Monday, November 22, 2004

My analysis of the guy who got "THE" Marine video, you know the one

From Kevin Sites Blog

Selected exerpts and comments

To Devil Dogs of the 3.1:

Since the shooting in the Mosque, I've been haunted that I have not been able to tell you directly what I saw or explain the process by which the world came to see it as well. As you know, I'm not some war zone tourist with a camera who doesn't understand that ugly things happen in combat. I've spent most of the last five years covering global conflict. But I have never in my career been a 'gotcha' reporter -- hoping for people to commit wrongdoings so I can catch them at it.
This week I've even been shocked to see myself painted as some kind of anti-war activist. Anyone who has seen my reporting on television or has read the dispatches on this website is fully aware of the lengths I've gone to play it straight down the middle -- not to become a tool of propaganda for the left or the right.
(Ok, I can let that go)

It's time you to have the facts from me, in my own words, about what I saw, , , "
", , , what I did was right or wrong. All the other armchair analysts don't mean a damn to me.

Here it goes. "
It's Saturday morning and we're still at our strong point from the night before, , ,
, , ,We'll be back clearing some of the area we passed yesterday. There are also reports that the mosque, where ten insurgents were killed and five wounded on Friday may have been re-occupied overnight. (remember this)

I decide to leave you guys and pick up with one of the infantry squads as they move house-to-house back toward the mosque, , ,
We hear gunshots from what seems to be coming from inside the mosque. A Marine from my squad yells, "Are there Marines in here?"

When we arrive at the front entrance, we see that another squad has already entered before us.
The lieutenant asks them, "Are there people inside?"
One of the Marines raises his hand signaling five.
"Did you shoot them," the lieutenant asks?
"Roger that, sir, " the same Marine responds, , ,
, , ,Immediately after going in, I see the same black plastic body bags spread around the mosque. The dead from the day before. But more surprising, I see the same five men that were wounded from Friday as well. It appears that one of them is now dead and three are bleeding to death from new gunshot wounds. The fifth is partially covered by a blanket and is in the same place and condition he was in on Friday, near a column. He has not been shot again. I look closely at both the dead and the wounded. There don't appear to be any weapons anywhere.
While I continue to tape, a Marine walks up to the other two bodies about fifteen feet away, but also lying against the same back wall.

Then I hear him say this about one of the men:
"He's fucking faking he's dead -- he's faking he's fucking dead."
Through my viewfinder I can see him raise the muzzle of his rifle in the direction of the wounded Iraqi. There are no sudden movements, no reaching or lunging.
However, the Marine could legitimately believe the man poses some kind of danger. Maybe he's going to cover him while another Marine searches for weapons.
Instead, he pulls the trigger. There is a small splatter against the back wall and the man's leg slumps down.
, , ,
I am still rolling. I feel the deep pit of my stomach. The Marine then abruptly turns away and strides away, right past the fifth wounded insurgent lying next to a column. He is very much alive and peering from his blanket. He is moving, even trying to talk. But for some reason, it seems he did not pose the same apparent "danger" as the other man -- though he may have been more capable of hiding a weapon or explosive beneath his blanket. (maybe he didn't feel threatend because YOU could have stopped something)
But then two other marines in the room raise their weapons as the man tries to talk.
For a moment, I'm paralyzed still taping with the old man in the foreground. I get up after a beat and tell the Marines again, what I had told the lieutenant -- that this man -- all of these wounded men -- were the same ones from yesterday. That they had been disarmed treated and left here. (remember the shooting from THIS mosque? Why wouldn't they be re-armed, or booby trapped?), , ,
, , ,In the aftermath, the first question that came to mind was why had these wounded men been left in the mosque? (Maybe in the confusion of city fighting, they'd been forgotten- or they felt AMERICANS needed treatment before terrorists?)

, , , (BIG gap here), , ,

We all knew it was a complicated story, and if not handled responsibly, could have the potential to further inflame the volatile region. I offered to hold the tape until they had time to look into incident and begin an investigation -- providing me with information that would fill in some of the blanks.
, , ,(space), , ,

I knew NBC would be responsible with the footage. But there were complications. We were part of a video "pool" in Falluja, and that obligated us to share all of our footage with other networks. I had no idea how our other "pool" partners might use the footage. (REALLY? Yeh, I'd assume Al Jazzera would air it with all the caveats that NBC was supposed to- not to INCITE anybody, ya know) I considered not feeding the tape to the pool -- or even, for a moment, destroying it. But that thought created the same pit in my stomach that witnessing the shooting had. It felt wrong. Hiding this wouldn't make it go away. There were other people in that room. What happened in that mosque would eventually come out. I would be faced with the fact that I had betrayed truth as well as a life supposedly spent in pursuit of it.

When NBC aired the story 48-hours later, we did so in a way that attempted to highlight every possible mitigating issue for that Marine's actions (Yep we lead by saying "the shooting of a wounded prisoner of War). We wanted viewers to have a very clear understanding of the circumstances surrounding the fighting on that frontline(A wounded POW was shot in a Mosque). Many of our colleagues were just as responsible(He's guilty, he's guilty). Other foreign networks made different decisions, and because of that, I have become the conflicted conduit who has brought this to the world."

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