Just found this Associated Press pic taken by Jim MacMillan on the following site...  http://cryptome.org/mk3/mosul-kill3.htm

It's in the second-from-last row of pics on the page.

The caption for the pic reads: "A US Army soldier checks for possible booby-traps and explosives after the bodies of four murdered men were found in a cemetery in Mosul, Iraq..."

So let's all get this right once and for all, okay? There's an established method put down to deal with dead or dying people who you suspect of being rigged with a booby trap.

That method is to run a metal detector over the body, or sniff it for explosives (helpfully illustrated for our benefit in the picture above).

That method does not include screaming "he's fucking faking he's dead! he's faking he's fucking dead!" and then shooting the body at point-blank range.

The marine in question is being let off the hook by corporate media on grounds that he might have been acting to pre-empt (remember the last time that term was used), even prevent, the chance of grievous injury in the event of the body being booby-trapped.

Well, since there's other ways to ascertain that prospect (see above picture again), on what precise grounds is the marine acting within the bounds of acceptable behaviour? In what exact terms is he not subject to the Geneva Convention? And on what pretext does corporate media believe he might have been acting in self-defense?

One wonders whether America's "moral values" voter has a take on this issue that's radically different from the rest of the world's?