Posted on 11/21/2004 4:58:22 PM PST by finnman69
Edited on 11/21/2004 5:01:54 PM PST by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
To Devil Dogs of the 3.1:
Since the shooting in the Mosque, I've been haunted that I have not been able to tell you directly what I saw or explain the process by which the world came to see it as well. As you know, I'm not some war zone tourist with a camera who doesn't understand that ugly things happen in combat. I've spent most of the last five years covering global conflict. But I have never in my career been a 'gotcha' reporter -- hoping for people to commit wrongdoings so I can catch them at it.
This week I've even been shocked to see myself painted as some kind of anti-war activist. Anyone who has seen my reporting on television or has read the dispatches on this website is fully aware of the lengths I've gone to play it straight down the middle -- not to become a tool of propaganda for the left or the right.
But I find myself a lightning rod for controversy in reporting what I saw occur in front of me, camera rolling.
It's time you to have the facts from me, in my own words, about what I saw -- without imposing on that Marine -- guilt or innocence or anything in between. I want you to read my account and make up your own minds about whether you think what I did was right or wrong. All the other armchair analysts don't mean a damn to me.
Here it goes.
It's Saturday morning and we're still at our strong point from the night before, a clearing between a set of buildings on the southern edge of the city. The advance has been swift, but pockets of resistance still exist. In fact, we're taking sniper fire from both the front and the rear.
Weapons Company uses its 81's (mortars) where they spot muzzle flashes. The tanks do some blasting of their own. By mid-morning, we're told we're moving north again. We'll be back clearing some of the area we passed yesterday. There are also reports that the mosque, where ten insurgents were killed and five wounded on Friday may have been re-occupied overnight.
I decide to leave you guys and pick up with one of the infantry squads as they move house-to-house back toward the mosque. (For their own privacy and protection I will not name or identify in any way, any of those I was traveling with during this incident.)
Many of the structures are empty of people -- but full of weapons. Outside one residence, a member of the squad lobs a frag grenade over the wall. Everyone piles in, including me.
While the Marines go into the house, I follow the flames caused by the grenade into the courtyard. When the smoke clears, I can see through my viewfinder that the fire is burning beside a large pile of anti-aircraft rounds.
I yell to the lieutenant that we need to move. Almost immediately after clearing out of the house, small explosions begin as the rounds cook off in the fire.
At that point, we hear the tanks firing their 240-machine guns into the mosque. There's radio chatter that insurgents inside could be shooting back. The tanks cease-fire and we file through a breach in the outer wall.
We hear gunshots from what seems to be coming from inside the mosque. A Marine from my squad yells, "Are there Marines in here?"
When we arrive at the front entrance, we see that another squad has already entered before us.
The lieutenant asks them, "Are there people inside?"
One of the Marines raises his hand signaling five.
"Did you shoot them," the lieutenant asks?
"Roger that, sir, " the same Marine responds.
"Were they armed?" The Marine just shrugs and we all move inside.
Immediately after going in, I see the same black plastic body bags spread around the mosque. The dead from the day before. But more surprising, I see the same five men that were wounded from Friday as well. It appears that one of them is now dead and three are bleeding to death from new gunshot wounds. The fifth is partially covered by a blanket and is in the same place and condition he was in on Friday, near a column. He has not been shot again. I look closely at both the dead and the wounded. There don't appear to be any weapons anywhere.
"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 ....... faking he's dead -- he's faking he's ....... 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.
But then two other marines in the room raise their weapons as the man tries to talk.
For a moment, I'm paralyzed still taping with the old man in the foreground. I get up after a beat and tell the Marines again, what I had told the lieutenant -- that this man -- all of these wounded men -- were the same ones from yesterday. That they had been disarmed treated and left here.
At that point the Marine who fired the shot became aware that I was in the room. He came up to me and said, "I didn't know sir-I didn't know." The anger that seemed present just moments before turned to fear and dread.
The wounded man then tries again to talk to me in Arabic.
