Reply #20: Well I, for one,

[JeebusB]

don't have a problem with that marine. I understand that many/most of you do. My question to you is, have you ever been in a war zone? The insurgent in question was not a prisoner, he was a combatant in a war zone. Was he playing possum or simply unconscious? I don't know and I guess now we'll never know. Whatever the case, he had not been secured. He wasn't bound, had not been searched, etc. Wasn't it just the previous day when a medic was killed or injured in a very similar situation when he went to help a wounded insurgent?

War is ugly and often cruel. Don't expect to engage in it and be able to maintain your smug sense of moral superiority. If you want to point at this incident and blame BushCo for putting our young men in that position where they have to do things like this, then we might be able to find some common ground. But don't blame the marine for making the correct, albeit distasteful, decision under extreme circumstances.

And to compare this incident in which a soldier dispatches an armed insurgent who shortly before was shooting at him and still presented a credible threat to himself and the rest of his unit with the savage murder by slow decapitation of helpless, bound, innocent people who've been captives for days/weeks is just repugnant.