The_Jazz, I found will's position to be less naive and less "unfamiliar with the way the world actually works."..... and not trolling at all. What is a fair way to describe a post in response to willravel's that can be distilled to, "you're probably too young to know what you are talking about"?
Yes, a corporal shot the Iraqi in the video, but it was the Marines command and judicial administration that failed to follow up by really investigating what was documented in the video, and it was the USMC that attacked the journalist who videotaped and reported the incident..... they make their reputation, and there has been no justice in these incidents, (and we only know or the incidents that have not been successfully covered up....)commensurate with a "liberating force", they and their CIC propagandize that they are in Iraq to accomplish, in the first place.
There is also the decision to ignore this life saving weapon:
Quote:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/...65_page3.shtml
The Pentagon's Ray Gun
David Martin Reports On A Non-Lethal Weapon Straight Out Of Buck Rogers
Comments 213 | Page 3 of 4
June 1, 2008
....But Sid Heal, a former Marine who has followed the ray gun's progress for nearly a decade, says the potential for abuse is not what's holding it up. It’s something else: cowardice.
"There's no other way of saying it. You could try to save people’s life with a non lethal weapon and fail and it’ll still be noble. But failing to try is cowardly. . . That is completely unacceptable," Heal explains.
Heal was once the Marine Corps' point man for non lethal weapons. He took them to Somalia in 1995 after America’s ill-fated attempt to relieve the famine there had degenerated into a shooting war.
"It's very difficult to make a case for a humanitarian operation if the only way you have of imposing your will is by killing the people you’re sent to protect," Heal says.
Heal has tried to teach Marines to use everything from sticky foam to lasers.
"A major came up to me and said that the Marine Corps wasn't overly thrilled with the whole non-lethal concept. And his idea was, is that the Marine Corps’ idea of force escalation went from M-16 to F-16. How many people we could kill and how fast we could do it."
The non-lethal weapons Heal works with at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department today are no more advanced than what he had in Somalia 13 years ago.....
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Jazz
Agreed. Marines are not murderers. If they are, they go to jail.
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Jazz
And others consider those same folks naive and unfamiliar with the way the world actually works.
Not to mention that on TFP that kind of thing can fit into the "troll post" catagory.
|
Quote:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=4646406
David Banks, NPR
Kevin Sites at the studios of NPR West in Culver City, Calif.
Day to Day, May 10, 2005 · Alex Chadwick talks with freelance journalist Kevin Sites about footage he videotaped last November in Iraq that appeared to show a U.S. Marine shooting an unarmed Iraqi in a Fallujah mosque.
The U.S. Marine Corps announced that it won’t prosecute that Marine corporal, who was not identified, for his actions.
Sites was on assignment for NBC on Nov. 13, 2004, and was following a squad into a mosque that the day before insurgents were using to fire on U.S. troops. The Marines were part of a U.S.-led offensive to clear Fallujah of its insurgent strongholds.
Sites' video shows five men wounded from the previous day's fighting lying on the floor of the mosque. One Marine can be heard shouting to others that a man was only "playing dead."
The Marine corporal in question appears to fire a round from his weapon into the Iraqi's head, and another Marine says, "Dead now."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6556034/
What happened in the Fallujah mosque
NBC correspondent writes about the killing of an injured Iraqi
Conflict in Iraq video
Kevin Sites
Correspondent
OPEN LETTER TO MARINES
By Kevin Sites
Correspondent
NBC News
updated 7:14 p.m. ET, Wed., May. 4, 2005
This story was originally published on Nov. 22, 2004
Since the shooting in the mosque, I've been haunted that I have not been able to tell you directly what I saw or explain the process by which the world came to see it as well. As you know, I'm not some war-zone tourist with a camera who doesn't understand that ugly things happen in combat. I've spent most of the last five years covering global conflict. But I have never in my career been a "gotcha" reporter -- hoping for people to commit wrongdoings so I can catch them at it.
