NPR has posted the unedited Sites video of the Fallujah mosque shooting, as well as an audio interview with Sites. The interview begins with a discussion of the reasons the US military declined to prosecute the Marine who shot the unarmed wounded Iraqi on tape.
Four other unarmed wounded Iraqis were executed in that mosque as well by Marines who arrived at the mosque just before the squad with which Sites was embedded. You hear Sites’ Marines ask, “Anyone in there? You shoot ’em? Were they armed?”
According to Sites, the five living Iraqis, along with ten corpses,had been left in the mosque the day before after having been treated for their injuries and disarmed. Sites entered the mosque and saw the Iraqis they had treated the day before lying on the floor bleeding to death. The two bodies you see in the foreground of Sites’ video are two of these Iraqis. As Sites filmed the two dying Iraqis, the next extraordinary scene unfolds. A Marine walks over to two other dying Iraqis and realizes one isn’t dead yet. After shouting that the man is “playing dead” and “fucking faking it” he splatters the man’s brains against the wall with a shot from his weapon. Another Marine deapans, “Dead now.”
The most interesting part of the interview is Sites’ account of his situation once the tape had been made, both with regard to his relationship with the Marines and NBC as well as the vicious reaction from the “patriots” back in the US. For a sampling of the warbot hysteria we blogged about at the time, see here and here.
Via Dan Gilmore and Boing Boing.