The photographs, which blistered across the Internet after they were posted on amateur wife and girlfriend site NowThatsFuckedUp.com, included several shots of mutilated and burned bodies, many of which were featured posed alongside men in U.S. Army uniforms.
News agencies across the country reported on the story, sparking so much traffic to the site it occasionally had to shut down.
But the Army Criminal Investigation Command, after studying the photographs and interviewing Army personnel, said there was no proof that members of the military were responsible.
“We're not blowing this off,” said Col Joe Curtin, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon. “If the Army thinks it's in its interest to investigate something, we will.”
But members of The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who initially called for the investigation into the photographs, are not happy. In a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld earlier this month, members of CAIR asked the Pentagon to “investigate this troubling phenomenon and do whatever is necessary to bring it to an end.”
Something the government has so far failed to do, according to the group.
“It's entirely inappropriate for the military to do such a cursory investigation of something that is really casting a very negative light on our nation's military and can only serve to further damage America's image and interests throughout the Islamic world,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the group.