U.S. war crimes in Iraq: Slitting throats in Haditha

€ ’³In their own words€ ’¥ Marines came to view dead civilians as not
€ ’±remarkable,€ ’² but as routine.€ ’´

€ ’³Troops€ ’¥ grew increasingly twitchy, killing more and more civilians in
accidental encounters. Others became so desensitized and inured to the
killing that they fired on Iraqi civilians deliberately while their fellow
soldiers snapped pictures, and were court-martialed. The bodies piled up€ ’¥
Charges were dropped against six of the accused Marines in the Haditha
episode, one was acquitted and the last remaining case against one Marine
is scheduled to go to trial next year.€ ’´

€ ’³That sense of American impunity ultimately poisoned any chance for
American forces to remain in Iraq, because the Iraqis would not let them
stay without being subject to Iraqi laws and courts, a condition the White
House could not accept.€ ’´

*As the U.S. formally withdraws from Iraq, it leaves behind an army of paid
mercenaries, a country on the edge of civil war, hundreds of thousands of
mourning families, and the memories of horrific war crimes.*

*Twenty four civilians were killed in various attacks in Haditha, in 2005,
including seven women and three children. No one was punished. Evidence was
supposed to have been destroyed. Now the interviews with the soldiers have
been discovered and published revealing the events and mentality that
murdered Iraqis that day.*

*These 400 pages lay bare what is usually so hidden (buried along with the
bodies) . Here is the reality of U.S. occupations. Here are the actual
activities of the € ’±boots on the ground€ ’´ in the town of Haditha € ’· but it is
an exposure of the whole larger operation in which the murder of Iraqi
people was routine, accepted and € ’³the cost of doing business.€ ’´*

*While the U.S. media talks of soldiers who are so routinely and
deceitfully sanitized as € ’³helping the foreign peoples€ ’´ and € ’³keeping America
safe€ ’´ € ’· the interviews from Haditha reveal what is actually being done.*

*The invasion and occupation of Iraq was a war of unprovoked aggression,
unleashed using a cynical government machinery of complete lies. Iraq was
pounded into pieces using a high tech aerial € ’³shock and awe€ ’´ followed by
massive foreign invasion.*

*Not only were the responsible war criminals Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and
Powell kept out of court and prison (why no Hague Tribunal for these war
criminals?), but their criminal war policies then pursued by a new
President Obama (whose main claim to fame was that he opposed the war from
the beginning)! And only a few of the lowest soldiers on the ground have
even faced the possibility of trial € ’· which is itself a white wash. And
their € ’³trials€ ’´ are (over and over) leading to acquittal. For those cases
that become scandals, € ’³prosecution€ ’´ is the form of official whitewash.*

*It is now widely said in the empire€ ’²s political arena that Obama has been
the most faithful successor to the Bush-Cheney polices of global war on
terror and its numerous wars of occupation . Withdrawals are happening on
the long-established Bush/McCain timetables.*

*In print, € ’³the troops are leaving.€ ’´ In the reality, thousands now stay
behind € ’· as a paid mercenary force of many thousands packed into the
permanent U.S. military base within the heart of Baghdad (officially
disguised as the world€ ’²s largest € ’³embassy.€ ’´)*

*The other combat forces and supplies are (in many cases) € ’³withdrawn over
the horizon € ’· i.e. withdrawn to naval fleets and nearby bases in Bahrain € ’·
where they can continue to threaten renewed reentry into Iraq and threaten
nearby Iran.*

*As Obama does his version of the € ’³Mission Accomplished€ ’´ ritual € ’· new
evidence of U.S. warc rimes emerges about Haditha.*

*The following detailed account appeared in the New York
Times.
The article bends over backwards to describe the massacre as the result of
€ ’³stress€ ’´ and as merely the actions of soldiers on the ground. But what
comes through is how routine such a massacre was, how powerful the
machinery of coverup, and how deeply the U.S. killers hate the people of
Iraq.*

* * * * * * * *

*Junkyard Gives Up Secret Accounts of Massacre in Iraq*

*By Michael S. Schmidt*

BAGHDAD
€ ’· One by one, the
Marines
sat
down, swore to tell the truth and began to give secret interviews
discussing one of the most horrific episodes of America€ ’²s time in
Iraq:
the 2005 massacre by Marines of Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha.

€ ’³I mean, whether it€ ’²s a result of our action or other action, you know,
discovering 20 bodies, throats slit, 20 bodies, you know, beheaded, 20
bodies here, 20 bodies there,€ ’´ Col. Thomas Cariker, a commander in Anbar
Province at the time, told
investigators
as
he described the chaos of Iraq. At times, he said, deaths were caused by
€ ’³grenade attacks on a checkpoint and, you know, collateral with civilians.€ ’´

The 400 pages of interrogations, once closely guarded as secrets of war,
were supposed to have been destroyed as the last American troops prepare to
leave Iraq. Instead, they were discovered along with reams of other
classified documents, including military maps showing helicopter routes and
radar capabilities, by a reporter for The New York
Times
at
a junkyard outside Baghdad. An attendant was burning them as fuel to cook a
dinner of smoked carp.

