U.S. military says troops acted within the rules in shooting death of Reuters cameraman

U.S. soldiers acted within the rules on opening fire when they shot and killed a Reuters television cameraman last month while videotaping near a U.S.-run prison on the outskirts of Baghdad, a U.S. Army officer said Monday.

Mazen Dana, 41, was filming outside Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad when he was fatally shot Aug. 17 by U.S. soldiers who the military said mistook his camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Dana, a Palestinian, was filming a day after a mortar attack in which six prisoners were killed and about 60 were wounded.

The U.S. Army has never publicly announced those rules, citing security of its soldiers, who face near-daily attack by insurgents opposed to the American military occupation.

Here's a guess what one of those rules might be...

"Under NO circumstances should one point a shoulder-mounted contraption towards a US tank advancing under fire."

Exerpt of a letter from the front:
The day after the mortar attack on a highway just beside Abu Ghraib, a Reuters cameraman who was filming the exterior of the prison for a story about the mortars suddenly stopped his unmarked black BMW on the entrance ramp and jumped out hoisting his large camera to his shoulder as a column of tanks approached. The commander of the tank column tragically mistook the camera for an RPG and with amazing accuracy felled the camera and man with only a handful of shots while the tank was rolling. I’m the legal advisor for XXXXX to the officer investigating the incident.

Normally interviewing the Reuters, French FR2 and BBC press who witnessed some of the event would be a turn-about to relish. This occasion was not. It was tragic all the way around. Of course, the French refused to make it easy insisting that their journalists who frankly spoke better English than me only speak in French. So we had to filter the interview through a French interpreter in Germany on a bad phone. Toots sweet! That really clarified things. Remind me why we like the French? Oh yeah, we don’t. For a moment, I thought about issuing the French crew RPG-looking news cameras. Another tragedy is that the commander who fired the shots is a superb young captain who had bravely commanded the cavalry company for the past eighteen months and was at the airport ready to head to his next duty assignment, when his replacement was killed in action and he was recalled to command return ticket still in hand. Welcome back.

Press advocacy groups Reporters Without Borders and the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists had demanded a full investigation into the shooting.

Our military have more important things facing them than baby-sitting these worrisome reporters who make warfare even more dangerous by getting in the way. The Press advocacy and reporters without borders and the CtoPJ are lucky more of them aren't shot! Investigate all they want - this is War, not a picnic for reporters!

The army has cleared the captain, so now it's up to him to decide how to handle things. If the incident doesn't mess him up psychologically, I think he can go far, if he wants to.

I'd wager that there are still a few people in the Army who have use for an officer that is both decisive and a good shot. The fact that he acted without hesitation to protect himself and his men is definitely not lost on anyone.

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