laudablepuss wrote:

http://www.slate.com/id/2109447/entry/0

Read this one and then click back to read the previous entries. I'll be interested to buy this guy's book when it comes out.

Based on his visits to Fallujah, Patrick Graham wrote that "it is the sniper the people of Fallujah fear more than anything else." Yet the sniper is the most discriminating of weapons, suggesting that the "people" Graham referred to were the jihadist fighters. I was on a roof during the April siege in Fallujah with a Marine sergeant who was a sniper. One afternoon, he told me, he saw an old man hobble out of his house, supported by his teenage son. They shuffled next door and returned with a few groceries. The son paused to look toward the Marine position before going indoors. On a hunch, the sniper kept watch, and a half-hour later, the young Iraqi sneaked out with a rifle, hid behind a wrecked car, and aimed in. The sniper shot him in the street. From the house came a sharp cry. A few minutes later, the old man hobbled slowly out and, step by faltering step, dragged the body back into the courtyard. The sniper watched through his scope as the old man began to dig a grave.