He says, "Yesterday I was shot... please... yesterday I was shot over there -- and talked to all of you on camera -- I am one of the guys from this whole group. I gave you information. Do you speak Arabic? I want to give you information." (This man has since reportedly been located by the Naval Criminal Investigation Service which is handling the case.)
In the aftermath, the first question that came to mind was why had these wounded men been left in the mosque?
It was answered by staff judge advocate Lieutenant Colonel Bob Miller -- who interviewed the Marines involved following the incident. After being treated for their wounds on Friday by Navy Corpsman (I personally saw their bandages) the insurgents were going to be transported to the rear when time and circumstances allowed.
The area, however, was still hot. And there were American casualties to be moved first.
Also, the squad that entered the mosque on Saturday was different than the one that had led the attack on Friday.
It's reasonable to presume they may not have known that these insurgents had already been engaged and subdued a day earlier. Yet when this new squad engaged the wounded insurgents on Saturday, perhaps really believing they had been fighting or somehow posed a threat -- those Marines inside knew from their training to check the insurgents for weapons and explosives after disabling them, instead of leaving them where they were and waiting outside the mosque for the squad I was following to arrive.
During the course of these events, there was plenty of mitigating circumstances like the ones just mentioned and which I reported in my story. The Marine who fired the shot had reportedly been shot in the face himself the day before.
I'm also well aware from many years as a war reporter that there have been times, especially in this conflict, when dead and wounded insurgents have been booby-trapped, even supposedly including an incident that happened just a block away from the mosque in which one Marine was killed and five others wounded. Again, a detail that was clearly stated in my television report.
No one, especially someone like me who has lived in a war zone with you, would deny that a solider or Marine could legitimately err on the side of caution under those circumstances. War is about killing your enemy before he kills you.
In the particular circumstance I was reporting, it bothered me that the Marine didn't seem to consider the other insurgents a threat -- the one very obviously moving under the blanket, or even the two next to me that were still breathing.
I can't know what was in the mind of that Marine. He is the only one who does.
But observing all of this as an experienced war reporter who always bore in mind the dark perils of this conflict, even knowing the possibilities of mitigating circumstances -- it appeared to me very plainly that something was not right. According to Lt. Col Bob Miller, the rules of engagement in Falluja required soldiers or Marines to determine hostile intent before using deadly force. I was not watching from a hundred feet away. I was in the same room. Aside from breathing, I did not observe any movement at all.
Making sure you know the basis for my choices after the incident is as important to me as knowing how the incident went down. I did not in any way feel like I had captured some kind of "prize" video. In fact, I was heartsick. Immediately after the mosque incident, I told the unit's commanding officer what had happened. I shared the video with him, and its impact rippled all the way up the chain of command. Marine commanders immediately pledged their cooperation.
We all knew it was a complicated story, and if not handled responsibly, could have the potential to further inflame the volatile region. I offered to hold the tape until they had time to look into incident and begin an investigation -- providing me with information that would fill in some of the blanks.
For those who don't practice journalism as a profession, it may be difficult to understand why we must report stories like this at all -- especially if they seem to be aberrations, and not representative of the behavior or character of an organization as a whole.
The answer is not an easy one.
In war, as in life, there are plenty of opportunities to see the full spectrum of good and evil that people are capable of. As journalists, it is our job is to report both -- though neither may be fully representative of those people on whom we're reporting. For example, acts of selfless heroism are likely to be as unique to a group as the darker deeds. But our coverage of these unique events, combined with the larger perspective - will allow the truth of that situation, in all of its complexities, to begin to emerge. That doesn't make the decision to report events like this one any easier. It has, for me, led to an agonizing struggle -- the proverbial long, dark night of the soul.
I knew NBC would be responsible with the footage. But there were complications. We were part of a video "pool" in Falluja, and that obligated us to share all of our footage with other networks. I had no idea how our other "pool" partners might use the footage. I considered not feeding the tape to the pool -- or even, for a moment, destroying it. But that thought created the same pit in my stomach that witnessing the shooting had. It felt wrong. Hiding this wouldn't make it go away. There were other people in that room. What happened in that mosque would eventually come out. I would be faced with the fact that I had betrayed truth as well as a life supposedly spent in pursuit of it.
