Jerry writes:

> Also, unlike Wirt, I don't think this incident is even close in comparison
> to what occurred at My Lai in 1968.  Here the man was indeed a
> combatant, not like the women, children and other civilians at My Lai
> who were stuck down on the orders of a ranking officer.   Not even close...

As soon as a prisoner is disarmed, especially a wounded disarmed prisoner, he
is no different than the women and children of My Lai. He is helpless and his
murder is a war crime.

You people are on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of the law. If
the Marine is not prosecuted, everything the US has been advocating for the
region will be lost, if it already isn't.

But more importantly, you seem to deeply misunderstand what has happened. The
image of the wounded prisoner being shot point blank in the head will become
as much of an enduring image of this war as did the image of the Saigon police
chief shooting a bound prisoner in the head with his pistol. Forty years
later, I remember quite clearly its first broadcast. That image, and a dozen
others like it, "lost" the war for us. And this image will be remembered forty
years later in the same way by a significant percentage of the world's population.

Several billion people have now seen this footage, and to them, this now
becomes the face of the American occupation, and it too will be a part of the
reason that we will eventually declare victory and leave Iraq in retreat. We don't
have the will to do what's truly necessary to bring the country under
control, and that is to kill nothing less than a million people.

I do not believe for a moment that this was an isolated incident. There are
probably several dozens of other incidents that have occurred in the past few
months that are identical in nature, different only in that this one was caught
on film. But neither can it be excused. There are undoubtedly tens of
thousands of soldiers in Iraq who would not have acted in the same manner.

Wirt Atmar

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