There were a number of journalists embedded with the US Marines as they embarked on the
battle for Fallujah in November of last year. One of those reporters was Kevin Sites from
the American network NBC.
This morning the marines, the marines swept into the centre of the city unopposed.
Kevin has spent nearly 10 months as an embedded journalist in Iraq. But he'd never before
captured anything like this.
He's faking he's fucking dead.
I had a pit in my stomach. I didn't feel like this was great footage. I knew exactly what
it was. It was something that has been captured on camera very few times in war.
Reports of a marine shooting an unarmed, wounded combatant quickly flashed around the world.
At the time, most Western audiences didn't even get to see the shooting. For instance,
NBC only showed this black-and-white still. But with Kevin's raw footage and his eyewitness
account, Dateline can now reveal the full story behind the incident.
It had all begun the day before the shooting. Kevin had been at that same mosque with a
unit of the third battalion first marine division. As the US troops fought their way into the
mosque on that Friday, they had killed 10 out of 15 suspected insurgents.
Yeah, we've got to fucking put two in each bag.
Five wounded men remained. They were disarmed and treated by marine medics.
Their wounds didn't seem to be life-threatening, they were serious but not life-threatening
and I asked the lieutenant colonel what will be done with these men? Will they be evacuated?
And he said, "Yes, they will." So we left that mosque, the men were still alive. Apparently
they were left unguarded but without weapons or anything and the marines advanced forward,
moving south from the city.
The next morning, on the Saturday, Kevin and the marines returned to that mosque after
reports of fresh fire from the area. When Kevin was still outside the mosque, he heard
shooting.
They're on the fourth floor. Far right, far right.
We heard gunshots outside the mosque before we went in. And to my ear - I'm pretty familiar
with what an M16 sounds like - they were single M16 gunshots and there were three of them.
It sounded like someone was being fired upon, and then moving over, firing again and then
firing again. Kevin overheard the following exchange between
the platoon commander and his troops before they went inside.
Did you shoot them?
Roger that, sir.
He comes up to the squad that had been inside the mosque and he says "Are there people inside
there?" and the marine that had been inside holds up five fingers signalling five people
inside. And then the lieutenant asks "Did you shoot them?", and the marine says "Roger
that, sir." And then the lieutenant asks "Were they armed?" and the marine just shrugs his
shoulders.
Same guys from yesterday?
These are the ones from yesterday. These are the wounded that they never picked up.
When I walked into that room, I immediately knew that these men that had just been shot
again were the same wounded insurgents from Friday, from the day before.
So apart from the shooting Kevin captured on camera, he believes these other unarmed
wounded men were also shot that day. This was largely ignored by the media at the time.
We look at the evidence that these men were definitely shot again, freshly shot, after
having been wounded the day before. And then one is actually killed point blank in front
of my camera. After capturing that image, Kevin discovers
that this man is still alive.
I was shot...
Please... I was shot... there...
what happened?
I spoke... with you... who are filming. Yesterday, here
in front of the whole group. I gave information. Please. Speak Arabic anything?
I don't speak Arabic.
I want to give you information.
The fate of this witness is unknown.
I felt at that moment I wish I hadn't been there. I wish I hadn't been in that spot at
that time just because I knew the responsibility I would have from that moment on.
Having been embedded with one particular marine unit for six weeks, Kevin had become very
close to the men. But things changed dramatically after the shooting.
It was a really dark time. I had time after this incident where I was moved to the rear
from the front line, I had to leave my unit.
But the reaction from back home was much worse. Kevin came under personal attack from the
American public.
I spent my days poring over thousands of hate mails and death threats every day. They were
calling me a traitor, a liberal media scumbag, hope that the next piece of video we see your
severed head on your back, hope some marine frags you over there, hope the insurgents
kill you, everything that you can possibly imagine. I'll be honest with you, there were
times when I really felt like I wanted to destroy that tape and not release it to the
public.
The controversy over Kevin's footage has fed into a growing debate about how the American
media reports home from the war in Iraq. Kevin is showing these final-year journalism students
the difference between the raw footage he shot and the report that was actually put
to air.
You probably have never seen this because I don't think it's even aired on American
television, the full shooting.
With the war such a hot political issue, the American media has become very reluctant to
criticise the actions of American soldiers. So even before Kevin received the hate mails,
he and NBC knew the delicate tightrope they would have to tread.
In the NBC report, Kevin went to great lengths to explain why the marine might have pulled
the trigger.
These US Marines have had to fight for nearly every inch of ground taken in Fallujah. They've
inflicted heavy casualties on insurgents here but have also suffered many of their own,
some from a new and harrowing tactic - booby trapping dead bodies to explode when marines
come near.
We were diluting it every step of the way. A lot of the mitigating circumstances we had
to say over and over again - he got shot in the face, they booby trapped bodies. In fact
we didn't start with the shooting at all. We talked about X, Y and Z and backed into
it.
At the same time just a block away, one marine was killed and five wounded by the booby trapped
body of a dead insurgent. So as dangerous as Iraq is, could the shooting be self-defence?
That was a conscious effort basically because we felt like we were going to take such fire
on the story. Some people might think that you defended
the marine too much in your report.
I think that people could make that argument. They could say that the mitigating circumstances
were presented in such a strong forthright way that perhaps, you know, the incident that
happened didn't get proper play.
The marine squad has already been in here and shot the wounded men again.
In the middle of all this media management and political controversy, the real debate
appears to have been lost.
Do you think that because of a paranoia to tell both sides of the story, and to explain
everything and to make sure you're not accused of being biased, do you think you can sometimes
lose the truth?
I think that the truth can become muddied in that process, I think that it can become
fairly foggy.
Despite evidence of what appears to be a war crime, the tape hasn't provoked a much greater
soul searching about acceptable rules of engagement for the US military.
Are these the kind of rules of engagement we use? And if so, we should be very open
about it. Are we willing to live with the fact that they may do the same thing to US
soldiers and US marines and potentially, that kind of rules of engagement will they lead
to other repercussions for us in society, will they create more terrorist acts because
people feel we are behaving unnecessarily violent or barbaric in war?