CNN just showed the June 2 videotape that the insurgents made of themselves shooting U.S. Army Pfc. Stephen Tschiderer. It’s amazing.
The camera is on Tschiderer, who is standing next to his Humvee and bending down to do some work. You can hear the voices of two insurgents. One is telling the other to shoot him. He is saying, Wait, I want him to stand up straight first. Then Tschiderer stands up straight, turns toward the camera, and BANG! Tschiderer falls to the ground.
For a second, it looks like he’s dead.
"Allah akhbar! Allah akhbar!" the insurgents say excitedly.
Then, as if to say, yeah, God is great, you goddamned boneheads, Tschiderer gets up!
He runs around his Humvee and calls for help. (It turns out the bullet hit his thumb and glanced into his bullet-proof vest. The bullet bruised his chest, but stayed in the vest.)
Now the insurgents are talking again. CNN did not translate this part, but as the other Humvees roll up, the insurgents are talking fast, and you can tell they are saying, Let’s get the hell out of here!
From here on, the video doesn’t show what happens. But we find out that Tschiderer and his fellow soldiers ended up chasing the insurgents on foot. The insurgent who shot Tchiderer was himself shot.
As if the story had to go full circle, it was Tschiderer who caught the man who shot him. Then Tschiderer, a medic, gave his would-be killer first-aid.
"Allah akhbar!" If God is on any side of any war, God is on the side of the liberators and the merciful.
Frank Warner
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