Ohiocore

We're only halfway into it, but November is already the 2nd most fatal month for U.S. troops in Iraq, approaching 100 dead. While we're on pace to surpass it, for now the cruelest month is still April (with 135 dead).

Then you have the videotaped slaughter of an unarmed, wounded, motionless, allegedly "insurgent" prisoner recorded by NBC camerman Kevin Sites. From the Globe and Mail report:

On the video, as the camera moved into the mosque during the Saturday incident, a marine can be heard shouting obscenities in the background, yelling that one of the men was only pretending to be dead.

“He's fucking faking he's dead!”

“Yeah, he's breathing,” another marine is heard saying.

“He's faking he's fucking dead!” the first marine says.

The video then showed a marine raising his rifle toward a prisoner lying on the floor of the mosque. The video shown by NBC and provided to the network pool was stopped and did not show the bullet hitting the man, but the audio continued and a rifle shot could be heard.

“He's dead now,” a marine is heard saying.

The blacked out portion of the videotape, provided later to Associated Press Television News and other members of the network pool, showed the bullet striking the man in the upper body, possibly the head. His blood splatters on the wall behind him and his body goes limp.

Of course the circumstances of war are extraordinary. Just one day earlier, a Marine in the same unit had been killed by an explosive rigged corpse. Earlier Marines had occupied the same Mosque where the bodies were, seized weapons there and treated some enemy wounded, leaving them "captured" for this, the next group of Marines. The shooter himself had suffered minor facial injury in the previous day's fighting. But for all these reasons, military discipline and international law expressly prohibit such action.

The ABC News report includes an image, and a fair amount conveying the apparent violation of the Geneva Convention (not unlike the Abu Ghraib atrocities).