"Marine kills wounded Iraqi"- Why should I care?

a guy faking his own death so he in turn won't be killed

No.

The ?insurgents? have been pretending to be dead and then jumping up and shooting or just blowing themselves up when soldiers get close enough. The Marines have every right to be extra careful.

 

And frankly your prejudice is showing. If as reported one of the other wounded men inside had already complied with the Marines 'I'm unarmed, don't shoot, sitting quitely hands visable' and had not been summarily executed pretending this guy was pretending to be dead so he wouldn't be shot is pretty foolish.

What the **** kind of prejudice might that be farrday? I'm not the partisan, and you're going to lecture me on prejudice? You think I want our soldiers to die? I'm for the war and certainly for this latest battle in Falluja. Did you not read what I've typed so far? IF his comrades had been shot just minutes before, it would not have been foolish to pretend he was dead and most of us in that situation would have done the same. But regardless, this guy did not have any weapons on him, and he was not a threat, so why do you suppose he was playing dead?

And again you never answered any of my questions, typical.

 

this guy did not have any weapons on him, and he was not a threat

It's easy to sit in at home and say that. They didn't know he wasn't a threat at the time.

PLEASE READ

 

It's easy to sit in at home and say that. They didn't know he wasn't a threat at the time.

Ugh...no crap, I was trying to make a point.

 

Well, turned up that Kevin Sites, the cameraman who taped this incident is an antiwar activist.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41506


Quote: "Kevin Sites, the NBC cameraman who shot video of the controversial shooting of a Fallujah insurgent by a U.S. Marine, is an anti-war activist whose photographs of Iraqi prisoners are featured on at least one anti-war website."

 

Well, turned up that Kevin Sites, the cameraman who taped this incident is an antiwar activist.

LOL, we've already gone through this, it's crap.

Please for the love of god and the sake of my sanity stop accepting everything you read from these junk partisan websites. Seriously people.

 

But that brought up interesting point. What kind of background this supposed unbiased reporter had? There is a level of distrust on the media these days and this kind of news doesn't help a bit.
I hope NBC will at least show Sites's background on its news.

 

there are crimes in every war.

this video dosent make us right or wrong. it just shows how stupid the whole thing is.

 

But what angers me is the reaction from Arab world. Why does this picture stirred so much anger from them when their own government are involved in human rights crisis as well? We all know how badly treated the prisoners in Saudi Arabia, and who knows what kind of treatment suffered by political prisoner in the region. Why is this incident evoke so much reactions?

 

But that brought up interesting point. What kind of background this supposed unbiased reporter had? There is a level of distrust on the media these days and this kind of news doesn't help a bit.
I hope NBC will at least show Sites's background on its news.

???? Didn't we just go over this? What is Site's background??? The photos in the anti-war website were taken directly from Sites's website, most likely without his permission. Please, STOP BLINDLY BELIEVING SUCH JUNK. Read his website, the guy is amazingly objective and has some really good blogs about individual soldiers. There is no "Sites background" scandal, it's crap. If the REAL news were to start reporting such nonsense I think I'd have to start my own media coup.

http://www.kevinsites.net/2003_10_19_archive.html

 

Why does this picture stirred so much anger from them

Arab Governments love pointing out faults of the US, taking attention away from the problems at home, of which there are many.

 

Why does this picture stirred so much anger from them when their own government are involved in human rights crisis as well?

what?! the public doesn?t care who does the most good or who does the most bad. you know that.

the only question is who is doing it. when an American shoots an Iraqi in a mosque, it angers these people more than if 2000 died in a flood. that?s just what we see life as now, political pawns.

who knows if these guys even feel any real sympathy.
in any event, its a better propaganda tool than the Boston massacre.

 

Interesting.. I also found out that Sites was prohibited from blogging last year. Apparently CNN doesn't want him to blog. I guess CNN must have smell something.

 

Darth Boba said: Hey, I'm an actual soldier. I hate to have to say this, but shooting POWs is bull. If he's wounded, then we *have* to provide aid. Not shoot him a couple of times more.

