then put yourself in the Iraqi sandals.
maybe he was a civilian whos family was killed by the same marines or other
US bombs.
Who knows? Not you and neither do I.
So far, we have 1200 US Soldiers and 100,000 Iraqi civilians not counting
Iraqi soldiers.
Does this mean anything to you? Guess not as only American losses of lives
are counted, others don't matter obviously.
maybe some became terrorist because there parents, wifes, husbands and
children were killed.




On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 09:00:59 -0600, Denys Beauchemin
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Today in the Wall Street Journal:
>
>Semper Fi
>The story of Fallujah isn't on that NBC videotape.
>
>Thursday, November 18, 2004 12:01 a.m.
>
>Some 40 Marines have just lost their lives cleaning out one of the world's
>worst terror dens, in Fallujah, yet all the world wants to talk about is
the
>NBC videotape of a Marine shooting a prostrate Iraqi inside a mosque. Have
>we lost all sense of moral proportion?
>The al-Zarqawi TV network, also known as Al-Jazeera, has broadcast the tape
>to the Arab world, and U.S. media have also played it up. The point seems
to
>be to conjure up images again of Abu Ghraib, further maligning the American
>purpose in Iraq. Never mind that the pictures don't come close to telling
us
>about the context of the incident, much less what was on the mind of the
>soldier after days of combat.
>
>
>
>
>Put yourself in that Marine's boots. He and his mates have had to endure
>some of the toughest infantry duty imaginable, house-to-house urban
fighting
>against an enemy that neither wears a uniform nor obeys any normal rules of
>war. Here is how that enemy fights, according to an account in the Times of
>London:
>"In the south of Fallujah yesterday, U.S. Marines found the armless,
legless
>body of a blonde woman, her throat slashed and her entrails cut out.
>Benjamin Finnell, a hospital apprentice with the U.S. Navy Corps, said that
>she had been dead for a while, but at that location for only a day or two.
>The woman was wearing a blue dress; her face had been disfigured. It was
>unclear if the remains were the body of the Irish-born aid worker Margaret
>Hassan, 59, or of Teresa Borcz, 54, a Pole abducted two weeks ago. Both
were
>married to Iraqis and held Iraqi citizenship; both were kidnapped in
Baghdad
>last month."
>
>When not disemboweling Iraqi women, these killers hide in mosques and
>hospitals, booby-trap dead bodies, and open fire as they pretend to
>surrender. Their snipers kill U.S. soldiers out of nowhere. According to
one
>account, the Marine in the videotape had seen a member of his unit killed
by
>another insurgent pretending to be dead. Who from the safety of his
>Manhattan sofa has standing to judge what that Marine did in that mosque?
>
>
>
>
>Beyond the one incident, think of what the Marine and Army units just
>accomplished in Fallujah. In a single week, they killed as many as 1,200 of
>the enemy and captured 1,000 more. They did this despite forfeiting the
>element of surprise, so civilians could escape, and while taking
precautions
>to protect Iraqis that no doubt made their own mission more difficult and
>hazardous. And they did all of this not for personal advantage, and
>certainly not to get rich, but only out of a sense of duty to their
>comrades, their mission and their country.
>In a more grateful age, this would be hailed as one of the great battles in
>Marine history--with Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Hue City and the Chosin
>Reservoir. We'd know the names of these military units, and of many of the
>soldiers too. Instead, the name we know belongs to the NBC correspondent,
>Kevin Sites.
>
>We suppose he was only doing his job, too. But that doesn't mean the rest
of
>us have to indulge in the moral abdication that would equate deliberate
>televised beheadings of civilians with a Marine shooting a terrorist, who
>may or may not have been armed, amid the ferocity of battle.
>
>
>
>
>
>I would also urge you to read the book "Black Hawk Down" by Mark Bowden.
>
>Finally, Christian, I find it amazing that you condemn this incident while
>remaining silent on your country's military conduct in Cote d'Ivoire.
>
>
>Denys
>
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