This week I've even been shocked to see myself painted as some kind of anti-war activist. Anyone who has seen my reporting on television or has read my dispatches is fully aware of the lengths I've gone to play it straight down the middle -- not to become a tool of propaganda for the left or the right.
But I find myself a lightning rod for controversy in reporting what I saw occur in front of me, camera rolling.
It's time you have the facts from me, in my own words, about what I saw -- without imposing on that Marine -- guilt or innocence or anything in between. I want you to read my account and make up your own minds about whether you think what I did was right or wrong. All the other armchair analysts don't mean a damn to me.
Here it goes.
Nov. 13, 2004
It's Saturday morning and we're still at our strong point from the night before, a clearing between a set of buildings on the southern edge of the city. The advance has been swift, but pockets of resistance still exist. In fact, we're taking sniper fire from both the front and the rear.
Weapons Company uses its 81's (mortars) where they spot muzzle flashes. The tanks do some blasting of their own. By mid-morning, we're told we're moving north again. We'll be back clearing some of the area we passed yesterday. There are also reports that the mosque, where 10 insurgents were killed and five wounded on Friday, may have been re-occupied overnight.
I decide to leave you guys and pick up with one of the infantry squads as they move house-to-house back toward the mosque. (For their own privacy and protection I will not name or identify in any way, any of those I was traveling with during this incident.)
Many of the structures are empty of people -- but full of weapons. Outside one residence, a member of the squad lobs a frag grenade over the wall. Everyone piles in, including me.
While the Marines go into the house, I follow the flames caused by the grenade into the courtyard. When the smoke clears, I can see through my viewfinder that the fire is burning beside a large pile of anti-aircraft rounds.
I yell to the lieutenant that we need to move. Almost immediately after clearing out of the house, small explosions begin as the rounds cook off in the fire.
At that point, we hear the tanks firing their 240-machine guns into the mosque. There's radio chatter that insurgents inside could be shooting back. The tanks cease fire and we file through a breach in the outer wall.
We hear gunshots from what seems to be coming from inside the mosque. A Marine from my squad yells, "Are there Marines in here?"
When we arrive at the front entrance, we see that another squad has already entered before us.
The lieutenant asks them, "Are there people inside?"
One of the Marines raises his hand signaling five.
"Did you shoot them," the lieutenant asks?
"Roger that, sir, “the same Marine responds.
"Were they armed?" The Marine just shrugs and we all move inside.
Yet when this new squad engaged the wounded insurgents on Saturday, perhaps really believing they had been fighting or somehow posed a threat -- those Marines inside knew from their training to check the insurgents for weapons and explosives after disabling them, instead of leaving them where they were and waiting outside the mosque for the squad I was following to arrive.
During the course of these events, there were plenty of mitigating circumstances like the ones just mentioned and which I reported in my story. The Marine who fired the shot had reportedly been shot in the face himself the day before.
I'm also well aware from many years as a war reporter that there have been times, especially in this conflict, when dead and wounded insurgents have been booby-trapped, even supposedly including an incident that happened just a block away from the mosque in which one Marine was killed and five others wounded. Again, a detail that was clearly stated in my television report.
No one, especially someone like me who has lived in a war zone with you, would deny that a soldier or Marine could legitimately err on the side of caution under those circumstances. War is about killing your enemy before he kills you.
In the particular circumstance I was reporting, it bothered me that the Marine didn't seem to consider the other insurgents a threat -- the one very obviously moving under the blanket, or even the two next to me that were still breathing.
I can't know what was in the mind of that Marine. He is the only one who does.
According to Lt. Col Bob Miller, the rules of engagement in Fallujah required soldiers or Marines to determine hostile intent before using deadly force. I was not watching from a hundred feet away. I was in the same room. Aside from breathing, I did not observe any movement at all.