The whole thing about shooting wounded soldiers is during the battle. If you come across a guy who's shot at you and is wounded during the attack, and still tries to attack you, it's SOP to kill him. Afterwards, when he's unarmed and captured, no-go.

This statement by Darth Boba epitomises the finest qualities of the American Soldier. We civilians expect our soldiers to act with such valour, and we respect them for doing so. I'm actually quite welled up with pride to read Darth Boba's words. I am not anti-military, but I do not agree with "war is chaos, therefore anything goes." Soldiers must retain their hearts and their civility even under times of great stress and great fear. It is the soldiers' duty to save the innocent and disable the dangerous, not to act as the angel of death.

A disturbing truth is that George W. Bush privately encouraged soldiers of the 4th Mountain Division to act like barbarians and "spill their blood" in the impending Iraq invasion. This was months before the public knew of any concrete plans for Iraq. The soldier who divulged this information to me said that this blood-thirsty speech during Bush's visit divided the troops into those who sought to become "angels of death" and those who sought to simply liberate the oppressed and protect the American people. Frankly, she and many soldiers were disgusted and frightened by the president's words and mannerisms. Tensions rose in the barracks due to this divisive, violent rally, and the two groups of soldiers became somewhat emotionally isolated from each other.

This mentality of violence before pardon comes directly from the top, which is why I believe no individual soldier should be held solely accountable for the war crimes in Iraq.

 

A disturbing truth is that George W. Bush privately encouraged soldiers of the 4th Mountain Division to act like barbarians and "spill their blood" in the impending Iraq invasion.....

Unless you have a link to the actual speech, or can at least provide a transcript, I would think twice about promoting anything like this as fact.

It just doesn't apply to Bush, but anyone in general.

What I've noticed is a disturbing trend of people supplying so called "facts," while at the same time not providing any kind of factual support.

You can certainly claim that that your friend "told you something," but there is a high probabilty that your friend was applying their own bias, embellishing, or at the very least, simply misunderstood.

Without the actual speech, none of us know the context, eh?

 

What I've noticed is a disturbing trend of people supplying so called "facts," while at the same time not providing any kind of factual support.


I have to protect my source. I don't trust this administration. If you do not believe me, then I will not provide further proof. Take it or leave it.

 

Have to protect your source from what?

The truth of what was really said in the speech?

I'm not saying you lied, I'm questioning your friend.

For example, there is no such thing as the 4th Mountian Division, so your friend's claim is suspect right there.

It's the 10th Mountian Division up at Ft Drum.

There is the 4th ID("Ivy Division"), which is mechanized, not mountain.

I'll compromise with you.. I also had a friend* who was at that very same speech.

He said that all Bush talked about was how great of friends Chirac is, that he would only use force as a last resort in Iraq, and that he was going to elevate Greenpeace to a cabinet position, and disband the military within 5 years.

That's quite a difference when compared to your version. I guess it doesn't really matter though, since neither one of us actually supplied a copy of the speech in question.

You don't even have to provide anything relating to your friend specifically. What date was this? What speech?

Presidential speeches are archived, so it would be no big deal to look up..

*=This friend may, or may not actually exist, but that fact seems to be irrelevent for the actual discussion.

 

"I have to protect my source. I don't trust this administration."


Self importance, meet paranoia!



Putting aside my main position, which Gonk and others have expressed in similar sentiment, that trying to pass judgement in absentia or use non-contexted single points to draw a larger picture is flawed...


This was interestingly phrased: "And a final repetition of the theme. There is also a much-scaled down morality play at work in Fallujah?scaled-down, that is, from the large-scale horrors of Hue.

The Vietcong killed thousands of city residents during their brief takeover of Hue, including foreign missionaries and doctors. That went down the great war-time memory hole, aided somewhat by the shock that properly gripped America over the My Lai massacre. In Fallujah it is a Marine who shot a wounded insurgent in a mosque (a mosque? Is that bonus points?) that has moved to center stage of atrocity.

It is a good bet this window on the Dark Side of war will supplant stories of terrorist torture chambers and summary executions as the example of the depths that awful Fallujah plumbed. That might not be fair, but of course, it is war."

