steel wind towers ranging from about 14 percent to 26 percent. The decision could result in tariffs of those amounts being imposed on about a dozen Chinese companies that export large numbers of steel wind towers to the United States.

It follows a Commerce Department decision this month to impose tariffs averaging about 31 percent on solar cells and panels imported from China.

China has called the U.S. action on solar equipment unfair and warned that higher tariffs could hurt efforts to promote clean energy.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration added new sanctions on a Syrian bank Wednesday as a top White House official said the U.S. wants to economically throttle the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and cut off salaries of pro-government thugs blamed for the grisly massacre in Houla.

The Treasury Department said the Syria International Islamic Bank has been acting as a front for other Syrian financial institutions seeking to circumvent sanctions. The new penalties will prohibit the SIIB from engaging in financial transactions in the U.S. and will freeze any assets under U.S. jurisdiction.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says the price tag on proposed fixes to Montana’s Fort Peck Dam following major flooding along the Missouri River could top $225 million.

But with money short, Corps officials said Wednesday they will be able to afford only $46 million in interim fixes for now.

Record snowfalls and massive spring rains in Wyoming and Montana last year prompted the release of unprecedented volumes of water from the Corps’ six Missouri River dams.

The torrent damaged Fort Peck’s spillway gates and eroded areas downstream from the dam, located at the top of the Missouri River system.

Fort Peck Project Manager John Daggett says the planned repairs will ensure the spillway can be used to safely release water during future flooding.