The timing of the account seems a little internally inconsistent. Sites’ description of, apparently, the first time the battalion stormed the mosque was that it was on “Saturday”, but later it seems more likely that it was on Friday… Maybe late-night Friday / early-morning Sat?
Anyway, that was when they left five wounded insurgents behind them inside the mosque, with no record that any first-aid had been offered to them. A violation of the Geneva Conventions. (Or, two violations.)
The marines also “displayed” the arms they’d found in the mosque at the time, which meant that the arms were in the Marines’ hands, not those of the insurgents. Almost certainly, the wounded insurgents were disarmed at that time. They were also apparently immobile, since they were simply “left behind in the mosque for other Marines to evacuate for treatment”.
No such evacuation occurred, however. (Did the attacking squad call in to the medics to make such an evacuation? That wd be crucial evidence of their intent.)
On Saturday, two units that “were not involved in Friday’s fighting” returned to the mosque, approaching it from two different sides. Sites was, obviously, traveling with only one of the two units and apparently could not see what the other unit was doing. He said he could hear gunfire from inside. He heard a Marine confirm that he had shot the people inside the mosque:
“Did you shoot them?” the lieutenant asked.
“Roger that, sir,” the second Marine replied.
“Were they armed?” the lieutenant asked.
The second Marine shrugged in reply.
I take it that’s a “No.”
When Sites entered the mosque, he saw the five people he’d seen left there the day before, and four of them “had been shot again, apparently by members of the squad that entered the mosque moments earlier.” He didn’t report seeing any other Iraqis in the mosque (such as might have been armed and shot at the squad that entered.)
In other words, four of the five wounded insurgents who’d been left there the day before, presumably already disarmed, immobile, and “awaiating medical evacuation”, had been summarily shot.
Four massive violations of the GC’s.
And then, Sites saw one Marine shoot one of the wounded men in cold blood. (Which is what we saw on the t.v. clip.)
Another violation of the GC’s. Possibly, the seventh such violation that Sites had talked about in his testimony so far.
Someone–presumably Sites– then told the shooter that his mvictim had been a wounded prisoner, and the Marine told Sites: “I didn’t know, sir. I didn’t know.”
So, huge numbers of violations there need to be investigated, and it seems clear it is not only the one shooter whom Sites had caught on tape whose actions should be investigated.
I want to express a massive thank-you to Kevin Sites for having stuck closely to journalistic and humanitarian ethics in this whole incident. I am sure that, for journalists who are embedded with fighting formations in circumstances that for all of them are very scary, there is a huge temptation to ignore or downplay the “excesses” that the embedded-in units might commit “in the heat of battle”. Sites resisted that temptation.
In addition, he knew enough about the distinctions contained in the Geneva Conventions that he could clearly recognize that the wounded insurgents did indeed qualify as wounded POWs (since they had previously been disarmed by the US forces, and the original capturing unit had asserted the US forces’ responsibility for them by promising a medical evacuation for them), and therefore that shooting them was an act for which the shooter should be reproached. Indeed, shooting them was a clear war crime.
So, Kevin: big thanks to you.
And the rest of us: let’s figure out what we can do to get humanitarian access into Fallujah and the other beleaguered cities absolutely as soon as possible.
The Iraqis were prisoners from the day before. They were taken prisoner and disarmed by another group of Marines and then left, wounded and bleeding.
I’m curious as to how the accounting by Kevin Sites got so garbled, to the point I’m getting numerous emails demonstrating the same error. I know the real story isn’t pleasant, but I don’t believe Phil Carter would write the article he did unless he had been convinced by someone credible that the story was as he related it. Unfortunately, it isn’t.