When NBC aired the story 48-hours later, we did so in a way that attempted to highlight every possible mitigating issue for that Marine's actions. We wanted viewers to have a very clear understanding of the circumstances surrounding the fighting on that frontline. Many of our colleagues were just as responsible. Other foreign networks made different decisions, and because of that, I have become the conflicted conduit who has brought this to the world.
The Marines have built their proud reputation on fighting for freedoms like the one that allows me to do my job, a job that in some cases may appear to discredit them. But both the leaders and the grunts in the field like you understand that if you lower your standards, if you accept less, than less is what you'll become.
There are people in our own country that would weaken your institution and our nation –by telling you it's okay to betray our guiding principles by not making the tough decisions, by letting difficult circumstances turns us into victims or worse…villains.
I interviewed your Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Willy Buhl, before the battle for Falluja began. He said something very powerful at the time-something that now seems prophetic. It was this:
"We're the good guys. We are Americans. We are fighting a gentleman's war here -- because we don't behead people, we don't come down to the same level of the people we're combating. That's a very difficult thing for a young 18-year-old Marine who's been trained to locate, close with and destroy the enemy with fire and close combat. That's a very difficult thing for a 42-year-old lieutenant colonel with 23 years experience in the service who was trained to do the same thing once upon a time, and who now has a thousand-plus men to lead, guide, coach, mentor -- and ensure we remain the good guys and keep the moral high ground."
I listened carefully when he said those words. I believed them.
So here, ultimately, is how it all plays out: when the Iraqi man in the mosque posed a threat, he was your enemy; when he was subdued he was your responsibility; when he was killed in front of my eyes and my camera -- the story of his death became my responsibility.
The burdens of war, as you so well know, are unforgiving for all of us.
I pray for your soon and safe return.
"I did not in any way feel like I had captured some kind of "prize" video. " The prize he is referring to is, of course, the Pulitzer Prize. Rather, Jennings and the rest of the Hate Bush MSM crowd will be sure to richly reward Mr. Sites for this coup. They do not care that it does irreparable damage to the Marines. It will be used as a cudgel against the Bush Administration for their efforts to liberate Iraq. Mr. Site's shouldn't worry. He will be a hero in Manhattan and Hollywood. It's the rest of the country that sees him as a traitor. But we don't count...
Sites is beneath contempt
"If he isn't beaten to a pulp someday by a Marine, Kevin Sites will be one truly lucky woman."
No offense, but have you ever considered that insulting a man - for whom you obviously have contempt - by comparing him to a woman implies that there's something inherently contemptible about women? Comparing women to this *sswipe hardly seems fair. And, yes, I am touchy.
Nearly 150 of my fellow FReepers posting so far and nary a one seems to be able to handle these truths:
1) just as at the outset of OIF, some of the fallujah 'insurgents' were pathetic conscripts who were coerced (at gunpoint and with threats to their families) to resist our 'invasion'
2) under certain circumstances, some uniformed americans have difficulty suppressing the sadistic tendencies that some of them harbor
Can't we admit our position that, after 9/11, any muslim who fails to recognize the rightness of our cause and thank us for their liberation bears some responsibility for every injury Americans have suffered at the hands of their terrorists? This includes muslims in the West and the civilian casualties in countries that harbored Bin Laden and allowed Saddam to fester.
Am I evil to relish the communication to the muslim world that their failure to cooperate in putting down the 'resistance' may result in their dying like dogs? Or foolish to think that this is a better message to send than that they can count on us to play by Queensbury rules?
Hey Kevin ... then why didn't you hold it till it was properly invesitgated??
Sorry .. but IMO this is a sorry excuse from this reporter and I am not buying it
When we repeatedly post his comments on his anti-war activities, and then he says he is not an anti-war activist...
He is a liar.
