What happened in the Fallujah mosque(Sites open letter to the Marines)

By Kevin Sites
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 8:29 a.m. ET Nov. 22, 2004

Since the shooting in the mosque, I've been haunted that I have not been able to tell you directly what I saw or explain the process by which the world came to see it as well. As you know, I'm not some war-zone tourist with a camera who doesn't understand that ugly things happen in combat. I've spent most of the last five years covering global conflict. But I have never in my career been a "gotcha" reporter -- hoping for people to commit wrongdoings so I can catch them at it.


This week I've even been shocked to see myself painted as some kind of anti-war activist. Anyone who has seen my reporting on television or has read my dispatches is fully aware of the lengths I've gone to play it straight down the middle -- not to become a tool of propaganda for the left or the right.

But I find myself a lightning rod for controversy in reporting what I saw occur in front of me, camera rolling.

It's time you to have the facts from me, in my own words, about what I saw -- without imposing on that Marine -- guilt or innocence or anything in between. I want you to read my account and make up your own minds about whether you think what I did was right or wrong. All the other armchair analysts don't mean a damn to me.

~snip~
more:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6556034/

"We're the good guys. We are Americans. We are fighting a gentleman's war here -- because we don't behead people, we don't come down to the same level of the people we're combating."

subtext:

"No we usually don't come down to the same level as the people we're combating. We drop 500 lb bombs from 8000 ft, which is far more gentlemanly than cutting off people's heads. The good-guy stick up my good-guy ass makes me feel like I can do anything because I Am An American."

Lieutenant Colonel Willy Buhl, before the battle for Fallujah began.

commemorates
the Beheading of St. John the Baptist
on September 11.

If memory serves,
Muslims had nothing to do with event either.

I don't think anyone, even the Church, holds a grudge against the Romans (Italians), in general, or Salome, in particular.

motivated people to pull the lever for Bush.
And they were equally ignoble.

That's near the end of the post. I mean... I mean...!

What do you say to this? I don't know anymore. It's not an individual problem. It's a national problem.

He did NOT destroy the tape. He did his job and turned it in.

I am ex-newsie, and while I never did war duty, I can understand his dilemma. Anyone who spends an inordinate amount of time with their subjects develops a bond with them. Anyone who denies this is lying.

I completely understand why he considered destroying the tape and applaud him for not doing so. He did his job.

BTW, I am against the "embedded" concept and have been since the beginning. What the military really wants is embedded PR men, not reporters, i.e., go troops, go. It appears to me that many embeds have already gone that route and Sites is the exception in his professionalism, not the rule.