Fallujah Marine in Trouble for Pulling a Kerry
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/11/16/92057.shtml

The television press was awash Monday night with video of a U.S. Marine entering a Fallujah terrorist nest filled with dead snipers who, moments earlier, had been shooting at his unit.

Upon discovering that one of the snipers is still breathing, the Marine shouts a warning to his buddies, the screen goes dark and a gunshot is heard - suggesting that the Marine finished off the wounded terrorist.

Iraq war critics are already salivating at the prospects of another Abu Ghraib-like military fiasco.

Not so fast, say the folks at FreeRepublic.com, who point out that John Kerry got a Silver Star with Combat V [for valor] for committing the same sort of "atrocity."

In fact, the February 1969 incident was considered by Kerry supporters to be his finest hour.

Patrolling the Bay Hap River, Kerry and his crew discovered they were about to be ambushed by a Viet Cong soldier who had just popped up at the shoreline with a loaded rocket launcher in his hands. With the VC about to fire, Kerry crew mate Thomas Bellodeau shot and wounded the attacker, saving the entire boat.

Only then did Kerry leap to the shore to chase the wounded enemy down - finishing him off behind a hootch.

When critics suggested that Kerry's actions that day were something less than heroic, they were hooted down by the press.

Certainly the as-yet-unnamed Marine in Fallujah deserves, if not the Silver Star, the same slack the press cut Kerry.

Cue Wolves, Idiots
http://www.shotinthedark.info/archives/004535.html
War is a lousy thing.
In Fallujah, a Marine apparently shot and killed a wounded Iraqi prisoner.

The NBC report set the scene:

The Marine battalion stormed an unidentified mosque Saturday in southern Fallujah after taking casualties from heavy sniper fire and attacks with rocket-propelled grenades. Ten insurgents were killed and five others were wounded in the mosque and an adjacent building.

The Marines displayed a cache of rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles that they said the men were holding. They said the arms were conclusive evidence that insurgents had been using mosques as fighting positions in Fallujah, which they said made the use of force appropriate.

When the Marines left to advance farther south, the five wounded Iraqis, none of whose injuries appeared to be life-threatening, were left behind in the mosque for other Marines to evacuate for treatment.
The other Marines arrived:

Sites saw the five wounded men left behind on Friday still in the mosque. Four of them had been shot again, apparently by members of the squad that entered the mosque moments earlier. One appeared to be dead, and the three others were severely wounded. The fifth man was lying under a blanket, apparently not having been shot a second time.

One of the Marines noticed that one of the severely wounded men was still breathing. He did not appear to be armed, Sites said.

The Marine could be heard insisting: "He's f---ing faking he's dead - he's faking he's f---ing dead." Sites then watched as the Marine raised his rifle and fired into the man's head from point-blank range.

"Well, he's dead now," another Marine said.

When told that the man he shot was a wounded prisoner, the Marine, who himself had been shot in the face the day before but had already returned to duty, told Sites: "I didn't know, sir. I didn't know."

Combat does things to people. Pressure, stress, the high emotion of watching your friends get killed and wounded, of being shot at yourself - they're all a recipe for occasional problems. During World War II, there were many stories of GIs killing prisoners. It happens. The military frowns on it, and I'm sure the Marine involved is in a world of trouble; as Jason Van Steenwyck points out, the Marine is probably looking at a murder rap.

But what it boils down to is that it's something that is a symptom of the stress of combat, something individuals and small groups do in the heat and pain and pressure of battle.

Not as a matter of national policy.

I would ordinarily feel silly pointing that last out. It's not rocket science. But a number of leftyblogs, not being themselves rocket scientists, are trying to create an Abu Ghraib-like scandal out of this - and pin it on the Administration:

Kevin Sites, while showing captures of the photos of the murder: "Let's watch Bush win Iraqi hearts and minds!"

Matthew Gross entitled his piece "Culture of Life", and said "Someday, not too far away, we'll tell the kiddies how the U.S. was once looked up to around the world, as a beacon of moral virtue. And you know what? They won't friggin' believe us."

Get a grip, people. It's not an administration policy, and it's not a sign that America is in decline. It's an alleged murder, with (it is likely) extenuating circumstances, none of which will help the Marine much if he's found guilty. It's a symptom of what a rotten thing war is.

Which leads us to the conundrum; we're fighting people who saw hostages heads off, and are lionized for it throughout the radical Moslem world. They're people who'd think nothing of killing prisoners - in fact, that's what started the whole situation in Fallujah.

Our laws, and "international law", forbid the killing of prisoners. That's a good thing. Our enemies will look at the prosecution of the wounded Marine who did the shooting, and laugh at our weakness.

