'Wash Post' Obtains Grim Report on Haditha Killings

[babylonsister]

'Wash Post' Obtains Grim Report on Haditha Killings

By E&P Staff

Published: January 05, 2007 11:55 PM ET

NEW YORK Josh White, who has secured a number of previous Iraq-related scoops, returns to the front page of The Washington Post on Saturday with another.

The Post, he writes, has obtained an investigative report on the alleged 2005 massacre in Haditha, Iraq. His story opens, "U.S. Marines gunned down five unarmed Iraqis who stumbled onto the scene of a 2005 roadside bombing in Haditha, Iraq, according to eyewitness accounts that are part of a lengthy investigative report obtained by The Washington Post.

"Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, the squad's leader, shot the men one by one after Marines ordered them out of a white taxi in the moments following the explosion, which killed one Marine and injured two others, witnesses told investigators. Another Marine fired rounds into their bodies as they lay on the ground.

"'The taxi's five occupants exited the vehicle and according to U.S. and Iraqi witnesses, were shot by Wuterich as they stood, unarmed, next to the vehicle approximately ten feet in front of him,' said a report by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service on the incident that runs thousands of pages.

"One of the witnesses, Sgt. Asad Amer Mashoot, a 26-year-old Iraqi soldier who was in the Marine convoy, told investigators he watched in horror as the four students and the taxi driver fell. 'They didn't even try to run away,' he said. 'We were afraid from Marines and we saw them behaving like crazy. They were yelling and screaming.'

more...

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003528636

[Botany]

1. We have put our troops into a hell hole and keep them there

..... is it any wonder that a few act like devils.

1 Marine KIA & 2 wounded but the marines have nobody to go after
so they "act out" on the first Iraqis they see.

We must get out of Iraq ASAP.

[TahitiNut]

3. It's a breakdown of the command structure and operational discipline.

The middle and senior command have disconnected from the tactical operations. They're bunkered up and obsessing on the political fallout - lacking the clear focus on realistic military objectives necessary to properly deploy and manage troops in the field. As a result, and in combination with troops worked far beyond their limits of endurance, they're adopting gang warfare tactics - it's the Crips and the Bloods, but with far less of a coherent mentality.

The troops are sent out on repeated forays which have the sole purpose of maintaining the obscene kabuki of a "visible presence." The presumption is that a constant show of force will somehow quell opposition ... when the reality is actually the opposite. They're like targets in a shooting gallery: easy to hit because the shooter knows exactly when the ducks will appear and where they will go.

The primary rules of warfare still prevail. They are (1) know exactly where your own forces are and what their condition is, and (2) know where the opposition forces are located and what their condition is. This can't be overstated. In any combat, knowing the strength and location of both your own and the opposition forces is essential. The opposition forces in Iraq know exactly where the US forces are located. The opposite is not true. Furthermore, they are able to predict where the US forces will be, based on patterns and history. (That's why buried bombs/IEDs are so effective.)

It's a shooting gallery.

Most tragically, there probably isn't a grunt that can connect his daily activities with any overall strategic military objective. It's like "Hamburger Hill" ... wasting lives to take control of a geographic objective only to abandon it - over and over and over again.

The feeling of being in an insane world is overwhelming. The ways in which human beings (ANY human beings!) 'adapt' to such conditions are well enough known that none of this should be unexpected.

[Botany]

4. Nice post

I talked to a National Guard member just back from hitch # 2 in Iraq.
He said ANYTIME they went out in a vehicle that the they could hear
the ping of rounds off their transport. He said that he knew that the
rounds would not get through "they" (the bullets) took their toll on everybody's
mind.

He said that his base was motored @ least 2 times a week early in the AM just
to wake everybody up and piss them off.

His unit was also hit by an IED and he got a cracked rib but stayed in Country.

He also saw an American get his head shot off by a sniper just outside the green zone.

I keep think of bush as Hitler pushing on and splitting his armies on the Russian front
when it comes to Iraq. Our "little war" has become a meat grinder. We have taken 44,000
+ wounded, sick, and injured in Iraq 31,000 of those to the extent they needed airlifted out
of country. So for every 1 that dies 10 more have to be evacuated out of Iraq.

BTW One other point ..... this in some ways is worse than Vietnam because the "enemy" does
not have a jungle to hide their movements so that means a large % of the population must
be helping the "bad guys."

