Afro88
21-04-2005, 09:45 AM
Did anyone see Dateline last night? They had a story about an American journo who was embedded in Iraq with a platoon. He witnessed first hand (and caught it on camera) one of the soldiers executing an unarmed wounded civillian. Basically they were in an area with a bunch of wounded not moving laying on the ground. There was one dude lying up against the wall wounded with no guns when one of the soldiers goes "is he dead?". The other one then aimed his rifle, shot the civillian in the head and then went "he is now."
At first I was like "wtf, that is sick", but I started to think about how insurgents are booby trapping wounded and dead civillians to take out soldiers, how maybe the soldiers don't have time to take care of every wounded civillian etc. But then I thought they're in Iraq supposedly for the people, they should be taking care of them. And what's the point in shooting a wounded civillian? He had no guns, no obvious affiliation with insurgents and he was wounded so he couldn't really do much. And it's not like the guy was asking the soldier to shoot him cause he was in pain and thought he was going to die anyway.
The story then went on to say that the journo came back to the same site the next day with a bunch of soldiers. One of them went inside, and the journo heard gun shots. He came back out and the commander said "anyone inside?" The soldier responded holding up his hand with 5 fingers, to say 5 people. The commander said "Did you shoot them?" the soldier says yes, the commander then goes "Were they armed?" and the soldier shrugs his shoulders. They then go inside and see the same wounded, except they're all dead.
This was reported in the news, although no networks showed the actual footage taken. I saw the footage last night which proves all of this happened. After all that, the the journo talks about how he took alot of flak for airing the story (thousands of hate mail and death threats from Americans).
Did anyone else see it? Even just reading what I've written, what do you think? Do you think the soldiers are justified to kill wounded civillians given that they may be booby trapped or working with insurgents?
PS, if Nodbugger replies to this, please ignore him. I want an intelligent discussion without the usual "u r stupid" comments and annoying trollish arguments riddled throughout it.
At first I was like "wtf, that is sick", but I started to think about how insurgents are booby trapping wounded and dead civillians to take out soldiers, how maybe the soldiers don't have time to take care of every wounded civillian etc. But then I thought they're in Iraq supposedly for the people, they should be taking care of them. And what's the point in shooting a wounded civillian? He had no guns, no obvious affiliation with insurgents and he was wounded so he couldn't really do much. And it's not like the guy was asking the soldier to shoot him cause he was in pain and thought he was going to die anyway.
The story then went on to say that the journo came back to the same site the next day with a bunch of soldiers. One of them went inside, and the journo heard gun shots. He came back out and the commander said "anyone inside?" The soldier responded holding up his hand with 5 fingers, to say 5 people. The commander said "Did you shoot them?" the soldier says yes, the commander then goes "Were they armed?" and the soldier shrugs his shoulders. They then go inside and see the same wounded, except they're all dead.
This was reported in the news, although no networks showed the actual footage taken. I saw the footage last night which proves all of this happened. After all that, the the journo talks about how he took alot of flak for airing the story (thousands of hate mail and death threats from Americans).
Did anyone else see it? Even just reading what I've written, what do you think? Do you think the soldiers are justified to kill wounded civillians given that they may be booby trapped or working with insurgents?
PS, if Nodbugger replies to this, please ignore him. I want an intelligent discussion without the usual "u r stupid" comments and annoying trollish arguments riddled throughout it.