They're Called Security Rounds
By Matthew Heidt
http://froggyruminations.blogspot.com/2004/11/theyre-called-security-rounds.html

Its a safety issue pure and simple. After assaulting through a target, put a security round in everybody's head. Sorry al-Reuters, there's no paddy wagon rolling around Fallujah picking up "prisoners" and offering them a hot cup a joe, falafel, and a blanket. There's no time to dick around in the target, you clear the space, dump the chumps, and moveon.org. Are Corpsman expected to treat wounded terrorists? Negative. Hey libs, worried about the defense budget? Well, it would be waste, fraud, and abuse for a Corpsman to spend one man minute or a battle dressing on a terrorist, its much cheaper to just spend the $.02 on a 5.56mm FMJ.

By the way, terrorists who chop off civilian's heads are not prisoners, they are carcasses.

UPDATE: Let me be very clear about this issue. I have looked around the web, and many people get this concept, but there are some stragglers.

Here is your situation Marine. You just took fire from unlawful combatants shooting from a religious building attempting to use the sanctuary status of their position as protection. But you're in Fallujah now, and the Marine Corps has decided that they're not playing that game this time. That was Najaf. So you set the mosque on fire and you hose down the terrorists with small arms, launch some AT-4s (Rockets), some 40MM grenades into the building and things quiet down. So you run over there, and find some tangos wounded and pretending to be dead. You are aware that suicide martyrdom is like really popular with these kind of idiots, and like taking some Marines with them would be really cool. So you can either risk your life and your fireteam's lives by having them cover you while you bend down and search a guy that you think is pretending to be dead for some reason. Also, you don't know who or what is in the next room, and you're already speaking english to each other and its loud because your hearing is poor from shooting people for several days. So you know that there are many other rooms to enter, and that if anyone is still alive in those rooms, they know that Americans are in the mosque. Meanwhile (3 seconds later), you still have this terrorist that was just shooting at you from a mosque playing possum. What do you do?

You double tap his head, and you go to the next room, that's what.

What about the Geneva Conventions and all that Law of Land Warfare stuff? What about it. Without even addressing the issues at hand you first thought should be, "I'd rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6."

Bear in mind that this is a perpetual mindset that is reinforced by experiences gained on a minute by minute basis. Secondly, you are fighting an unlawful combatant in a Sanctuary which is a double No No on his part. Third, tactically you are in no position to take "prisoners" because there are more rooms to search and clear, and the behavior of said terrorist indicates that he is up to no good. No good in Fallujah is a very large place and the low end of no good and the high end of no good are fundamentally the same... Marines get hurt or die. So there is no compelling reason for you to do anything but double tap this idiot and get on with the mission.

If you are a veteran then everything I have just written is self evident, if you are not a veteran than at least try to put yourself in the situation. Remember, in Fallujah there is no yesterday, there is no tomorrow, there is only now. Right NOW. Have you ever lived in NOW for a week? It is not easy, and if you have never lived in NOW for longer than it takes to finish the big roller coaster at Six Flags, then shut your hole about putting Marines in jail for war crimes. Be advised, I am not talking to my readers, but if this post gets linked up, I want regular folks to get this message loud and clear. Froggy OUT.

Some Additional Reflections on Fallujah
http://froggyruminations.blogspot.com/2004/11/some-additional-reflections-on.html

The MSM and other TV/Radio outlets have been putting Colonels and other officers on their programs to "defend" the Marine who is being accused of war crimes by the left. By and large I wouldn't expect much in the way of solace coming from these military talking heads. Why? They are officers. With the exception of the SEAL Teams and perhaps other SOF units, officers and enlisted are trained separately. Officers are trained to be aware of their own accountability and liability for the actions of the enlisted in their command. Enlisted are trained to shoot people and blow stuff up. Enlisted people are taught by senior enlisted people, many with combat experience from other conflicts, to put security rounds into tangos after assaulting through a target. Officers are not. So don't listen to what you hear from former officers on TV, because it's not an officer's job to shoot people, it's his job to direct those in his command and to get direction from those who command him.

I have also seen a lot in the way of explaining this Marine's actions by taking into account the fact that he was wounded the day before, that he was tired, he was caught up in the "fog of war", and similar excuses for his actions. He doesn't need any excuses in my book. While all of those factors were in play, they aren't germane to the subject at hand.

Combatants generally fake death for a reason. The reason is not important. That there is a reason is important. If Kevin Sites wasn't there with his camera, those Marines probably would have double tapped everybody in the room. Site's presence clearly attenuated the natural response of the Marines in that situation. Which makes the shooting of the one tango all the more justifiable in my estimation. Marines know that they have to be on their best behavior when the press is around, because chances are they were explicitly warned by their unit commander. The fact of the matter is that this Marine acted with RESTRAINT and only shot the one hostile who was acting in a suspicious manner. Kevin Sites certainly owes his life to this and many other Marines he was straphanging with last week. I glad he was able to offer them his gratitude in such a compelling way.

Simul rabidly froths, in an emotional spasm of venomous leftist self-and-America-loathing:

Killing is what war's all about.  America looks good on TV for making a patsy out of some poor GI?  No thanks.

