Mosque killing: the reporter's experience, international reactions

[plover]

Kevin Sites, the reporter present at the killing in the Fallujah mosque, has written an account of his experience that day as an 'Open Letter to Devil Dogs of the 3.1'.

No one, especially someone like me who has lived in a war zone with you, would deny that a solider or Marine could legitimately err on the side of caution under those circumstances. War is about killing your enemy before he kills you.

In the particular circumstance I was reporting, it bothered me that the Marine didn't seem to consider the other insurgents a threat -- the one very obviously moving under the blanket, or even the two next to me that were still breathing.

I can't know what was in the mind of that Marine. He is the only one who does.

But observing all of this as an experienced war reporter who always bore in mind the dark perils of this conflict, even knowing the possibilities of mitigating circumstances -- it appeared to me very plainly that something was not right. According to Lt. Col Bob Miller, the rules of engagement in Falluja required soldiers or Marines to determine hostile intent before using deadly force. I was not watching from a hundred feet away. I was in the same room. Aside from breathing, I did not observe any movement at all.

[...]

[The officers and I] all knew it was a complicated story, and if not handled responsibly, could have the potential to further inflame the volatile region. I offered to hold the tape until they had time to look into incident and begin an investigation -- providing me with information that would fill in some of the blanks.

[...]

I knew NBC would be responsible with the footage. But there were complications. We were part of a video "pool" in Falluja, and that obligated us to share all of our footage with other networks. I had no idea how our other "pool" partners might use the footage. I considered not feeding the tape to the pool -- or even, for a moment, destroying it. But that thought created the same pit in my stomach that witnessing the shooting had. It felt wrong. Hiding this wouldn't make it go away. There were other people in that room. What happened in that mosque would eventually come out. I would be faced with the fact that I had betrayed truth as well as a life supposedly spent in pursuit of it.

When NBC aired the story 48-hours later, we did so in a way that attempted to highlight every possible mitigating issue for that Marine's actions. We wanted viewers to have a very clear understanding of the circumstances surrounding the fighting on that frontline. Many of our colleagues were just as responsible. Other foreign networks made different decisions, and because of that, I have become the conflicted conduit who has brought this to the world.

[...]

So here, ultimately, is how it all plays out: when the Iraqi man in the mosque posed a threat, he was your enemy; when he was subdued he was your responsibility; when he was killed in front of my eyes and my camera -- the story of his death became my responsibility.

The burdens of war, as you so well know, are unforgiving for all of us.

The Middle East scholar who goes by 'Abu Aardvark' comments on how the current absence of al-Jazeera in Iraq affects public opinion in the Arab world.

A lot of Americans complain about al Jazeera's coverage of Iraq, and the American military certainly remembers how al Jazeera's coverage of Fallujah transformed the battle in April. But ... the absence of al Jazeera also has real drawbacks, even from an American point of view: when some small piece of information - such as the mosque shooting video - appears in a near-vacuum of information, it has far greater impact than if there had been ongoing, full coverage of the conflict.

By this argument, the American heavy-handed determination to win the media war this time thereby created the conditions for the enormous impact of this video.

Middle East scholar Juan Cole provides a précis of the wave of international protests sparked by the Fallujah campaign (along with some of the Iraqi responses to the Abu Hanifa raid).

World revulsion against the US attack on Fallujah reached a crescendo during the past five days, with significant street protests breaking out in the Middle East and Latin America. Turkey, Palestine and Libya in the region, and Chile in the New World saw thousands of angry protesters come out against the US.

The brutal way the US conducted the assault, and the continual aerial bombardment of civilian neighborhoods in the weeks leading up to the attack, suggested to many observers that the operation was intended as a form of collective punishment against the people of Fallujah, and a warning to the residents of other Iraqi cities not to let the guerrillas operate freely in their urban areas. Collective punishment is forbidden by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 governing militarily occupied territories.

(There were also significant protests in Pakistan and Greece, and an official condemnation from the Egyptian Council on Foreign Affairs.)

 

[Smurf]

*Deep Artificial Radio Announcer Voice* Once again Team America has pissed off the Entire World!

 

[loseyourname]

Regarding the Mosque Shooting

This is a letter from the reporter to the marine corp, from his personal blog:

To Devil Dogs of the 3.1:

Since the shooting in the Mosque, I've been haunted that I have not been able to tell you directly what I saw or explain the process by which the world came to see it as well. As you know, I'm not some war zone tourist with a camera who doesn't understand that ugly things happen in combat. I've spent most of the last five years covering global conflict. But I have never in my career been a 'gotcha' reporter -- hoping for people to commit wrongdoings so I can catch them at it.

Full text at www.kevinsites.net

 

[loseyourname]

By the way, it really bothers me that the LA Times published this letter and completely edited out this entire part:

During the course of these events, there was plenty of mitigating circumstances like the ones just mentioned and which I reported in my story. The Marine who fired the shot had reportedly been shot in the face himself the day before.

I'm also well aware from many years as a war reporter that there have been times, especially in this conflict, when dead and wounded insurgents have been booby-trapped, even supposedly including an incident that happened just a block away from the mosque in which one Marine was killed and five others wounded. Again, a detail that was clearly stated in my television report.

No one, especially someone like me who has lived in a war zone with you, would deny that a solider or Marine could legitimately err on the side of caution under those circumstances. War is about killing your enemy before he kills you.

I understand that the entire letter would not have fit in the space provided, but given that the writer clearly wanted to make a very even-handed assessment of the situation, the only reason I can think of for the editor to only include those parts of the letter damning to the marine is pure agenda and bias against the US military. I understand that the Times does not support the war and neither does it support president Bush, but they need not selectively publish what are initially very fair reports in an effort to tarnish every action taken by our troops. That is not responsible journalism, even on an op-ed page.

 

[plover]

loseyourname:

I'm slightly puzzled as to why you re-posted the link Kevin Sites' blog (not bothered, just puzzled).

I understand that the entire letter would not have fit in the space provided, but given that the writer clearly wanted to make a very even-handed assessment of the situation, the only reason I can think of for the editor to only include those parts of the letter damning to the marine is pure agenda and bias against the US military.

If Sites himself did not do the edit, then that is indeed annoying. (Perhaps they included the paragraph starting with "When NBC aired..." that I included above, and thought that sufficed?)

The issue of the Marine having been shot the day before, while certainly a mitigiating factor for the Marine himself, does make me wonder though. If the injury was serious enough, either physically or psychologically, to have been a mitigating factor, why was this guy back on duty so soon?

The explanations that come to mind depend either on low personnel levels forcing the Corps to put people back on duty, or on the kind of breakdown of the line between useful stoicism and macho crapola that can prevail in military culture, but I haven't heard evidence that supports any specific interpretation.