How long before we hear leftists and journalists claim that Zarqawi was alive after the attack and was killed contrary to "the Geneva Convention" and his death is therefore a war crime?
Al-Zarqawi was alive shortly after bombing
MSNBC ^ | 06/09/06
He died after ‘he mumbled something,’ military spokesman says WASHINGTON - A mortally wounded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, still alive after a U.S. airstrike on his hideout, mumbled briefly and attempted to “turn away off the stretcher” he had been placed on by Iraqi police, the U.S. military said Friday.
U.S. officials had said Thursday in announcing the attack that Zarqawi was dead when U.S. troops arrived on the scene.
Maj. Gen. Bill Caldwell, briefing military reporters at the Pentagon from his post in Baghdad, said he learned after getting briefings Friday that Zarqawi was alive when Iraqi police first arrived on the scene, but he died a short time later.
“We did in fact see him alive,” Caldwell said. “He mumbled a little something but it was indistinguishable and it was very short.”
Asked whether al-Zarqawi was shot after U.S. ground troops arrived, Caldwell said he could not give a definitive answer based on what he had read in the latest official U.S. military report on the event. “I’ll go back and specifically ask that,” he said. “But no, there was nothing in the report that said he had received any wounds from some kind of weapons system like that.”
Al-Zarqawi’s safehouse was destroyed by two 500-pound bombs launched from an Air Force F-16 on Wednesday evening.
Autopsy performed Caldwell said the U.S. military was still compiling some details of the event, including the exact amount of time Zarqawi was alive after the attack. He said an initial analysis of al-Zarqawi’s body had been done but he was not certain whether it constituted a full autopsy. |
