"For filming events as they happened?"
That is NOT what he did. He CREATED the scene.
He knew more about the situation than the Marines. He knew wounded had been left there. He did NOT tell the Marines this key information.
However he DID whisper into his mike as he was filming "these are the wounded who were left behind". I heard that when Hannity played the complete tape yest.
The Marine, after the shooting, exclaimed, I did not KNOW, SIR.
I.e. that these were wounded who had been disarmed. (However, someone else could have come into the bldg in the mean time in anycase.)
Seits DENIED the Marines important contextual information -- so he could film them going into the building, tension filled, not knowing what to expect. High drama.
So Seits set the stage, and let roll the camera. He CREATED this scene, then stood back to record it . . .
Not only is he guilty of putting a young Marine on the spot with fractions of a second to make a decision, he is MORE guilty than the Marine pulling the trigger -- because HE had more knowledge of the situation.
PLUS, if he thought a war crime was in the process of taking place, HE should have intervened, NOT stood there to record it on film, then LATER posture how UNFORTUNATE it was!! ANYONE has a moral duty to intervene.
He needs to be charged.
That's quite a conclusion. You must be a mind-reader. You are assuming that he knew that this current group of Marines didn't know the situation in the mosque and that he also knew how the Marines would react. Sites must be an evil genius.
PLUS, if he thought a war crime was in the process of taking place, HE should have intervened, NOT stood there to record it on film, then LATER posture how UNFORTUNATE it was!!
The shooting took about two seconds. Even if he had lightning-fast reflexes, what do you propose that he should have done to stop a battle-hardened, armed Marine?
He needs to be charged.
With what?
I heard the part of "these are the wounded who were left behind" quite clearly. I didn't interpret it as "whispering into the mike," personally, but I will listen to it again with that interpretation in mind. I had taken it that the Marines had just not listened to the cameraman.
This goes to my other point, which is, why should our forces have to rely on an embedded reporter to tell them that information? Why were these wounded not evacuated earlier? I think we just don't know enough about why this Marine didn't have enough information to make a proper response to the situation (since as you point out, after the shooting, I don't think that even his officer thought what he'd done was a "good thing"tm).