November 16, 2004
NBC: US Soldier Murders Unarmed Prisoner in Falluja.
A television pool report by U.S. network NBC says that a U.S. Marine shot dead an unarmed and wounded Iraqi prisoner in a mosque in Falluja. via BoingBoing.
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.
funnyodd when people express horror at things like this. Not that it isn't horrible, but how is it less horrible/repugnant if the same bullet had entered the same head from a nice anonymous distance, or off-camera? Are we then thinking "oops, it was an accident, he didn't mean to kill him." or "we can't tie that death to one individual's fault because he is protected by the anonymity of the assault" or "It's just one of those things." Sheesh.Shinything:
As someone who has seen action, well, Don't apologize. Wake up: war is hell. The training for war is to put a person into such chaos that they will snap and kill anything they don't recognize as their own. With prejudice. Actual war reinforces this concept when those around you that you have trained with and know like brothers (and sisters) start to die. These people are trained to kill. I'm going to repeat that: THESE PEOPLE ARE TRAINED TO KILL. The things they say, the emotions they show, at the point of killing are irrelevent. This is the individual shining through, in some way. But it is not the person. It is the machine of a human that has cost the military several million dollars to train and produce that is killing that person. I can guess that a 'higher up' (some one up the food chain in the military) could look at this and say 'good, good'. War sucks. Get use to it. War kills. Soapbox: this is what those who voted for this administration need to realize. When you voted for W, you voted for killing. Yes, Kerry would have had to kept on killing, but W started it, and by voting for him you said, 'Hey, this is OK, keep killing'. Remember this.