What CNN doesn't cover is the hundreds of thousand of dead civilians.

The US is so busy killing people in Iraq, we've fogotten that it's not our country, we had no business invading it, and more Iraqi's died because of our bombs and sanctions over the last 10 years than Saddam, as bad as he was, would have kiled if he had ruled for 100 years.

By sheer body count, we're 10 times worse than Saddam.

Joe, with calm, cool, coherent and collected logic, reason and historical evidence, answers:

Saddam killed 2 million people during his 22 year reign; he has killed more Muslims than any other single figure in recorded history.  The US has not killed 100,000 Iraqi noncombatants, as the Lancet propagandized, but, according to more objective counts, far fewer than 10,000; this is 90,000 less than saddam killed in a typical year.
Saddam allowed all those people to die for propaganda value, all the while building 50 palaces, fattening his military, pursuing WMD programs, and bribing UN officials and members of the French, Russian and Chinese governments with oil-for-food kickbacks from the 21.3 billion he skimmed from the program, the proceeds from which were SUPPOSED to go to the clothing, feeding, health and welfare of the Iraqi people.  The blood is on Saddam's hands, and those of the French, the Russians, the Chinese, and certain UN officials, not upon the hands of the US.

Even the Chicago tribune knows these things:

The UN's coalition of the bribed
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0411170262nov17,1,522968.story?coll=chi-newsopinion-hed

One after another, with the cadence of choreographed mortar fire, disclosures about the phenomenally corrupt United Nations program known as Oil-for-Food--it ranks as one of the greatest financial crimes of all time--are exploding into the news.

With each troubling disclosure, last year's refusal of the UN Security Council to enforce its 17 resolutions against Iraq after the Persian Gulf war becomes more transparent. To prop up the regime that murdered his people by the hundreds of thousands, and to thwart UN sanctions, Saddam Hussein bribed officials and companies in influential nations worldwide. Given the vast payoffs he funneled to France, Russia and China--three countries with veto power at the Security Council--Hussein had nothing to fear from the UN's coalition of the bribed.

By the time a U.S. president finally confronted the UN with its failure to enforce its own repeated demands of Iraq, the fix evidently was in. As last month's report from Charles Duelfer, chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, made alarmingly clear, the sanctions in which opponents of the Iraq war had invested so much faith and hope were in truth collapsing. Hussein used money looted from Oil-for-Food to buy friends around the globe who could speed that collapse. Duelfer wrote that once Hussein undermined the sanctions, he intended to rebuild his weapons of mass destruction--and craft nuclear bombs. Fortunately, he was dethroned and defanged first.

In this week's burst of Oil-for-Food news:

- U.S. Senate investigators reported Monday that Hussein illegally pocketed some $21 billion during 13 years of sanctions--double prior estimates. Much of that came via Oil-for-Food, in which Iraq was allowed to sell some oil, supposedly under UN monitoring, and use the proceeds to buy food and medicine for its people.

Instead, as Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) accurately framed it, "That humanitarian program was corrupted and exploited ... for the most horrible and aggressive purpose" of funding Hussein's military. Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), who chairs a Senate panel aggressively investigating Oil-for-Food, said the huge fraud left a "dark stain" over the UN. While the UN averted its eyes, or worse, Hussein illegally smuggled oil, collected fat surcharges on permitted oil sales, bought rotting or substandard goods for his people, and even demanded kickbacks from foreign suppliers of those goods.

- As Iraqis died of malnutrition and disease, Hussein paid bribes to undermine sanctions and clear a path for spending on WMD. Mark Greenblatt, a counsel for the Senate panel, said Hussein tried "to gain influence throughout the world" for his campaign to end the sanctions. Greenblatt said Hussein "gave oil allocations to officials, journalists and even terrorists, who then sold their allocations to the traditional oil companies in return for a sizable commission." If some Hussein allies who criticized the sanctions as cruelties imposed on the dictator were gullible, others were purchased and paid for.

- Probers previously alleged that Benon Sevan, the sidekick of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan who ran Oil-for-Food, secretly got lucrative rights to illicit oil from Hussein himself. On Sunday, The Washington Post reported that Sevan also blocked the UN's anti-corruption unit from investigating his program. The Post said Sevan, who denies wrongdoing, was "loath to antagonize key Security Council members, particularly Russia, which routinely opposed efforts to reform a multibillion-dollar program that served its political and economic interests." Translation: People like their bribes intact.

Hussein's hijacking of Oil-for-Food bought him a world of support--almost. Now, honorable governments need to demand accountability from the nations, companies and individuals that were complicit in his blood-caked crimes. The UN also must produce the records that will let probers unravel the corruption for which so many Iraqi innocents paid with their lives.

Even in history's rough draft, this scandal is contemptible. And for those who appeased Saddam Hussein, it will grow more embarrassing.