Posted on 11/15/2004 3:56:58 PM PST by Kaslin
LONDON (Reuters) - A television pool report by U.S. network NBC said on Monday that a U.S. Marine had shot dead an unarmed and wounded Iraqi prisoner in a mosque in Falluja.
The Iraqi was one of five wounded prisoners left in the mosque after Marines had fought their way in on Friday and Saturday. There was no immediate comment from the Pentagon (news - web sites) on the report.
U.S. forces launched an offensive one week ago on Falluja, and have gained overall control of the formerly rebel-held city, although scattered resistance remains.
The pool report by NBC correspondent Kevin Sites said the mosque had been used by insurgents to attack U.S. forces, who stormed it and an adjacent building, killing 10 militants and wounding the five.
Sites said the wounded had been left in the mosque for others to pick up and move to the rear for treatment. No reason was given why that had not happened.
A second group of Marines entered the mosque on Saturday after reports it had been reoccupied. Footage from the embedded television crew showed the five still in the mosque, although several appeared to be already close to death, Sites said.
He said one Marine noticed one of the prisoners was still breathing.
A Marine can be heard saying on the pool footage provided to Reuters Television: "He's fucking faking he's dead. He faking he's fucking dead."
"The Marine then raises his rifle and fires into the man's head. The pictures are too graphic for us to broadcast," Sites said. No images of the shooting were shown in the footage provided to Reuters.
The report said the Marine, who had returned to duty after being shot in the face a day earlier, had been removed from the field and was being questioned by the U.S. military.
Sites said the shot prisoner "did not appear to be armed or threatening in any way."
"Sites said the shot prisoner "did not appear to be armed or threatening in any way.""
Was he a muslim? Was he breathing? Did he sign the F---ing Geneva Convention?
Good job, Marine.
Well at least he did not put underwear on his head.
If so, than we would really have a problem. Other than that, A GOOD TERRORIST IS A DEAD TERRORIST. Send them all to hell to their GOD.
A Fort Bragg judge has postponed the trial of an Army sergeant accused of attacking his unit on the eve of the invasion of Iraq.The delay was granted Tuesday to give Sgt. Hasan Akbar's lawyers more time to develop an insanity defense.
The judge, Col. Stephen R. Henley, postponed the court-martial from Oct. 25 to Feb. 15.
"I agree some additional time is needed to develop an insanity defense," he said during the hearing, which lasted about an hour and 10 minutes.
The trial date will come almost two years after the March 23, 2003, grenade attack at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait that left two officers dead and 14 soldiers wounded.
Akbar, a combat engineer who was with the 101st Airborne Division at the time of the attacks, is charged with two counts of premeditated murder and three counts of attempted premeditated murder. He faces death if convicted.
Agreed. If a Marine did execute a wounded prisoner then he was wrong. He should be removed from the battlefield and investigated. We must be above this.
I don't know....but Im getting pissed off....get rid of these reporters and let the Marines do their job!.....
So he sent a Jihadist along to his 72 virgins. That's a bad thing? At least he didn't put underwear on his head.
Freepers had better rally to this marine's defense. There are a lot of PC types calling the shots over there.
Mon Nov 15 18:01:47 2004
Closed caption capture, joined just a few seconds in progress.
From PMSNBC CHrissy the Hissy speaking...then they show the video just to the point the Marine fires his weapon...
"...operations in fallujah. Nbc news has decided not to air the most gruesome of the images, but the incident you'll see in this report is raising the question. Is there ever a justification for shooting an unarmed enemy? Nbc's kevin sites has this exclusive firsthand account of what happened inside that mosque.
>> These U.S. Marines have had to fight for nearly every inch of ground taken in fallujah. They've inflicted heavy casualties on insurgents here. But have also suffered many of their own. Some with a new harrowing tactic, booby trapping them. They fired on them with rifles and R.P.G.'S from this mosque. Marines hit back, killing 10 insurgents, and wounding five inside. These weapons were collected from the dead. This marine's flee splooe one more example that mosques are being used by insurgents as fighting positions. They treat the wounded but leave them behind to be picked up later as marines continue their offensive sound. The next day the marines got reports that some of the areas they had cleared the day before had been reoccupied by insurgents. Including the mosque. What happens that saturday is an entirely -- isn't clear. A marine unit whic was not involved in the prior day's attacks on the mosque now fights its way up the street toward the mosque. For taking fire, perhaps from the mosque. One squad moves around the back. A second approaches from the back. There are but not got. When the second squad, followed by msnbc reaches the entrance, the first has already been inside.
>> We had two in there.
