Haditha

May 18, 2006

This is just breathtaking.

A [tag]Pentagon[/tag] probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of [tag]Haditha[/tag] will show that U.S. [tag]Marines[/tag] “[tag]killed[/tag] [tag]innocent[/tag] [tag]civilians[/tag] in [tag]cold blood[/tag],” a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.

From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children.

One young Iraqi girl said the Marines killed six members of her family, including her parents. “The Americans came into the room where my father was praying,” she said, “and shot him.”

Rep. [tag]Jack Murtha[/tag] (D-Pa.) discussed the Pentagon investigation publicly yesterday, explaining that “it’s much worse than reported” and that U.S. troops “overreacted because of the pressure on them.”

As the WSJ reported, the Marines announced last month that three officers were relieved of command after the battalion involved in the Nov. 19 incident in Haditha ended its tour of Iraq and returned to the U.S. Those relieved included both the commander of the rifle company involved in the events under investigation and his direct superior.

It’s obviously a horrifying tragedy. It’s even more frustrating, however, to see the far right lash out, not at the military for offering a false initial account of the incident, but at Murtha for telling the truth.

Some are calling Murtha “[tag]dishonorable[/tag].” Others labeled him a “[tag]traitor[/tag]” and recommended that he be sent to “jail.” Another added, “Murtha has no honor left, no dignity, and will never be considered as a Marine except by his liberal buddies who would hate him for wearing that uniform in the first place.”

I can appreciate that this is a sensitive issue and that the Marines involved in the violence in Haditha deserve a fair inquiry into their conduct. But if conservatives could muster a little more disgust for the actual incident and a little less for Murtha for pointing it out, I’d feel a lot more comfortable about their moral compass.

When I saw Murtha telling this story, I knew the chicken-hawks would be up in arms. But you have to understand that Murtha is not concerned with the death of Iraqis nearly as much as he is concerned with the dishonour and degradation of the U.S. Marine Corps. As far as he sees it, the failures of the Pentagon to put the necessary resources into Iraq to conduct this mission is destroying his beloved corps.

But as I said, chicken-hawks and right-wing pundits don’t give a damn about the destruction they are doing to the U.S. Military.

  • This goes hand in hand with a report I heard on NPR recently about the high number of soldier suicides. Many aren’t getting help even when their commanding officers are aware of depression or other mental illness.

    When you give children and young adults the power over life and death and do not deal with the results you are opening the door for tragedy and atrocity.

    When you cover up tragedy and atrocity with a slap on the wrist at worst, you justify and enable more.

    The Bush Administration and the Republican majorities, through wanton disregard of consequences and nonexistent accountability, have begun to reap what they have sown.

  • I admire John Murtha stepping up and saying the things that no one wants to say–and especially for daring to state that the military has made mistakes that have resulted in the loss of innocent Iraqi lives. Throughout this war the assumption has been that any dead Iraqi was an insurgent.
    I understand that the troops in Iraq are working in very difficult circumstances where bombs lurk along the roadside and almost anyone can be the enemy, but none of this justifies killing a man while he is praying or killing women or children.
    Even if Murtha’s account isn’t 100% accurate, it is important to bring incidents such as this one to light in order to prevent future recurrences. How can anyone say that he has no honor left when he is trying to preserve the honor of the US military? We should vocally support him so that he will continue to be around to propagate the truth and so that others will find the courage to do the same.

  • With all due respect for the fact that the investigation is not complete, this would be a good time for a little history review:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson%2C_Jr.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre

    Hugh Thompson set his helicopter down between US troops and a hut full of civilians they were about to blow up, and threatened to use his ship’s guns on the American troops if they continued with the massacre. Thompson then evacuated eleven civilians from the scene.

    They called him a traitor too.

    Thompson:
    In a 2004 interview with 60 Minutes, he was quoted referring to C-Company’s men involved in the massacre, “I mean, I wish I was a big enough man to say I forgive them, but I swear to God, I can’t.”

  • Well, we’re all implicated in this–at least insofar as our tax dollars now appear to be funding uniformed death squads. I support the troops, but I don’t support lawless scumbags sporting the uniform and title of an honorable branch of military service.

