I understand, as well as a civilian can anyway, that war creates psychological problems that may never heal. I’m sure these troubles are particularly acute in an occupation like the one we are conducting in Iraq, where insurgents and terrorists hide among the civilian population and you never really know where death hides. Plus our fighting forces are poorly trained and over-burdened, and this can be laid directly at the feet of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.
But shooting wounded men who are no threat is a war crime. If it’s true that the incident caught on tape by Kevin Sites was only one in a series of such shootings, then we need to make sure the prosecution goes as far as it needs to, and put a firm stop to these incidents. Seeing an unarmed Muslim man shot in the head, in a mosque, is only going to fuel Iraqi hatred of the occupying forces, and feed the insurgency we’re trying to quell.