>> Inside the mosque, the same five men that were wounded the day before are still there. But now one of them is dead while three others lay dying. Only one is untouched. Then a marine notices, one of the severely wounded men is still breathing. He did not appear to be armed or threatening in any way. In fact, there were no weapons visible in the room except those carried by the marines. The marine then raises his rifle and fires into the man's head. The pictures are too graphic for to us broadcast. At the same time, just a block away, one marine was killed and five wounded by the booby-trapped body of a dead insurgent. So as dangerous as iraq is, is the shooting is self-defense. Lieutenant colonel bob miller is heading up a full scale investigation into the case.
>> The policy of the engagement of the marines to use force when presented with a hostile act.
>> The marine who pulled the trigger has been removed from the field pending possible charges tsmg day before he was shot in the face during combat but had already returned to duty.
>> The wounded in this case insurgents who don't pose a threat would not be considered hostile.
>> But this war zone like most is rife with uncertainty and confusion. Young men here are often forced to shoot faster than they can think. And that can create a deadly place indeed. Kevin sites, nbc news, fallujah.
>> Let's get reaction from the pentagon and nbc news correspondent jim miklaszewski. What is the military's reaction to this?
>> T pentagon's reaction is that this is in the hands of the military. The military justice system. There's an investigation underway. And the pentagon officials with oversight think that the military will indeed conduct a thorough investigation. I can tell you the military's reaction to this is one of somewhat resigned sadness. That they know in the heat of combat, the situations like this often occur but they really hate to hear about it.
>> The nbc piece was carefully reported, wasn't it?
>> There was a lot of context from kevin. It wasn't just, here's the picture. It talks for itself. He tried to explain the environment. The soldier had been shot himself in the face. There were cases of booby-trapped bodies. All kinds of reasons to believe that a body, a wounded person wasn't necessarily a wounded person.
>> And chris, if you hear the voice of the soldier who pulls the trigger, he's clearly jazzed. He is really wound pretty tightly. And you can only imagine what the intensity of that combat does to many of these troops after several days. On the other hand, if indeed this was a wounded, unarmed combatant, the military code of justice says there is no justification for doing that. Earlier in the battle of najaf, there was an incident where a combatant, an enemy combatant was seriously wounded to the point that he was clearly dying. A U.S. Soldier walked up and put a bullet into his head. He says, it was a mercy killing. However, the army looked at it differently. They pulled him out of service and he's been charged with homicide. And that trial is yet to the begin.
>> We'll be listening to that tape. We didn't hear it quite clearly. I didn't hear it. The comments made by the trooper, did they sound malicious? Is there anyway to read it?
>> It doesn't sound malicious at all. Not like he was sneering. Nothing like that at all. He just sounded wound tightly. He said with some and me I have thees in it, he is faking he is dead. He's faking he's dead. And then boom! You hear the shot. So clearly, it's possible that he had in his mind the fact that one of his comrades was killed on the streets of fallujah only a few days before by a body of an insurgent that was booby-trapped. However, again, the uniform code of military justice looks at this much differently and even in the heat of battle, while they recognize that sometimes these things can sort of spin out of crom, ultimately, the letter of the law says there is no justification for shooting an unarmed wounded combatant. And kevin sites was pretty clear to say that the, all the weapons that were in that mosque had been removed the day before when another squad of marines had gone in there and there was no evidence of any weapons inside."
GOD BLESS OUR FANTASTIC MARINES!! and GOD BLESS That Marine who had just taken a shot to the face the day before and was back in Battle!
Mainly lambasting the MSM.
Michael can get kinda off the page at times but tonight he is square on.
Sentiments very like those on this thread.
Remember that group that was captured with the American? They were all wounded prisons and what did they do? Didn't a couple of our guys get killed in the process?
If you watch CNN and other MSM, which I do only rarely, you can't miss how they salivate over any chance to show American soldiers do something wrong. In their leftist minds, any misstep is a symptom of a Fascist military.
They were positively orgasming the other day when a tank fired into a mosque in the middle of battle, and they acted like the marine explanation ("it was necessary for our advance") was incomprehensible.
I saw the video. I think that the Troop was just doing a psyche job on the reporter/cameraman.
The Marines and Soldiers have seen enough now about what the media is capable of. They know (and I know that they know) that the media is not their friend.
Kiss my grits NBC.
Maybe the rule should be "Shoot the reporter first."
Have any of the enemy been found wearing suicide bombs? I know that some troops have been killed in the Fallujah mission by entering booby trapped buildings.
A) He was a prisoner.
B) This is war.
C) If he was indeed faking it, he could've killed more brave Americans.
D) In war, people die.
Oh, well. Too bad. Give the Marine a pat on the back for taking care of business.
Next.
That headline is one big fat loser if the source is trying to enable anyone to understand it!
I think we need to ban all MSM from the front lines, obviously they are there to give aid and comfort to the beheading jihadists!
The video I saw today didn't show a damn prisoner! If it's the same incident?
Agreed. The Media is on the wrong side in this war.
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