  • Those who serve in our military deserve our utmost respect and gratitude. Those who are charged with the defense of our country (or in this case our imperialist unprovoked attack) and betray that trust by acting inappropriately deserve to be punished.

    This seems to be like the OJ Simpson trial. OJ is a hall of famer and is loved by many. To accuse him of murder is unacceptable! Whatever OJ did or didn’t do and whatever these Marines did should in no way be impacted upon by their former status or actions.

    Thank goodness Murtha has gotten on the abandoned Straight-talk-Express train!

  • The actions by Murtha should be encouraged, not attacked. He’s trying to hold up the integrity of this country. If we allow soldiers in Iraq to act like death squads, then we’re no better than the terrorists. If we allow soliders to torture prisoners at Gitmo, then we’re no better than the terrorists. If we allow Lynndie England to abuse and humiliate prisoners at Abu Ghraib, then we’re no better than the terrorists. American soldiers need to be held accountable for their actions, we can’t let conservatives sweep these issues away under the guise of “national security.”

  • In war, even good men can commit attrocities. That’s one of the reasons why going to war is not something to be done when it isn’t necessary, and why commanders must fiercely maintain a high moral standard.

    The Marines who pulled the triggers aren’t the only ones to blame.

  • When people tally the number of foreign terrorists in Iraq, how many American troops should they include? Because if killing a bunch of random people for no apparent reason isn’t terrorism, I’m not sure what is.

    And can someone explain why it’s better for us to have a civil war in Iraq *with* American soldiers debasing themselves, our country, and our ideals, instead of without all that? Do we need to prove that we tried to save them, but it’s impossible?

  • What conditions are our servicemembers over in Iraq having to deal with that degrades them to not only kill civilians, but a three year old girl? In my time in the infantry, the thought of killing a child up close would have never registered in my mind. My biggest fear in Panama wasn’t that I would get killed (that was second), but that I would accidentally kill a little kid. I would like to think those over in Iraq and Afghanistan had the same fears that I did before they deployed. I’m sure a good number of them have children at home, too.
    For Murtha’s critics, I would just like to say:
    “Fuck off. If you love your country so much and want this war, go fucking fight it yourself”

  • Just remember the poor soldier who broke the Abu Ghraib story, by slipping a CD under the door of C.I.D. Death Threats put him and his family under protections we would normally reserve for a witness for the mob. It’s fucking crazy when we allow people to do this to real patriots, who believe in our country, and that part of the oath that says, “against ALL enemies, foreign AND domestic”. We swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, not an oath to blindly follow any one man or group of men.

  • This is something that has roiled good conservative ex-Marines I know since it first came out. And they have come down on the side Murtha is on, unlike the chickenhawks calling him a traitor who have never served a minute in uniform. “Honor” is a big deal to them.

  • Went over and read some of the “commentary” – so much for “The Anchoress” and her decision to eschew politics as reported by James Wolcott earlier this week.

    A rightie lies! How strange is that????

  • Isn’t this Vietnam all over again? Doesn’t anybody remember My Lai and Lt. Caley?

    What’s the proverb? Oh yeh: “Thoses who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.”

  • Interestingly enough, the “confederateyankee” site and the “california conservative” site that are linked above both allow open posts, and they’re not getting a lot of “attaboys”. It’s worth your time to click those links and let the morons know what you think.

  • Re: #17

    Done my bit for the reality-based populace, Tom. Now I’ll probably get tons of hate mail.

  • Slip kid: yes, this is Vietnam all over again. But our “leaders” haven’t forgotten the past–they’re repeating it because they never paid attention when it was happening. Like V.P. Darth Dick said, they had “other priorities” at the time. And they still do. Self-serving criminals.

  • The individuals involved in this—from those who pulled the triggers on unarmed civilians (ever hear of the Geneva Conventions?) to the officers involved in the cover-up—are all, each and every one, guilty of besmirching the uniform and honor of the Corps. As for the “others” who think Murtha is “dishonorable, traitorous, and worthy of imprisonment,” I find them to be the actual enemies of the People…and of the Constitution…and of the Marine Corps.

