No Winners in this War

Update (4:50 pm) The Los Angeles Times has more details.

Via Unfair Witness, I came across this horrible report about two US soldiers facing a possible court martial and death sentence:

Two U.S. soldiers could face murder charges in a military trial in Baghdad for shooting and killing a severely wounded Iraqi teenager who had been mistaken for an insurgent by American troops, The Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site.

The newspaper said on Thursday that the two army staff sergeants had admitted that they had shot the Iraqi boy as he lay moaning on the ground but that they had said they did so out of mercy.

A total of seven Iraqis were killed in the incident in August in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, in which U.S. troops fired on a garbage truck on Aug. 18 after mistakenly concluding that it was planting roadside bombs, the newspaper said, quoting Iraqi witnesses and U.S. military officials.

The two soldiers told U.S. officials that they had killed the teenager to "put him out of his misery," the paper said.

Put him out of his misery--these are the people we are supposedly liberating, yet we treat them like diseased or injured livestock. Moreover, if you read the article, you'll note that medics were available AND that one of the witnesses was a relative of the boy. And, as Unfair Witness points out, the attack on the truck was a mistake to begin with.

Your tax dollars at work.