The documents € ’· many marked secret € ’· form part of the military€ ’²s internal
investigation, and confirm much of what happened at Haditha, a Euphrates
River town where Marines killed 24 Iraqis, including a 76-year-old man in a
wheelchair, women and children, some just toddlers.

Haditha became a defining moment of the war, helping cement an enduring
Iraqi distrust of the United States and a resentment that not one Marine
has been convicted.

But the accounts are just as striking for what they reveal about the
extraordinary strains on the soldiers who were assigned here, their
frustrations and their frequently painful encounters with a population they
did not understand. In their own words, the report documents the
dehumanizing nature of this war, where Marines came to view 20 dead
civilians as not € ’³remarkable,€ ’´ but as routine.

Iraqi civilians were being killed all the time. Maj. Gen. Steve Johnson,
the commander of American forces in Anbar, in his own
testimony,
described it as € ’³a cost of doing business.€ ’´

The stress of combat left some soldiers paralyzed, the testimony shows.
Troops, traumatized by the rising violence and feeling constantly under
siege, grew increasingly twitchy, killing more and more civilians in
accidental encounters. Others became so desensitized and inured to the
killing that they fired on Iraqi civilians deliberately while their fellow
soldiers snapped pictures, and were court-martialed. The bodies piled up at
a time when the war had gone horribly wrong.

Charges were dropped against six of the accused Marines in the Haditha
episode, one was acquitted and the last remaining case against one Marine
is scheduled to go to trial next year.

That sense of American impunity ultimately poisoned any chance for American
forces to remain in Iraq, because the Iraqis would not let them stay
without being subject to Iraqi laws and courts, a condition the White House
could not accept.

Told about the documents that had been found, Col. Barry Johnson, a
spokesman for the United States military in Iraq, said that many of the
documents remained classified and should have been destroyed. € ’³Despite the
way in which they were improperly discarded and came into your possession,
we are not at liberty to discuss classified information,€ ’´ he said.

He added: € ’³We take any breach of classified information as an extremely
serious matter. In this case, the documents are being reviewed to determine
whether an investigation is warranted.€ ’´ The military said it did not know
from which investigation the documents had come, but the papers appear to
be from an inquiry by Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell into the events in Haditha.
The documents ultimately led to a report that concluded that the Marine
Corps€ ’²s chain of command engaged in € ’³willful negligence€ ’´ in failing to
investigate the episode and that Marine commanders were far too willing to
tolerate civilian casualties. That report, however, did not include the
transcripts.

*Under Pressure*

Many of those testifying at bases in Iraq or the United States were clearly
under scrutiny for not investigating an atrocity and may have tried to
shape their statements to dispel any notion that they had sought to cover
up the events. But the accounts also show the consternation of the Marines
as they struggled to control an unfamiliar land and its people in what
amounted to a constant state of siege from fighters who were nearly
indistinguishable from noncombatants.

Some, feeling they were under attack constantly, decided to use force first
and ask questions later. If Marines took fire from a building, they would
often level it. Drivers who approached checkpoints without stopping were
assumed to be suicide bombers.

€ ’³When a car doesn€ ’²t stop, it crosses the trigger line, Marines engage and,
yes, sir, there are people inside the car that are killed that have nothing
to do with it,€ ’´ Sgt. Maj. Edward T. Sax, the battalion€ ’²s senior
noncommissioned officer,
testified
.

He added, € ’³I had Marines shoot children in cars and deal with the Marines
individually one on one about it because they have a hard time dealing with
that.€ ’´

Sergeant Major Sax said he would ask the Marines responsible if they had
known there had been children in the car. When they said no, he said he
would tell them they were not at fault. He said he felt for the Marines who
had fired the shots, saying they would carry a lifelong burden.

€ ’³It is one thing to kill an insurgent in a head-on fight,€ ’´ Sergeant Major
Sax testified. € ’³It is a whole different thing € ’· and I hate to say it, the
way we are raised in America € ’· to injure a female or injure a child or in
the worse case, kill a female or kill a child.€ ’´

They could not understand why so many Iraqis just did not stop at
checkpoints and speculated that it was because of illiteracy or poor
eyesight.

€ ’³They don€ ’²t have glasses and stuff,€ ’´ Col. John Ledoux
said<http://www.nytimes. com/interactive/ 2011/12/15/

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