On November 19th Marines entered three homes, where they killed 19 people at close range. They then killed another five, four students and a taxi driver, in a taxi approaching the scene.
Among the victims were Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali, a 76-year-old amputee in a wheelchair; Abdullah Walid, age 4; Aisha Younis Salim, age 3; Zainab Younis Salim, age 5; Aeda Yasin Ahmed, woman, 41; and Sabaa Younis Salim, age 10.
One survivor, Safa Younis Salim, 13, told the New York Times, "I pretended that I was dead when my brother's body fell on me and he was bleeding like a faucet." Adults begged and pleaded and attempted to save their children by shielding them with their bodies, to no avail.
COVER UP
Afterward, the Marines lied to cover up their actions by claiming they were under attack. Higher-ups in the military also tried to cover it up until revelations in the media forced them to conduct a serious investigation.
In the Marines’ story the eight helpless men they slaughtered became "insurgents." The other 16, necessarily "civilians" because of age or sex, they first claimed were also victims of the same IED; later, some were supposed to have been "collateral damage" of a supposed "exchange of gunfire" with said "insurgents."
Unfortunately for them, a journalism student took photographs of the bodies in the Haditha morgue that showed victims shot in the head from close range in execution-style killings. Nothing forced the Marines to kill these Iraqis.
According to Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), a former marine, a military investigation of the incident expected to be released next week will show that marines killed innocent civilians in Haditha and tried to cover up the deaths. When Chris Matthews of MSNBC’ "Hardball" tried to spin the incident, Murtha calmly corrected him and said, no, there was no battle, no exchange of gunfire, no explosion - the troops killed 24 people "in cold blood." When Matthews asked him if this was like My Lai, Murtha said it was.
TIP OF THE ICEBERG
The Haditha massacre is not an isolated incident committed by "rogues" or a "few rotten apples," as some in the government and the media are saying. It is just the tip of the iceberg.
According to Garrett Reppenhagen, who served as a sniper in Fallujah and is now a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), "There were massacres by ones and twos all over Iraq. We have members who can tell you about carrying shovels in their vehicles to throw down next to killed civilians proof that they were planting IEDs (improvised explosive devices). There are a lot of reasons that lead to events like this, but the thing you can't get way from is that if these troops were not in Iraq, this wouldn't be happening. Don't be surprised when a lieutenant is the highest-ranking person prosecuted. The order to annihilate Fallujah came from the very top, and none of them are doing the duck walk. They never will either."
The BBC reports it has uncovered video that appears to show that US forces deliberately killed 11 civilians, including five children and four women, in the town of Ishaqi in March. On May 31, the Associated Press reported that U.S. soldiers killed two women, one of whom was about to give birth, at a checkpoint on Wednesday, May 30, 2006.
On June 2, the New York Times reported that military prosecutors are preparing murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy charges against seven marines and a Navy Corpsman in connection with the shooting death of an Iraqi civilian in April. Marine officials and Congresspeople briefed on the case say there is evidence that the marines threw down a shovel and bomb components near the Iraqi’s body to make it appear he had been digging a hole for an IED. An AK-47 rifle was also fired near the body to make it seem that the victim had been shooting at the soldiers.
Civilians have also been killed regularly at checkpoints by soldiers, indiscriminate return fire in crowded civilian areas, use of area weapons like 2000-pound bombs on "suspected insurgents," and a general "shoot first ask questions later" policy.
During the second assault on Fallujah in November 2004, for example, the operative principle was that any "military age male" in the city was presumptively a fighter and thus subject to attack. Plant a gun on a man you've killed, or, for that matter, a shovel, and instantly he's an "insurgent."
In a rare move, on June 1 Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki condemned the Haditha massacre, saying U.S. troops who "do not respect the Iraqi people" were responsible for making violence against civilians a "daily phenomenon." Announcing that the Iraqi government would conduct its own investigation, he demanded that U.S. officials turn over their investigative files on the murders.
OCCUPATION ATROCITY-PRODUCING SITUATION
Just as happened during the Vietnam war, the occupation of Iraq has created an atrocity-producing situation. During war and under occupation, crimes like the Haditha massacre are all but inevitable. The Marines who are guilty of murder should be severely punished, along with their commanding officers. At the same time the policy-makers responsible for the occupation -- George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, etc. -- must be held accountable.
The problem is not lack of training, young age, or stress (as Rep. John Murtha has suggested). The fact that one of their comrades died from an improvised explosive device (IED) before they killed these civilians is not a justification. Even if these were the case, they are not an excuse for the unprovoked murder of old men, women, and children.
In fact, U.S. military training makes such incidents inevitable. In Basic Training or Boot Camp, during bayonet training young soldiers learn to holler "Kill, kill, kill!" or "Blood, blood, blood makes the grass grow!" This is not mindless sadism, but rather a specifically developed regimen designed to overcome the natural human aversion to killing another human.
Once on the ground to enforce an occupation on an unwilling people, soldiers inevitably learn to treat the dark-skinned people whose land they occupy as enemies who deserve little mercy. As Iraqis have reacted to U.S. troops' unwanted presence with hostility, it was only a matter of time before occupying soldiers took out their aggression on innocent civilians.
Charlie Anderson, who served as a Navy medical corpsman accompanying the Marines during the initial invasion, remembers, "If they heard a single shot, we responded by firing against unseen targets in populated areas. One day, our unit opened up on a village in response to a couple of shots from an unseen gunman. When you learn to behave with that level of aggression and that level of insensitivity to the local population, how big a step is it really from shooting up a village from 100 meters away and shooting a family in its home?"