"A Booby-Trapped Raghead Cadaver"

The "hearts and minds" campaign starts with our hearts and minds, and apparently we're losing quite badly. Media Matters posts this excerpt from "Imus in the Morning":

Well people, [war] is still hell -- as the young Marine who plugged that bastard clearly understood from the previous day's combat when he had lost a comrade to a booby-trapped raghead cadaver and had gotten shot in the face himself. Was the NBC News embed unit there to record any of that, so that we could witness that bit of action from our living room sofas? Apparently not. Rather, we are treated to this episode, without benefit of combat context, so that we can have our knee-jerk "moral confusion" and guilt buttons pushed.

And pushed by what? By pictures of a soldier dispatching an enemy combatant who had sworn fidelity to some bearded fatwa fairy...

There's a reason those "knee-jerk 'moral confusion' and guilt buttons" are there, you despicable jackass. It's to keep us human.

"Without benefit of combat context"?

There is no context that matters. That's the point. Shooting a helpless wounded soldier has been wrong for hundreds of years, and it's still wrong. Even if the other side breaks the rules. That's the point. War is hell: sometimes you have to play by the rules, and risk your life for the rules, because that's the only way to know you're fighting for the right side.