[TahitiNut]

9. Thanks. It's not only far worse than Viet Nam in many ways, it's different.

The superficial comparisons to Viet Nam frustrate me since so much is dependent on perspectives and the specific viewpoint from which the comparisons are drawn. No matter how frequently used, the 'Viet Nam metaphor' is as likely (or more) to mislead as enlighten. In Iraq, there's not even a facade of an opposition regular military - it's all "insurgency" ... and of almost uncountable kinds. In Viet Nam, we had little difficulty identifying the NVA - a largely conventional military. The VC were predominantly the responsibility of the ARVN, despite the US-centric habit of viewing everything as being "about us" - and, subsequent to about mid-1969, were cut down to less than 25% of their greatest force.

Iraq is a far more bare-bones and blatant exercise in propping up a superficial federal 'government' that not even its own adolescent military is dedicated to preserving. There is virtually no majoritarian popular support for ANY 'leadership' in Iraq. There is no definable "We" in "The People." Even within ethnic 'zones' it's not at all clear that there's any commonality, despite the media/political attempts to oversimplify it and, for example, present al-Sadr as a 'leader.'

Iraq was a political failure waiting to happen. As soon as Saddam was deposed, the bottom line was written: political chaos. All the blood and bailing wire in the world can't do anything to salvage a population so extremely factionalized. Absolutely everything we've done since the invasion has been about ascribing blame. The political machinations have been solely about complicity, and blame-avoidance and have had absolutely nothing to do with achieving any kind of 'success' - an impossible and totally undefined goal.

It is for these corrupt political machinations (and the profiteering such chaos invites) that we are sending our troops to die. We have committed a slow-motion atrocity and wallow in denial.

[Richard Steele]

6. Very well stated, TH!

"The ways in which human beings (ANY human beings!)
'adapt' to such conditions are well enough known
that none of this should be unexpected."

[IWantAChange]

8. Outstanding post - you've managed to capsulize a huge part of the

problem in Iraq into a few paragraphs. Thanks.

[babylonsister]

2. Here's the WaPo link to this story; what are we creating?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/05/AR2007010502248_pf.html

[mainer]

5. And still -- it's a horrible crime. Do we excuse them?

No matter what stresses are put on our soldiers, shooting women and children is WRONG. From an Iraqi point of view, we Americans are immune to real justice. Soldiers can kill 24 civilians, including women and children, and the most that will probably happen is a few years' imprisonment and then they're free again. Just like Lt. Calley. There is zero chance of life imprisonment. There is zero chance of a death penalty. They might as well have shot dogs.

I truly am getting tired of how we always excuse our troops' behavior with, "oh, but they're under so much pressure! Anything they do is not their fault!"

I'm sorry, but this IS their fault. And if I were an Iraqi, I would be outraged -- rightfully so.

[NNN0LHI]

7. I know that is the same excuses used after the national guard killed 4 students in Ohio

I refused to accept the excuses back then and I feel the same way now.

This making excuses for murderers is some scary shit.

Don

[TahitiNut]

10. Within the context of a HUGE war crime overall, can we be surprised at 'smaller' war crimes?

Can we blithely salve our pretense of 'honor' and merely punish some selected instances of the 'smaller' crimes against humanity? While, in any approximation of 'good conscience,' any half-ways sane human being cannot permit this to go unpunished, we're more complicit in these crimes than judges if we don't punish the larger, more encompassing crimes against humanity of which this is but a part. It's a form of insanity to pretend that troops under the conditions they've been placed aren't sometimes going to react in these ways. As soon as they're told, even in garbled terms, that they're in a "free fire" situation, we can expect nothing other than such atrocities. Consider for a moment that the coincident US bombings and air strikes of Haditha killed multiples of the numbers of innocent civilians as these grunts did. Believe me, this is NOT something these grunts are unaware of. Who gets punished for that? I think it's impossible to even come close to conveying the utter insanity of such combat situations to anyone without some minimal experience.

[gratuitous]

11. I'm not surprised at all

In fact, I fully expected Haditha (though I didn't know the name of the place back in 2002) as well as a hundred other little atrocities and war crimes to be carried out by our faultless, freckle-faced, star-spangled boys in uniform. I have to say I didn't reckon on the leading role some women would play, but that's probably a product of my own child-of-Eisenhower world view.

But I have absolutely no personal experience in a war zone; just an awareness of history. Sending out the U.S. Wehrmacht has always been a necessary ingredient for crimes against humanity, at least during my lifetime. I've heard tales of isolated noble and honorable exploits, but generally the result has been to leave a place worse off than when our troops first intervened.

But we do infallibly spend a lot of money and kill a lot of people, so there's that.

[babylonsister]

12. And someone with any amount of experience and a working brain

cell would hopefully have thought twice before immersing us into a situation such as Iraq.
Your insight is most welcome, TahitiNut, thanks.

[scarface2004]

13. any one want to buy...

some 'i don t support the troops!' bumper stickers??