US Soldier "Executes" Terrorist Playing Dead

The left's new Abu Ghraib?

NEW YORK (AP) - A U.S. Marine shot and killed a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner in a mosque in the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, according to dramatic pool television pictures broadcast Monday. A Marine spokesman in Washington said the shooting was under investigation.

The shooting Saturday was videotaped by pool correspondent Kevin Sites of NBC television, who said three other previously wounded prisoners in the mosque apparently also had been shot again by the Marines inside the mosque.

...

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.

The video then showed a Marine raising his rifle toward a prisoner laying on the floor of the mosque but neither NBC nor CNN showed the bullet hitting the man. At that moment the video was blacked out but the report of the rifle could be heard.

The blacked out portion of the video tape, provided later to Associated Press Television News and other members of the network pool, showed the bullet striking the man in the upper body, possibly the head. His blood splatters on the wall behind him and his body goes limp.

Sites reported 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.

Will Andrew Sullivan and the others be able to maintain interest outside of the superheated environment of a presidential election?

It will be harder, of course. This guy wasn't being directly supervised at the moment, and seemed to act completely spontaneously.

It also has to be noted that these guys have played dead before. And that "playing dead" is not surrendering. And that if you're not surrendering, you're a legitimate target.

posted by Ace at 11:54 PM

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