I don't doubt that. My post was meant to be sarcastic, told from Mr. Sites mind set, as only arrogance and contempt for his audience would allow Mr Sites' to think anyone would believe it. His letter is self-serving, vain and a ultimately a lie.
Ah yes, the preemptive denial. It is a classic 'tell' of a liar. Everything denied preemptively is true.
The truth is that by and large we have a very professional military in every sense of the word. We all understand that war is literally killing your enemy before he kills you, and there is nothing new in that regard. Our military is simply adapting to the circumstances of the battlefield. Waving the white flag and then firing. Booby trapping dead bodies. Playing dead to draw our men in close to kill them. These are tactics being used by the terrorists, and they need to know that they are regarded as a potential danger to our troops at any time regardless of their condition. Every dead terrorist is a very good thing for this country from a security standpoint, and from a personal standpoint I am very happy when we spill their savage animal blood. GO MARINES!!
This guy sounds strangely like John Kerry.
Another POS.
It's time you to have the facts ... All the other armchair analysts don't mean a damn to me.
Here it goes.
...we're taking sniper fire from both the front and the rear.
...There are also reports that the mosque, where ten insurgents were killed and five wounded on Friday may have been re-occupied overnight...
We hear gunshots from what seems to be coming from inside the mosque...
The lieutenant asks them, "Are there people inside?"
One of the Marines raises his hand signaling five.
"Did you shoot them," the lieutenant asks?
"Roger that, sir, " the same Marine responds.
"Were they armed?" The Marine just shrugs and we all move inside...
"These were the same wounded from yesterday," I say to the lieutenant...
I see an old man... Another is face down next to him...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...
Ah, I think this is what you call faking death! If I've got this straight so far, they were taking fire from the mosque that was supposedly cleared the night before, and they believed the enemy may have reoccupied the mosque, they re-enter and notice some are ominously still, un-cleared and unsecured. Bingo, do I have to read any more?
Then I hear him say this about one of the men:
"He's ....... faking he's dead -- he's faking he's ....... 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...
Memo to the naive, enemy-soldier-loving cameramen: wounded enemies faking death are not, I repeat not, expected to be moving, 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 feel the deep pit of my stomach...
...I'm paralyzed still taping with the old man in the foreground. I get up after a beat and tell the Marines again, what I had told the lieutenant -- that this man -- all of these wounded men -- were the same ones from yesterday. That they had been disarmed treated and left here...
Notice how he adds more to what he allegedly said to the Lieutenant when first entering the building ("These were the same wounded from yesterday," I say to the lieutenant).
In the aftermath, the first question that came to mind was why had these wounded men been left in the mosque?
It's obvious: THEY WERE FAKING DEATH -Just as the marine had surmised.
... the squad that entered the mosque on Saturday was different than the one that had led the attack on Friday.
...those Marines inside knew from their training to check the insurgents for weapons and explosives after disabling them, instead of leaving them where they were and waiting outside the mosque for the squad I was following to arrive...
In the particular circumstance I was reporting, it bothered me that the Marine didn't seem to consider the other insurgents a threat...
This may come a surprise or shock to you, Mr. Cameraman, but if that marine was thinking as I am, he did not give a d*mn about what bothers you when clearing out and securing that room from which the enemy was fighting.
...it appeared to me very plainly that something was not right. According to Lt. Col Bob Miller, the rules of engagement in Falluja required soldiers or Marines to determine hostile intent before using deadly force. I was not watching from a hundred feet away. I was in the same room. Aside from breathing, I did not observe any movement at all.
SFW, was it part of the rules of engagement to check with you before shooting enemy soldiers -huh, Mr. Cameraman?
...I did not in any way feel like I had captured some kind of "prize" video. In fact...Immediately after the mosque incident, I told the unit's commanding officer what had happened. I shared the video with him, and its impact rippled all the way up the chain of command...
If he didn't think he had some kind of "prize" video, why did he feel compelled to immediately show the commanding officer part of it?
We all knew it was a complicated story, and... could have the potential to further inflame the volatile region. I offered to hold the tape until they had time to look into incident and begin an investigation -- providing me with information that would fill in some of the blanks.
