Word: fallujah
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...freelance photojournalist working for NBC videotaped a Marine shooting first, apparently killing a wounded Iraqi lying on the floor of a Fallujah mosque. Three days later, the footage aired around the world--and the damage was done...
...officials say the video lacks enough context to draw any firm conclusion about whether the Marine had legitimately defended himself or committed a war crime. But several officers interviewed by TIME concede that the images look bad and could indeed lead to a court-martial. In the battle for Fallujah, during which 51 Americans, 8 Iraqi allies and an estimated 1,200 insurgents have been killed, it was a propaganda coup for the other side. "I'm upset if this Marine murdered in cold blood," says Bernard Trainor, a retired Marine three-star general who faced combat in Korea...
...injured Iraqis may also have been shot in the mosque that day. The corpses of four Iraqis have been shipped to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for autopsies, and the Marine shooter in the video, who has not been identified, has been removed from the battlefield. Marines in Fallujah have launched an investigation into the shooting...
...initial reports aired on NBC. A network spokeswoman says he expects to be deposed. But three days before the shooting, Sites, 42, an experienced war correspondent, had posted a telling dispatch on his weblog. "The Marines are operating with liberal rules of engagement," he wrote. As the unit entered Fallujah, a staff sergeant announced that "everything to the West is weapons free." That meant, Sites explained, the Marines could "shoot whatever they see." Many of the Americans were grieving and exhausted, he wrote. "Almost to a man, the Marines I'm embedded with have all lost friends in this protracted...
...some 20 Iraqis last week in Baghdad, not one gave the Marine in the mosque the benefit of the doubt. "I can only imagine how many other Fallujans were killed like that," said Jassim Abu Hamid, a schoolteacher. The outrage will probably grow once residents return en masse to Fallujah, a deeply conservative place known as the City of Mosques. Dozens of mosques have been hit by heavy fire, and some were obliterated. Journalists embedded with U.S. forces said some soldiers had urinated and defecated in mosque rooms where worshippers ritually cleanse themselves...