Remember this scene from Fallujah 2004? Embed photographer Kevin Sites of NBC accidentally filmed an American GI dead- checking a wounded Iraqi at point blank range. The soldier accused the Iraqi of playing dead, and so shot him.

Why would a wounded Iraqi, captured by the Marines and medevac’d to a Mosque, need to pretend to be dead? That was the uglier story. This soldier examining the Iraqi wounded in the Mosque was actually making the second pass, verifying that all the captives in the Mosque had been killed. A squad before him had sought to save these wounded Iraqis, but a later order was issued to take no prisoners.