An Oscar-winning screenwriter has done some hair-raising reporting about a group of soldiers who turned killing unarmed Afghans into a one-sided blood sport. Mark Boal, who won the Academy Award for best original screenplay for "The Hurt Locker," has written an angry, complex expose called "The Kill Team" (click here) for Rolling Stone. The subtitle summarizes the content brutally well: "how U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered civilians and mutilated their corpses -- and how their officers failed to stop them."

The piece is harrowing because it brings you frighteningly close to the corrupted psyches of "bored and angry and shell-shocked soldiers" in the 3rd Platoon of the 5th Stryker Brigade. They "couldn't tell the difference between local nationals and combatants" and viewed Afghans as "savages."

You turn the pages appalled and amazed at their monstrous cruelty and their ability to get away with it. "Even if the commanding officers were not co-conspirators or accomplices in the crimes," Boal writes, "They repeatedly ignored clear warning signals and allowed a lethally racist attitude to pervade their unit."

Boal's piece hasn't roused as much news coverage as the Rolling Stone cover story on Rihanna, "Pop's Queen of Pain." Are its revelations too much to bear in an apocalyptic news cycle? Boal and Rolling Stone, to their credit, don't overplay the Oscar card. But you'd think the media would pick up on an agonizing expose of atrocious misconduct by the author of "The Hurt Locker."

Photo of Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal at the Charles Theatre in 2009, by Barbara Haddock Taylor