I guess it never occurred to you jacka$$ they were in the middle of a fierce battle to retake a city filled with enemy soldiers who were still fighting with them, and they did not have time to pu$$yfoot around with some tender-heart, enemy-sympathetic reporter.
For those who don't practice journalism as a profession, it may be difficult to understand why we must report stories like this at all...
The answer is not an easy one.
...there are plenty of opportunities to see the full spectrum of good and evil that people are capable of. As journalists, it is our job is to report both...
How nice to finish this up with a condescending lecture to us common folk about how being a journalist elevates one to a higher understanding of these novel concepts -yes, novel indeed.
... I had no idea how our other "pool" partners might use the footage. I considered not feeding the tape to the pool -- or even, for a moment, destroying it. But that thought created the same pit in my stomach that witnessing the shooting had. It felt wrong. Hiding this wouldn't make it go away...What happened in that mosque would eventually come out...
Yep, straight down the middle, you can see he's made no judgments at all about what he's filmed.
The Marines have built their proud reputation on fighting for freedoms like the one that allows me to do my job, a job that in some cases may appear to discredit them. But both the leaders and the grunts in the field like you understand that if you lower your standards, if you accept less, than less is what you'll become.
After all this, this SOB thinks he can now speak for marines.
...when the Iraqi man in the mosque posed a threat, he was your enemy; when he was subdued he was your responsibility; when he was killed in front of my eyes and my camera -- the story of his death became my responsibility.
The burdens of war, as you so well know, are unforgiving for all of us.
This is the most disingenuous, kiss my a$$, diatribe I've read in quite some while. I'm just praying that this glory hound gets a new ticket back to unit he's taken upon lecturing.
Excellent vetting, Chief.
So many posts! If this is redundant, sorry!
IMH0,no matter HOW he tries to rationalize it, he's SCUM who is trying to build a career on the bodies of US Troops; troops he helped to get killed. If anybody ever deserved to be "fragged" this guy is it. Where's a "friendly fire" "accident" when you need one?
NONE of these "insurgents" meet the criteria of legal combatants under the rules of land warfare, especially in light of their collective behavior(s).
They don't meet the criteria of "militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements..." as they are not( a)being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;(b)having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;(c)carrying arms OPENLY;(d)conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war and (3) are NOT Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power. these rules also state "as soon as a soldier (and these are NOT "soldiers" nor any other type of lawful combatant) is no longer able to fight, that person ceases to be a target."
Would that be before of after the bomb on which they are lying is detonated??
ANSWER: "in the blanket protection of wounded or sick troops(and they are not "troops")...there is the assumption that these people are unarmed...but if they do arm themselves, they give up certain aspects of their protected status". Like if you and your buddies strap a 155 round to your butt and you hold the trigger, yer gonna get tapped. If your group has a rep of strapping 155 rounds to your butts, you will probably (reasonably) be considered "armed and dangerous" and treated as such. They are targets, they are war criminals & IMHO, fair game. How could it be a "war crime" to kill a presumed-armed "war criminal"?
..Now about that freakin' reporter... }:-(
I appreciate your comments. Your proposal to leave reporters out of the action has some merits to it (but also some drawbacks). But I've got to respectfully suggest the proposal might not get to the heart of the problem.
The Arab press and Arab preachers are inciting violence against us every day. They get their "information" from all kinds of sources -- if they lost the reports from embedded media they'd still have plenty of other reports to work with.
We've had little success so far at countering them. We need some new ideas to convince the enemy to stop fighting.
What Sites fails to mention in this letter is that it is likely that the insurgent (terrorist) "peeping from his blanket" wasn't considered a threat because he wasn't feigning death (he was clearly alive, as were the other two near him). The other one, however, was perceived to be faking death, setting an alarm off in that Marine's head. Just today, Insurgents faking dead fires on Marines. There is good reason the Marine felt threatened by this man an not by the others clearly showing life signs.
FWIW - I believe that faking death is also against the Geneva Convention.
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