I really can’t think of anything to say about this that I haven’t said before. The only thing I can point out is that apparently four unarmed, wounded people were executed rather than the one we saw on the tape.
The U.S. military has cleared a Marine who shot three unarmed insurgents in a mosque at the height of fighting in Fallujah, Iraq, in November, NBC News reported Wednesday.
Marine commander Lt. Gen. John Sattler has ruled the soldier involved fired his weapon in self-defense – and no charges will be filed against him, according to NBC.
The shootings occurred at a mosque during an intense street-to-street battle for Fallujah. Caught on tape by an NBC camera, a squad of Marines entered the mosque to investigate reports of enemy gunfire. Inside, they found four enemy insurgents, wounded in a firefight the day before.
A Marine corporal who noticed one of the insurgents was still breathing raised his rifle and fired a single shot into the man’s head. Military officials now report that same corporal shot three of the unarmed insurgents inside the mosque, NBC reported.
But after an exhaustive five-month investigation, Sattler ruled the Marine had fired his weapon in self-defense, the network said.
Sources told NBC News the decision was based on the fact the Marines had been warned that the enemy would feign death and booby-trap bodies as a tactic to lure Marines to their deaths. The sources said the corporal apparently feared
for his life when he fired the shots.NBC added that the investigation is not over. At least one other Marine remains under investigation for shooting a fourth unarmed insurgent in that same mosque.
Maybe this will help.
For public consumption, U.S. military officers – like their civilian
bosses and American journalists – usually discuss this war in secular, even antiseptic terms. When the Times quoted Marine battalion commander Gary Brandl in another front-page story, on Nov. 6, the lieutenant colonel sounded straightforward: “We are going to rid the city of insurgents. If they do fight, we will kill them.”However, on the same day, the Associated Press reported that the same Lt. Col. Brandl said: “The enemy has got a face. He’s called Satan. He’s in Fallujah, and we’re going to destroy him.”
That statement by Brandl – an officer with 800 soldiers under his command – caused a bit of stir in some Internet circles. But mainstream U.S. media outlets scarcely noted his holy-warrior declaration. Most news outlets ignored it entirely.
Providing a fuller, more revealing quote from Lt. Col. Brandl, the Sunday Times of London included a lead-in sentence: “The Marines that I have had wounded over the past five months have been attacked by a faceless enemy. But the enemy has got a face. He’s called Satan…”
In other words, Satan started this conflict. And we – the anti-Satan forces – fully intend to finish it by destroying him.
Sounds very fundamentalist.
Sounds a lot like Osama bin Laden.