  • Murtha is right to investigate this kind of behavior and dennounce it.
    This war is turning our soldiers into monsters due to its savage nature
    and the uncertainty they face daily. No one put in that kind of environment is going to stay sane for long. As time wears on we are going to be hearing more stories of atrocities committed by our soldiers not less.
    They are decent human beings being exposed to horrific conditions that
    provoke this kind of sensless killing.
    War is hell and is always going to be hell. When soldiers are put in a
    no win situation that is deteriorating daily atrocities are the result.
    The answer is not to silence Murtha but to find a way to end this
    conflict as soon as is humanly possible.

  • “Re: #17

    Done my bit for the reality-based populace, Tom. Now I’ll probably get tons of hate mail.” – Me

    I actually got an email back from one of them (I forget which) saying Murtha had not been to Iraq since the insurgency began.

    So I wrote back that then it’s worse in Iraq since Murtha was there 😉

  • What does the Bush administration expect?

    They invade a country that never attacked us and had no intention of doing so. They refused to listen to their military commanders on how many troops it will take to accomplish their goal, which by the way,is getting to Iraq’s oil deposits and had nothing to do with WMS or spreading democracy. They also ignore all advice from diplomats familiar with the Middle East, Jordan’s King Hussein, and other leaders of Middle East countries, who warned Bush that invading Iraq would mobilize ALL muslims who would regard the invasion as an attack on their religion and way of life.

    So, the insurgency revolt starts, the troops are unprepared, out numbered, and asked to live in a condition of constant attacks. They cannot tell the enemy from civilians. Instead of having one rotation in Iraq they are asked to come back to those dreadful conditions going on 3 years now because there are NOT ENOUGH TROOPS.

    Cheney and Rumsfeld spent zero time in uniform and Bush couldn’t even hack a single National Guard enlistment. These arrogant bozos are ignorant of what war does to a soldier.

    Now they are reaping the rewards of their misguided mission, and US soldiers are paying the price along with the American people who will be paying for this war for decades longer than Bush will be in office.

    But what does he care? Hasn’t he already stated that his successor will have to solve the Iraq problem? What a miserable coward we have for a leader.

    Way to go Murtha! You are truely a brave, honorably soldier who is not afraid to speak the truth.

  • It takes a moron to beleive reports from terrorist sympathisers, this website looks like a village of morons! Haditha is a terrorist center, the local people apparently like the terrorists much more than they like coalition troops. So a handful of america haters report that a bunch of innocents were massacred by coalition troops, the story cannot be independently verified. That is good enough for the mainstream media and the liberal Bush haters. So the residents sit back and let the terrorists plant all sorts of roadside bombs, and they celebrate when US soldiers are killed. After the bomb goes off our troops come under fire, and they aren’t supposed to fight back? How do you know that the terrorists werent’ the ones killing Iraqi families, and the sympathisers are telling the truth? I don’t believe this BS story, I’ll wait until all of the facts are in before I throw our soldiers under the bus.

    Happy Memorial Day, morons!

  • Very few of us are truly rational creatures, though we like to pretend that we are. Did you buy the car you are currently driving strictly based on it’s appearance, its horsepower, fuel consumption, reliability, etc? Chances are that the ad agency, which knew how to pull your emotional strings was able to bypass these rational considerations, and appealed to your “feelings”, your self-image, etc.

    I can tell you from my personal combat experiences in Vietnam, that combat pulls a lot of very complex strings in your psyche, which is the sum-total of everything you have ever experienced in your lifetime: Your joys, your sorrows, your fears and hopes – perhaps you get the picture.

    In many cases, you survive because your adrenalin helps you to make those split-second decisions, which help your unconscious mind make those split-second decisions, which your conscious mind would weigh in the balance just long enough to get you killed.

    Unfortunately, that same “unconscious” mind which has just saved your life, also has a very dark side. It will sometimes encourage you to make judgments that what we poetically call “The Angels of Our Better Nature”, would soundly condemn.

    I believe that is what happened during the “Lt. Calley’s massacre” in My Lai, Vietnam. It is the same disease, which overpowered rational judgment by those Marines in Iraq. You can certainly blame the commander, but I prefer to pass judgment on the President who sent these men into harm’s way.

    Wolfgang P. May
    Advisory Team Leader
    Republic of Vietnam, 1968/69

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