Making sure you know the basis for my choices after the incident is as important to me as knowing how the incident went down. I did not in any way feel like I had captured some kind of "prize" video. In fact, I was heartsick. Immediately after the mosque incident, I told the unit's commanding officer what had happened. I shared the video with him, and its impact rippled all the way up the chain of command. Marine commanders immediately pledged their cooperation.
We all knew it was a complicated story, and if not handled responsibly, could have the potential to further inflame the volatile region. I offered to hold the tape until they had time to look into incident and begin an investigation -- providing me with information that would fill in some of the blanks.
For those who don't practice journalism as a profession, it may be difficult to understand why we must report stories like this at all -- especially if they seem to be aberrations, and not representative of the behavior or character of an organization as a whole.
The answer is not an easy one.
In war, as in life, there are plenty of opportunities to see the full spectrum of good and evil that people are capable of. As journalists, it is our job is to report both -- though neither may be fully representative of those people on whom we're reporting. For example, acts of selfless heroism are likely to be as unique to a group as the darker deeds. But our coverage of these unique events, combined with the larger perspective — will allow the truth of that situation, in all of its complexities, to begin to emerge. That doesn't make the decision to report events like this one any easier. It has, for me, led to an agonizing struggle -- the proverbial long, dark night of the soul.
Pool footage
I knew NBC would be responsible with the footage. But there were complications. We were part of a video "pool" in Fallujah, and that obligated us to share all of our footage with other networks. I had no idea how our other "pool" partners might use the footage. I considered not feeding the tape to the pool -- or even, for a moment, destroying it. But that thought created the same pit in my stomach that witnessing the shooting had. It felt wrong. Hiding this wouldn't make it go away. There were other people in that room. What happened in that mosque would eventually come out. I would be faced with the fact that I had betrayed truth as well as a life supposedly spent in pursuit of it.
When NBC aired the story 48 hours later, we did so in a way that attempted to highlight every possible mitigating issue for that Marine's actions. We wanted viewers to have a very clear understanding of the circumstances surrounding the fighting on that frontline. Many of our colleagues were just as responsible. Other foreign networks made different decisions, and because of that, I have become the conflicted conduit who has brought this to the world.
The Marines have built their proud reputation on fighting for freedoms like the one that allows me to do my job, a job that in some cases may appear to discredit them. But both the leaders and the grunts in the field like you understand that if you lower your standards, if you accept less, than less is what you'll become.
There are people in our own country that would weaken your institution and our nation — by telling you it's okay to betray our guiding principles by not making the tough decisions, by letting difficult circumstances turns us into victims or worse ... villains.
I interviewed your Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Willy Buhl, before the battle for Fallujah began. He said something very powerful at the time — something that now seems prophetic. It was this,
"We're the good guys. We are Americans. We are fighting a gentleman's war here -- because we don't behead people, we don't come down to the same level of the people we're combating. That's a very difficult thing for a young 18-year-old Marine who's been trained to locate, close with and destroy the enemy with fire and close combat. That's a very difficult thing for a 42-year-old lieutenant colonel with 23 years experience in the service who was trained to do the same thing once upon a time, and who now has a thousand-plus men to lead, guide, coach, mentor -- and ensure we remain the good guys and keep the moral high ground."
I listened carefully when he said those words. I believed them.
So here, ultimately, is how it all plays out: when the Iraqi man in the mosque posed a threat, he was your enemy; when he was subdued he was your responsibility; when he was killed in front of my eyes and my camera -- the story of his death became my responsibility.
The burdens of war, as you so well know, are unforgiving for all of us.
I pray for your soon and safe return.
Kevin Sites is an NBC News correspondent. The letter first appeared on his personal blog www.kevinsites.net under the title "Open Letter to Devil Dogs of the 3.1."
|
I think if willravel had narrowed his response to "too many murderers in those ranks, and too much of an urge, by the command, to cover up and whitewash the implications of that, let alone administer fair and timely justice to all the guilty, regardless of rank, especially considering they purport to be a liberating force in Iraq."... and I could agree with what he posted and why he posted it. |
