Panetta warns troops: Scandals "can cost lives"

“These days, it takes only seconds for a picture, a photo, to suddenly become an international headline,” Panetta said.

“And those headlines can impact the mission that we’re engaged in. They can put your fellow service members at risk. They can hurt morale. They can damage our standing in the world. And they can cost lives.”

Panetta’s speech was his first public attempt at a direct appeal to troops to avoid the sorts of incidents that have generated a host of bad press for the U.S. mission in Afghanistan…

Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of Staff, said that “maybe we’ve gotten overconfident and maybe we’ve gotten a little bit comfortable in our young leaders,” in an interview with the Associated Press Thursday.