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>From <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.opinionjournal.com">www.opinionjournal.com</a><br>
<font face="Garamond, Times" size="5"><b>Semper Fi</b></font>
<br>
<font face="Garamond, Times" size="4">The story of Fallujah isn't on
that NBC videotape.</font>
<br>
<font face="Verdana, Times" size="2"><br>
<i>Thursday, November 18, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST</i>
</font>
<p><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">Some 40 Marines have
just lost their lives cleaning out one of the world's worst terror
dens, in Fallujah, yet all the world wants to talk about is the NBC
videotape of a Marine shooting a prostrate Iraqi inside a mosque. Have
we lost all sense of moral proportion?</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">The al-Zarqawi TV network, also
known as Al-Jazeera, has broadcast the tape to the Arab world, and U.S.
media have also played it up. The point seems to be to conjure up
images again of Abu Ghraib, further maligning the American purpose in
Iraq. Never mind that the pictures don't come close to telling us about
the context of the incident, much less what was on the mind of the
soldier after days of combat.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2"><img
src="cid:part1.05070101.07040906@solution-consulting.com" alt=""
width="88" height="6" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" align="middle">
</font></p>
<font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">Put yourself in that Marine's
boots. He and his mates have had to endure some of the toughest
infantry duty imaginable, house-to-house urban fighting against an
enemy that neither wears a uniform nor obeys any normal rules of war.
Here is how that enemy fights, according to an account in the Times of
London:</font>
<p><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">"In the south of Fallujah
yesterday, U.S. Marines found the armless, legless body of a blonde
woman, her throat slashed and her entrails cut out. Benjamin Finnell, a
hospital apprentice with the U.S. Navy Corps, said that she had been
dead for a while, but at that location for only a day or two. The woman
was wearing a blue dress; her face had been disfigured. It was unclear
if the remains were the body of the Irish-born aid worker Margaret
Hassan, 59, or of Teresa Borcz, 54, a Pole abducted two weeks ago. Both
were married to Iraqis and held Iraqi citizenship; both were kidnapped
in Baghdad last month."</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">When not disemboweling Iraqi
women, these killers hide in mosques and hospitals, booby-trap dead
bodies, and open fire as they pretend to surrender. Their snipers kill
U.S. soldiers out of nowhere. According to one account, the Marine in
the videotape had seen a member of his unit killed by another insurgent
pretending to be dead. Who from the safety of his Manhattan sofa has
standing to judge what that Marine did in that mosque?</font></p>
<p></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2"><img
src="cid:part1.05070101.07040906@solution-consulting.com" alt=""
width="88" height="6" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" align="middle">
</font></p>
<font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">Beyond the one incident, think of
what the Marine and Army units just accomplished in Fallujah. In a
single week, they killed as many as 1,200 of the enemy and captured
1,000 more. They did this despite forfeiting the element of surprise,
so civilians could escape, and while taking precautions to protect
Iraqis that no doubt made their own mission more difficult and
hazardous. And they did all of this not for personal advantage, and
certainly not to get rich, but only out of a sense of duty to their
comrades, their mission and their country.</font>
<p><font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">In a more grateful age, this
would
be hailed as one of the great battles in Marine history--with
Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Hue City and the Chosin Reservoir. We'd know the
names of these military units, and of many of the soldiers too.
Instead, the name we know belongs to the NBC correspondent, Kevin Sites.</font></p>
<font face="Verdana, Times" size="2">We suppose he was only doing his
job, too. But that doesn't mean the rest of us have to indulge in the
moral abdication that would equate deliberate televised beheadings of
civilians with a Marine shooting a terrorist, who may or may not have
been armed, amid the ferocity of battle.</font><br>
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