Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: "He's fucking faking he's dead! He's faking he's fucking dead!"   Real American Heroes

Da alt.journalism
L'affare si ingrossa: altre uccisioni sommarie documentate dall'AFP
November 16, 2004
COVERING UP EXECUTIONS IN FALLUJAH
By Brian Dominick
Reporters are bending over backwards to explain and dismiss apparent
executions of Iraqis in Fallujah, including this latest one, committed
by a US Marine and caught on videotape by an NBC News crew.
Agence France-Presse is reporting that one of their correspondents has
found 27 bodies of men apparently executed at point blank range.
But after referring to the city of 280,000 inhabitants as a "rebel
enclave" in order to dehumanize Fallujah, AFP only looked to one
source for a speculative explanation of the killings:
    Marine Captain Drew McNulty said he thought that the mujahideen
who had ruled Fallujah, before the insurgents took heavy losses in a
US-led assault launched last Monday, had forced all males aged 15 to
50 to stay and fight.
    "They probably kept the military-aged males and forced them to
fight and those who refused they executed," he speculated.
This is truly fascinating stuff, since the "males aged 15 to 50"
criteria is one used by US occupation troops and Iraqi interim
government forces to separate "friendly" Iraqi civilians from
potential enemies. But the AFP report is less than skeptical of the
Marines' explanation, leaving the story at that.
A decent reporter would have followed up the question like so: Since
the US announced just before the ground assault that males aged 45 or
younger would be captured if they tried to leave Fallujah from that
point forward, how now can the Marines place sole blame for these
executions on the "insurgents"?
I am not saying I have any better idea of who killed those men, but so
far the number of videotapes showing Iraqis executing local
noncombatants is zero, while at least two separate videos now show
American Marines executing wounded Iraqis this past week (see the
first here).
In the NBC video released today, the disturbing part is not that a
battle-hardened kid could so coldly and angrily murder a man
identified as a wounded "enemy" -- anyone who did not already know
that such events are commonplace in war probably gets their news
solely from Hollywood. What was really agonizing was watching NBC's
correspondent awkwardly try to excuse the killing, instead of just
doing his job and telling us what happened. Also excruciating: reading
MSNBC's website report on the incident, which tries its best to
"balance" (my word) its footage of a cold-blooded killing with
mitigating evidence.
First, anchor Matt Lauer warned viewers that the video "could be
disturbing to some viewers" -- perhaps politely excluding viewers who
hate Arabs, not wanting to generalize about his audience's ability to
stomach atrocity. Then Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski made a
point of explaining that the Marine who committed the execution was
himself wounded the day before, and that he made a "split-second
decision that cost one enemy insurgent his life and could now result
in charges against the Marine." So the dead man is our enemy, and the
killer, we are reminded, is one of us.
Next we see troops sauntering about a room strewn with what appear to
be dead or severely injured men. Suddenly, we hear a Marine yelling,
"He's fucking faking he's dead! He's faking he's fucking dead!" Then
apparently that same Marine shoots the prone man in the head from a
few feet away.
Note the accusation the Marine made before executing the man. It was
not that the man was armed or dangerous -- but simply that he was
alive. That was the offense in question. Not "he's got a gun" or "he's
got a grenade" or anything like that -- just that he was playing dead.
(Ironically, had the man been pretending to be dead, he probably would
have been doing so in order to avoid execution or capture, in hopes of
being overlooked, as is common on battlefields the world over.)
But the man had in fact been wounded already -- apparently the day
before -- and was unarmed. A separate unit of Marines had reportedly
shot, disarmed and then abandoned the men in the building on the
previous day.
Later we hear from Kevin Sites himself, who has been living among
Marines for weeks now, and who continues to be surrounded by them.
Sites reads from a prepared statement he holds in his hand:
    "As an embedded reporter I have witnessed the Marines behaving as
a disciplined force throughout this offensive, and in this particular
case it certainly was a confusing situation, to say the least. Perhaps
the only one who knows the true intentions in this particular incident
was the Marine in question."
And that's it. All we hear directly from Sites is a pre-written
disclaimer, read aloud in highly restrictive conditions. This kind of
reporting is given credence, even though embedded journalists
obviously would not dare speak negatively about the men with whom they
live, and on whom they depend for protection during firefights.
But the scene captured in NBC's own video does not uphold Sites'
characterization of a "confusing situation" at all. A bunch of men,
barely living or dead to the last one, are slumped, unarmed, against a
wall or one another, or scattered about the floor of a large,
otherwise empty room. The only thing confusing about the situation is
how the Marine, or the reporter who witnessed the events and even had
the advantage of instant replay, could have concluded that an unarmed
man is a threat, and conceivably needs to be shot in the head, simply
because he is breathing.
Advocates of looser rules of engagement have argued all day that one
must leave open the possibility that the Marine thought the wounded
man was actually a booby-trapped corpse, as this same unit reportedly
discovered the previous day (the hard way). The rigging of corpses is
a fairly common guerilla warfare tactic, and Sites dutifully reported
that "possibility" in order to cast doubt on what his videotape
actually shows.
But, if that were the fear, seeing that the prone man was in fact
alive would, in such a case, have been cause for relief, not urgent
suspicion. I haven't seen that logic employed in any commentary on the
situation, though it seems self-evident. I just searched somewhat
extensively and could find no accounts of a living mujahideen
booby-trapping his own body in Fallujah.
In the end, Sites' apologetics are perfectly emblematic of the reason
The NewStandard has used so little information gleaned from embedded
reporters. His unwillingness to call a spade a spade, on the pretense
of whatever "objective impartiality" an embedded reporter can muster
in the thick of battle, is just a side-lesson about what modern media
has done to modern warfare, and vice versa.
In the end, if reporters do their jobs (which they tend not to do),
there will be a focus on how many such incidents were not caught on
tape, and focus will drift from this particular instance (which
appears is presented as more of an aberration than an example), to the
broader context and what it indicates about the real, untold story of
the second Battle for Fallujah.
Article found at:
http://newstandardnews.net/alivewires/mideast/content/?show_item=1235
"To derail concern over whether you should 'support their policy', the
PR system focuses attention on whether you 'support our troops' --
meaningless words, as empty as the question of whether you support the
people of Iowa.  That of course, is just the point: to reduce the
population to gibbering idiots, mouthing empty phrases and patriotic
slogans, waving ribbons, watching gladiatorial contests and the models
designed for them by the PR industry, but, crucially, not thinking or
acting."
--Noam Chomsky
"If only more to today's military personnel would realize that they
are being used by the owning elites as a publicly subsidized
capitalist goon squad."
--Smedley Butler

before -- and was unarmed.
Puttanate indimostrabili al momento :)
-Stefano