American Heroes...

[MSgt213]

I'm feeling sick- literally. I can't get the video Al-Jazeera played out of my head:

The mosque strewn with bodies of Iraqis- not still with prayer or meditation, but prostrate with death- Some seemingly bloated… an old man with a younger one leaning upon him… legs, feet, hands, blood everywhere… The dusty sun filtering in through the windows… the stillness of the horrid place. Then the stillness is broken- in walk some marines, guns pointed at the bodies... the mosque resonates with harsh American voices arguing over a body- was he dead, was he alive? I watched, tense, wondering what they would do- I expected the usual Marines treatment- that a heavy, booted foot would kick the man perhaps to see if he groaned. But it didn't work that way- the crack of gunfire suddenly explodes in the mosque as the Marine fires at the seemingly dead man and then come the words, "He's dead now."

"He's dead now." He said it calmly, matter-of-factly, in a sort of sing-song voice that made my blood run cold… and the Marines around him didn't care. They just roamed around the mosque and began to drag around the corpses because, apparently, this was nothing to them. This was probably a commonplace incident.

We sat, horrified, stunned with the horror of the scene that unfolded in front of our eyes. It's the third day of Eid and we were finally able to gather as a family- a cousin, his wife and their two daughters, two aunts, and an elderly uncle. E. and my cousin had been standing in line for two days to get fuel so we could go visit the elderly uncle on the final day of a very desolate Eid. The room was silent at the end of the scene, with only the voice of the news anchor and the sobs of my aunt. My little cousin flinched and dropped her spoon, face frozen with shock, eyes wide with disbelief, glued to the television screen, "Is he dead? Did they kill him?" I swallowed hard, trying to gulp away the lump lodged in my throat and watched as my cousin buried his face in his hands, ashamed to look at his daughter.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. And Bush will say,

"They hate us for our freedoms"

I am ashamed of the American policy that made it all right to go into a house of worship and do this. I don't care if they thought weapons were there, what they did was repugnant. Don't they realize that the ONLY time the lesser jihad is allowed is when Muslims are not allowed to worship in peace?

I tremble for my country, for we have surely sowed the wind and will reap the whirlwind. May God have more mercy upon us than those soldiers did on the worshippers.

[MSgt213]

2. The thing is there were more crimes committed here then the killing

leaving those men in the condition they were in unattended in a mosque for more then a full day is in itself a violation of international law. Those men should have been removed immediately for their own safety, protection and treatment of their wounds. I think some died from negelect of their wounds and at least one died because the Marines failed to protect an injured and badly wounded non combatant from one of their own.

[DebJ]

3. would repeating scenes like this wake up the REST of Americans,

or would they simply cease to have any affect?