{"id":923,"date":"2004-11-22T10:53:14","date_gmt":"2004-11-22T18:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2004\/11\/essential_reading_from_falluja\/"},"modified":"2004-11-22T10:53:14","modified_gmt":"2004-11-22T18:53:14","slug":"essential_reading_from_falluja","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2004\/11\/essential_reading_from_falluja.html","title":{"rendered":"ESSENTIAL READING FROM FALLUJA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><P>Have you read <A class=inline\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.kevinsites.net\/2004_11_21_archive.html#110107420331292115\"\ntarget='new\"'><B><FONT color=#003399>&#8220;Open Letter to Devil Dogs of the<br \/>\n3.1&#8221;<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> by combat photographer Kevin Sites? It&#8217;s his eye-witness account of<br \/>\nwhat happened nine days ago in the Falluja mosque where he videotaped a U.S. Marine shooting<br \/>\nand killing a wounded, unarmed Iraqi prisoner.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>Explaining his motives to the Marines he was with during the battle of Falluja, he writes:<\/P><br \/>\n<P><br \/>\n<BLOCKQUOTE>It&#8217;s time [for] you to have the facts from me, in my own words, about what I<br \/>\nsaw &#8212; without imposing on that Marine &#8212; guilt or innocence or anything in between. I want you<br \/>\nto read my account and make up your own minds about whether you think what I did was right or<br \/>\nwrong. All the other armchair analysts don&#8217;t mean a damn to me.<\/BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<P><\/P><br \/>\n<P>Sites posted his lengthy, gripping, detailed account on Sunday in <A class=inline\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.kevinsites.net\" target='new\"'><B><FONT color=#003399>his personal<br \/>\nweblog<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>. Shocked that he&#8217;s been &#8220;painted as some kind of anti-war activist&#8221;<br \/>\nbecause of what he captured on camera, Sites points out that he has never been &#8220;a &#8216;gotcha&#8217;<br \/>\nreporter &#8212; hoping for people to commit wrongdoings so I can catch them at it.&#8221;<\/P><br \/>\n<BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<P>No one, especially someone like me who has lived in a war zone with you, would deny that a<br \/>\nsolider or Marine could legitimately err on the side of caution under those circumstances. War is<br \/>\nabout killing your enemy before he kills you. &#8230; <\/P><br \/>\n<P>But observing all of this as an experienced war reporter who always bore in mind the dark<br \/>\nperils of this conflict, even knowing the possibilities of mitigating circumstances &#8212; it appeared to<br \/>\nme very plainly that something was not right.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<P>Sites wrestles with his conscience. He tells the Marines that &#8220;making sure you know the basis<br \/>\nfor my choices after the incident is as important to me as knowing how the incident went down. I<br \/>\ndid not in any way feel like I had captured some kind of &#8216;prize&#8217; video. In fact, I was<br \/>\nheartsick.&#8221;<\/P><br \/>\n<P>His conclusion is worth chiseling in stone. Go read it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you read &#8220;Open Letter to Devil Dogs of the 3.1&#8221; by combat photographer Kevin Sites? It&#8217;s his eye-witness account of what happened nine days ago in the Falluja mosque where he videotaped a U.S. Marine shooting and killing a wounded, unarmed Iraqi prisoner. Explaining his motives to the Marines he was with during the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-923","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-eT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}