by James Glaser
November 16, 2004

On Monday a United State's Marine was caught on film as he shot to death an unarmed and wounded Iraqi prisoner in a mosque in Fallujah. Kevin Sites a NBC correspondent said the mosque was used by insurgents to attack US forces and five wounded Iraqis had been left for others to pick up and move for treatment.

According to NBC, "Another group of Marines entered the mosque." Footage from the embedded television crew showed the five Iraqis still in the mosque, although several appeared to be already close to death, Sites said.

On a Reuters Television Film, a Marine can be heard saying, "He's fucking faking he's dead. He faking he's dead." "The Marine raises his rifle and fires into the man's head. NBC says, "The pictures are too graphic for us to broadcast." Sites said the shot prisoner "did not appear to be armed or threatening in any way."

Does this surprise me? Not at all. Killing is part of war and the only shame here is that this film will not be shown to the American public so that they can see just a little piece of the horror our troops and the Iraqi people have been seeing for over twenty months.

Thirty three years old Bilal Hussein was an Associated Press photographer trapped in Fallujah after the Marines sealed off the city, AP Writer, Katarina Kratovac, wrote his story and it was featured on Yahoo!.News.

Bilal said, "Everyone in Fallujah knew it was coming. I had been taking pictures for days, I thought I could go on doing it." Well in the next few days, Hussein's Jolan neighborhood was hit with bombs and artillery. It turned everything into rubble and the walls of his house were "pockmarked by coalition fire."

Hussein said, "Destruction was everywhere. I saw people lying dead in the streets, wounded were bleeding and there was no one to come and help them. Even the civilians who stayed in Fallujah were too afraid to go out." He went on, "There was no medicine, water, no electricity nor food for days."

"U.S, soldiers began to open fire on the houses, so I decided that it was very dangerous to stay in my house," he said. Bilal had to try and get out of the city and was going to try and swim the Euphrates River, but he said, "I changed my mind after seeing US helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river." He watched in horror as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross and he "helped bury a man by the river bank, with my own hands."

Bilal met some people who helped him and they got a message to the Associated Press office in Baghdad and they got him out with a boat.

Now yes, I know Bilal Hussein is an Iraqi, but his story does ring true. War zones turn into hell holes and yes, our troops do shoot and kill civilians if that is what they are told to do. Remember the enemy in Iraq does not wear a uniform, so anybody could be out to kill you.

In the Korean War we had "No Gun Re," the place American troops slaughtered Korean civilians, because our troops were told to kill anyone trying to get past a certain point. In Vietnam, over a million innocent civilians were killed by both the North Vietnamese and yes, our troops. We had death squads who killed thousands of civilians in the Phoenix Program and like Fallujah, bombs and artillery rained down on many cities and villages. Millions and millions of innocent civilians were killed in WW II as we did saturation bombing runs over almost every German city, and they tried to do the same to England.

The Military doesn't like to talk about these "war crimes," because that is what they are, War Crimes. Anybody who has been in combat knows that any so called "rule book" gets thrown away when your first buddy is killed. Every war has its horrors and American wars are no different.

We here in the States are so very lucky that the September 11th attack is the only War we have seen. Can you even imagine what it is like in Fallujah? Our battle there makes September 11th seem like a skirmish.

We now know that this battle has displaced over 300,000 civilians who lived in Fallujah. Make that 300,000 minus however many we killed in the battle. Our military does not keep count of the women and children they kill, but they do count anyone they can claim fought against them.

Today almost every Iraqi captured said they had stayed in the city to protect their homes from looters. Now you know that not all of them were telling the truth, but that story does ring true to me. Remember, this is Iraq. These people have no insurance policy to protect them and unlike the United States, the Iraqi government is not going to replace what these people lost. Many homes were obliterated and who really knows who was in them?

Amnesty International is looking at that War Rule Book and Crying "foul." "Amnesty International fears that civilians have been killed, in contravention of international humanitarian law, as a result of failure by parties to the fighting to take necessary precautions to protect non-combatants."

There was also British film of an American soldier firing a shot in the direction of a wounded insurgent behind a wall and then commenting "he's gone." "Under international humanitarian law, the US forces have an obligation to protect fighters hors de combat."

It almost seems silly to try and have rules on how you can kill the other guy. In every war you have young men and now women trying their best to kill everyone on the other side. These young people are scared to death and as more and more of their comrades get killed or wounded, they tend to fall into a state of insanity. Kill or be killed and damn any one who tries to wave that rule book. I think back on how foolish Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sounded when he complained at the start of the war that Iraq was taking pictures of Americans captured in battle and a few months later he was trying to explain the sexual abuse photos of the Iraqi prisoners we held.

War always turns into a state of horror and the longer it goes on the more horrible the acts of war become. Marines fighting in Fallujah were in combat for days and their actions reflect the horror they saw. Your friends are getting killed and some of them are losing limbs. All you can think about is how you want to get home in one piece and your officers tell you to get out there and kill and that is what you have been trained to do since boot camp, so you do.

You see that wounded Iraqi who was trying to kill you a little while ago and you go nuts and kill him unarmed or not. That's war. People run around and wave this list of rules you are supposed to follow, but they have never been there and they don't understand that you just "lost it' and pulled the trigger. That's war.

War is a state of insanity and America loves to get its troops into that state and then we say that they are heroes and we give them medals and parades.