Something to think about

Re: the controversy over the Marine shooting the Iraqi insurgent who was laying down. Keven Myers from the UK Telegraph gives his perspective:

Not being a subscriber to al-Jazeera television, I can only imagine what it has recently been playing on its news service – but I’d go bail it was clips of the US marine shooting dead a wounded Iraqi in a mosque in Fallujah. Indeed, it is probably on a continuous loop. Needless to say – for reasons of “sensitivity” – al-Jazeera is not showing the murder of Margaret Hassan.

The outcry over the killing by the marine passes all belief. Moreover, we actually know the context for the shooting. The marines thought the room in the mosque contained only dead bodies, not wounded. When the marine saw a “dead” man move, he cried out first, and then shot him.

Lance Corporal Ian Malone and Piper Christian Muzvuru, 1st Battalion, Irish Guards, RIP, took no such precautions in Basra in April last year. They simply ignored the body of the dead fedayeen fighter as they dismounted from their Warrior armoured fighting vehicle – and it, being on a suicide mission, promptly rose up and shot them both, before itself being blown apart. Thenceforth, the “Micks” probably made it their business to re-kill every corpse they saw.

Myers goes on to touch on a touchy subject with many of us right now and that’s the embedded press with the troops in Iraq. Are some of them really concerned with “getting the truth out” or are they only interested in sensationalism and propagandizing the war?

Mackubin Thomas Owens at NRO has more (for that link, a wink to Powerline)

On the heels of that, we have this:

Marines shoot insurgent who was ‘playing dead’

The US military says Marines in Fallujah have shot and killed an insurgent who engaged them as he was faking being dead, a week after footage of a marine killing an apparently unarmed and wounded Iraqi caused a stir in the region.

“Marines from the 1st Marine Division shot and killed an insurgent who while faking dead opened fire on the marines who were conducting a security and clearing patrol through the streets,” a military statement said.