"Cover my back."
"These were the same wounded from yesterday," I say to the lieutenant. He takes a look around and goes outside the mosque with his radio operator to call in the situation to Battalion Forward HQ.
I see an old man in a red kaffiyeh lying against the back wall. Another is face down next to him, his hand on the old man's lap — as if he were trying to take cover. I squat beside them, inches away and begin to videotape them. Then I notice that the blood coming from the old man's nose is bubbling. A sign he is still breathing. So is the man next to him.
While I continue to tape, a Marine walks up to the other two bodies about fifteen feet away, but also lying against the same back wall.
Then I hear him say this about one of the men:
"He's fucking faking he's dead — he's faking he's fucking dead."
Through my viewfinder I can see him raise the muzzle of his rifle in the direction of the wounded Iraqi. There are no sudden movements, no reaching or lunging.
However, the Marine could legitimately believe the man poses some kind of danger. Maybe he's going to cover him while another Marine searches for weapons.
Instead, he pulls the trigger. There is a small splatter against the back wall and the man's leg slumps down.
"Well he's dead now," says another Marine in the background.
I am still rolling. I feel the deep pit of my stomach. The Marine then abruptly turns away and strides away, right past the fifth wounded insurgent lying next to a column. He is very much alive and peering from his blanket. He is moving, even trying to talk. But for some reason, it seems he did not pose the same apparent "danger" as the other man — though he may have been more capable of hiding a weapon or explosive beneath his blanket....
Kevin Sites | Open Letter to Devil Dogs of the 3.1
I hope Kevin Sites is watching his back. Blogs that have appeared on the internet since the freelance cameraman filmed a US Marine shooting and killing a wounded and prostrate Iraqi in Falluja do not make comfortable reading.
While Sites has many supporters, it is his detractors who are most chillingly eye-catching, suggesting they would like to do to him what the Marine he filmed did to the injured Iraqi. 'The Marines should have shot that goat-tee [sic] m***** f***** Kevin Sites,' said one message posted last week, while a second ventured: 'Kevin Sites should have a bullet in his f****** face.'
Suddenly, the freelance cameraman, veteran of Kosovo, Afghanistan and now Iraq, has found himself in the middle of a controversy that he did not invite and could not avoid - facing a petition of 24,000 names supporting the Marine who pulled the trigger and damning Sites to boot.
Peter Beaumont in The Observer | Why embedded journalists are being taken for a ride
These terrorists do not follow the rules of war. These terrorists kill innocent women by disemboweling them, cut of the heads of innocent truck drivers, detonate car bombs in crowds full of innocent people, and fly planes into buildings filled with innocent Americans.
It is my opinion that NOTHING should happen to this American Marine. He should be returned to his unit or be given an honorable discharge. We don't need our young men and women taking an extra second to decide if its right to shoot an enemy terrorist when that could mean that one of our soldiers could lose their life. The lives of our soldiers should be the single most important factor in this war against terrorism. The rights of terrorists can come second.
Petition to U.S. Congress
The above online petition (and its duplicate—yeah, you can sign both) in 'support' of the Marine withdrawn from active duty pending investigation into the death of one of four defenseless Iraqi fighters shot dead in Fallujah [.ram], has 155,000 signatories to date. And uncorroborated reports such as this, Insurgents (sic) Faking Dead Fires on Marines, filed today from the Headquarters United States Central Command (CentCom) and replicated by ABC News Online, suggest the likely outcome of the military investigating one of its own.
On the upside, tens of millions of readers support responsible journalism. It allows us to know what is going on about us. It allows our societies to continue functioning. As the NBC cameraman's blog entry shows and Peter Beaumont's article points out, Kevin Sites is a responsible, courageous journalist.
Note: Michael Schwartz plots the unravelling of the American 'conquest' of Fallujah, Xinhuanet reports resistance fighters holding 60 percent of the city, Abbas Ahmed Ibrahim offers a view from within (as does Xinhuanet's Abdul Rahman), and Dahr Jamail details further indiscriminate slaughter by U.S. troops in Ramadi.
Related (added 11.23.2004)
The videotaped shooting of a Fallujah combatant by a U-S Marine has evoked strong emotions in the Arab world and on Capitol Hill.
Texas Democrat Sylvestre Reyes ... says it's time to rethink the presence of embedded reporters in combat zones. During a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, Reyes compared it to a football game, saying "we don't want to know everything that's going on on the field." Reyes says this is not censorship. In his words, "We should not be providing the Al-Jazeera the kind of propaganda they've had the last couple of three days."
Associated Press | Fallujah Video has congressman calling for reporter ban
