I'm not intimately familiar with the dynamics of a battle field, but killing an unarmed enemy who may still be dangerous seems like a non-issue to me.
On the video, as the camera moved into the mosque during the Saturday incident, a Marine can be heard shouting obscenities in the background, yelling that one of the men was only pretending to be dead.If someone is faking being dead, it's probably because they're trying to surprise you."He's (expletive) faking he's dead!"
"Yeah, he's breathing," another Marine is heard saying.
"He's faking he's (expletive) dead!" the first Marine says.
The video then showed a Marine raising his rifle toward a prisoner lying on the floor of the mosque. The video shown by NBC and provided to the network pool was blacked out at that point and did not show the bullet hitting the man. But a rifle shot could be heard.
"He's dead now," a Marine is heard saying.
The shooting is shown so quickly that it is impossible to tell whether the body was moving before the shot. The only movement which can be seen is the body flinching at the moment the bullet hits.
Charles Heyman, a senior defense analyst with Jane's Consultancy Group in Britain, defended the Marine's actions, saying it was possible the wounded man was concealing a firearm or grenade.That about sums it up."You can hear the tension in those Marines' voices. One is [shouting], '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."
If the injured man makes even the slightest move, "in my estimation they would be justified in shooting him."
When you fight a war, you fight to win and to minimize your own casualties. That means you kill the enemy, and on the battlefield you can't afford to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes you make a wrong choice -- as this Marine may have -- but that's the way it goes. Investigate, that's fine, but this is hardly a huge scandal.
My biggest objection to the story is the repeated use of the term "prisoner". It makes it sound like this guy was in custody, when nothing could be further from the truth. They guy wasn't in handcuffs. He hasn't been checked for weapons. He hadn't surrendered. He wasn't a prisoner -- he was a terrorist.
P: Excellent points. He had been previously disarmed and then left behind, so there was no way to know what his current capabilities were. He wasn't a prisoner at all.
Vietnam vet of US Marine long-range reconnaissance team...Best case mission: get in/get out without being seen...Not always...Old woman, kid, dog that barks, VC/NVA: all potential life-threat....
You do what you gotta do....Remorse is for the VA shrink or atop a bar stool....
BTDT
Is there really any pressure building from the left on this trumped-up non-story? Everybody I've read has jumped all over it and stated the obvious. I hope some libs put some of their energy and credibility behind this, so they can get trounced again.
My own contribution to what is probably pretty obvious:
1. An enemy pretending to be dead is extremely dangerous, even if severely wounded. He can squeeze off a few shots, pull the pin on a hand grenade, or do goodness knows what else.
2. The cues that show that someone is faking death are very subtle. Think of what you would look for if trying to determine if someone was pretending to be asleep: a little tension in the muscles around the eyes, subtle cues in breathing rate, or an overall posture of the body that isn't quite fully relaxed. The cameraman could have had a close-up shot of the terrorist and still not picked up on the cues that the soldier saw.
So the essence of this story has nothing to do with the videotape or its audio. The question is simply what you are inclined to presume: Do we assume that the marine was reasonable in his assessment that the terrorist was playing dead? Or do we assume that the marine was a cold-blooded killer looking for any excuse to end another life?
I hope the MSM tries to run with this. If they do, they'll injure their already-frail credibility even further.
I guess thats fine if it applies to wounded Americans shot by the resistance also.
I am totally convinced you are faking being criminally insane, and so I have recommended that you be committed.