 

Let me be more clear, I believe the rules of war should be followed,

we agree here.

and they are for the most part by Western nations.

we don't here. i think that's an incredibly naive view. overall, i don't think our military is anything exceptional with regard to abstaining from atrocities. in many cases, the American military specifically has actually been pretty bad since Vietnam or so. if you throw in the behavior of our allies and client states, including people we've trained and outfitted directly, our record is arguably among the worst in modern history.

--------------

in general, i'm glad that people are seeing what our military is doing in Iraq, and i commend the media for doing its job for once on that score (though i will concede that access to the battlefield is a limiting factor here). i don't think it does anyone a service to sugarcoat things.

that said, i don't think this specific incident is especially horrible considering the situation, and as such, i think it's inappropriate to fixate on what one soldier did in one combat zone, and whether or not his decision was justified.

honestly, i don't think that it's appropriate to judge people too harshly for their actions in that sort of situation, because i don't really believe that anyone knows with 100% certainty what they would do in those situations unless and until they happen.

ultimately, that's not the point. the point is that in certain wartime situations, incidents like this are inevitable. it's war, and the lofty ideals of proper conduct don't always hold when the rubber meets the road.

however, knowing that that's the case, we have to be extremely careful about the decision to go to war in the first place. we have to know that, whether or not we have the best intentions, this sort of behavior is going to happen. even under the best of circumstances and with the most stringent precautions, someone's going to get shot who probably shouldn't be shot, some building's going to be bombed that shouldn't be bombed, etc. there's always a margin of error to any endeavor, and in war, the margin of error is measured in bodies and property damage.

by asking whether or not the soldier's action was justified, we're drawing attention away from the real question, which is "who put that soldier in a position where he had to make that decision in the first place?" if you throw a bunch of people into combat, life-and-death decisions like that are going to be made all the time, and whatever your position on issues like this is, you're not going to be happy with all of the outcomes.

responsibility, therefore, begins at the top, and at the beginning, with the decision to go to war in the first place, because that decision implies the necessity of all the others which follow as well as the inevitability that some percentage of those decisions will be the "wrong" ones. it also incorporates any atrocities committed by the other side in response to the attack. is this a justified war? is it legal? is it necessary? is it in our best interests, even? you can probably guess that my answer to each of these questions with regard to the Iraq war is "no."

from there, you go down the chain to question the conduct of the war, starting with the broad strategic decisions and working your way down through training issues and smaller-scale tactical decisions until you get to the point of Monday morning quarterbacking the behavior of some undereducated 19-year-old who's being shot at for a living.

i'm absolutely not defending the Marine's conduct, or trying to excuse it, but, really, when we decided to go to war, what did we think would happen? normal people put in bad situations will do bad things. if you decide to create a situation where a lot of people are put in bad situations, a lot of bad things are going to happen, and, gee, what a surprise, they're happening, from Abu Ghraib and civilian deaths to car bombs and beheadings.

from my perspective, responsibility for all of these deaths, on both (all?) sides, is

 

"I have to protect my source. I don't trust this administration."


Self importance, meet paranoia!

If I revealed my source and they were to get a dishonorable discharge due to intelligence reading this, I would not be surprised. Its a fact that there are legions of G-men scouring message boards due to the patriot act. This was a private speech, and was not to be relayed to the public. Even if I revealed my source, there is no public transcript of the speech, so you'd be taking my word anyway. So revealing a source wouldn't even support my case. I'm not a liar, and neither is my source. Whether you believe me or not is your choice, but not an indicator of the truth.

 

If you say so..

Although you forgot to mention the black helicopters.

They play an important role in subjugating our free will, and I think they deserve some mad props as well...

 

The black helicopters are part of the 4th Mountain Div?

 

Well, not "offically.."

 

wait, "mad props"! I get it!

 

Cyprus, don't jump all over me for basically doing exactly what YOU and the media have been doing to this marine for the past few days: jumping to conclusions that fit their perception, even if false.

Got it?