To: U.S. Congress

Friday November 12 2004

U.S.Marines were fired upon by snipers and insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades from a mosque and an adjacent building. The Marines returned fire with tank shells and machine guns.

They eventually stormed the mosque, killing 10 insurgents and wounding five others, and showing a cache of rifles and grenades for journalists.

The Marines told the pool reporter that the wounded insurgents would be left behind for others to pick up and move to the rear for treatment. But Saturday, another squad of Marines found that the mosque had been reoccupied by insurgents and attacked it again.

Four of the insurgents appeared to have been shot again in Saturday’s fighting, and one of them appeared to be dead, according to the pool report. In the video, a Marine was seen noticing that one of the insurgents appeared to be breathing.

A Marine approached one of the men in the mosque saying, “He’s [expletive] faking he’s dead. He’s faking he’s [expletive] dead.”

The Marine raised his rifle and fired into the insurgents head, at which point a companion said, “Well, he’s dead now.”

The camera then shows two Americans pointing weapons at another Iraqi insurgent lying motionless. But one of the Marines step back as the insurgent stretches out his hand, motioning that he is alive. The other Marine stands his ground, but neither of them fires.

When told by the pool reporter that the men were among those wounded in Friday’s firefight, the Marine who fired the shot said, “I didn’t know, sir. I didn’t know.”

“You can hear the tension in those Marines’ voices. One is saying, ‘He’s faking it. He’s faking it,’” Heyman said. “In a combat infantry soldier’s training, he is always taught that his enemy is at his most dangerous when he is severely wounded.”

A Marine in the same unit had been killed just a day earlier when he tended to the booby-trapped dead body of an insurgent.

NBC reported that the Marine seen shooting the Iraqi insurgent had himself been shot in the face the day before, but quickly returned to duty.

About a block away, a Marine was killed and five others wounded by a booby-trapped body they found in a house after a shootout with insurgents.

Amnesty International has noted reports that insurgents have used mosques as fighting positions, and have used white flags to lure Marines into ambushes.

The Marine who shot the insurgent has been withdrawn from the battlefield pending the results of an investigation, the U.S. military said.

These terrorists do not follow the rules of war. These terrorists kill innocent women by disemboweling them, cut of the heads of innocent truck drivers, detonate car bombs in crowds full of innocent people, and fly planes into buildings filled with innocent Americans.

It is my opinion that NOTHING should happen to this American Marine. He should be returned to his unit or be given an honorable discharge. We don’t need our young men and women taking an extra second to decide if its right to shoot an enemy terrorist when that could mean that one of our soldiers could lose their life. The lives of our soldiers should be the single most important factor in this war against terrorism. The rights of terrorists can come second.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Sign the petition

78000 people had signed the petition when I posted this. At 1pm on November 20th, I was number 31595.

I found #86716 said to be very insightful:

written by: Rance R Stowell
I am a Vietnam veteran and was with the 101st Airborne Division. I was an infantry soldier and the first American I watched die was from a friendly young boy who put a bomb in a burn barrel that was on fire. It exploded and killed the soldier next to me.What givies anyone who is not in a combat situation the right to second guess the soldier who is making that decision so that he and his fellow solders will live another day. They are doing a job just as we do each day. Getting up and going to work.Let them do the job they are put there to do!! The solider should not be punished in any way, but honored for saving his fellow soliders Lets Unite and make this happen.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 20th, 2004 at 1:00 am and is filed under Politics, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.