{"id":2069,"date":"2005-05-05T00:30:34","date_gmt":"2005-05-05T07:30:34","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-05-05T00:30:34","modified_gmt":"2005-05-05T07:30:34","slug":"fallujah-mosque-shooting-revelation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2005\/05\/05\/fallujah-mosque-shooting-revelation\/","title":{"rendered":"Fallujah Mosque shooting revelation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I really can’t think of anything to say about this <\/a>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.<\/p>\n

\"Fallujahroad\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

  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.<\/p>\n

  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.<\/p>\n

  But after an exhaustive five-month investigation, Sattler ruled the Marine had fired his weapon in self-defense, the network said.<\/p>\n

  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
\nfor his life when he fired the shots.<\/p>\n

  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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

        <\/p>\n

Maybe this will help.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

For public consumption, U.S. military officers \u2013 like their civilian
\n  bosses and American journalists \u2013 usually discuss this war in secular, even antiseptic terms. When the Times<\/em> 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.”<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

That statement by Brandl \u2013 an officer with 800 soldiers under his command \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

Providing a fuller, more revealing quote from Lt. Col. Brandl, the Sunday Times<\/em> 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…”<\/p>\n

In other words, Satan started this conflict. And we \u2013 the anti-Satan forces \u2013 fully intend to finish it by destroying him.<\/p>\n

Sounds very fundamentalist.<\/p>\n

Sounds a lot like Osama bin Laden.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2069"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}