The 2008 Iraq Winter Soldier hearings took place in a news blackout. Last year, WikiLeaks showed us a U.S. Army video of Iraqi civilians (including children and two journalists) being gunned down by an attack helicopter, but there was little media attention.
Now, the New York Times has uncovered classified documents about the 2005 massacre of civilian noncombatants in Hadita, Iraq by U.S. Marines. Some 24 people were killed, including a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair, women and children, some just toddlers.
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 biggest “secret” of U.S. war crimes in Iraq, of course, is really not a secret to anyone who wants to know. At the height of combat against insurgents, atrocities against civilians took place nearly every day. For American commanders, reports of incidents in which innocent noncombatants were killed became routine– “just a cost of doing business,” in the words of one officer.
The same “secret” is hiding in plain sight in Afghanistan. Former commanding general Stanley McChrystal: “We’ve shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force.”
UPDATE: Last US Marine faces trial over 2005 Iraq killings
UPDATE: Marine said ‘shoot first, ask later’ in Iraq civilian slayings
When the initial reports arrived saying more than 20 civilians had been killed in Haditha, the Marines receiving them said they were not surprised by the high civilian death toll.
Chief Warrant Officer K. R. Norwood, who received reports from the field on the day of the killings and briefed commanders on them, testified that 20 dead civilians was not unusual.
“I meant, it wasn’t remarkable, based off of the area I wouldn’t say remarkable, sir,” Mr. Norwood said. “And that is just my definition. Not that I think one life is not remarkable, it’s just —”
An investigator asked the officer: “I mean remarkable or noteworthy in terms of something that would have caught your attention where you would have immediately said, ‘Got to have more information on that. That is a lot of casualties.’ ”
“Not at the time, sir,” the officer testified.
General Johnson, the commander of American forces in Anbar Province, said he did not feel compelled to go back and examine the events because they were part of a continuing pattern of civilian deaths.
“It happened all the time, not necessarily in MNF-West all the time, but throughout the whole country,” General Johnson testified, using a military abbreviation for allied forces in western Iraq.
“So, you know, maybe — I guess maybe if I was sitting here at Quantico and heard that 15 civilians were killed I would have been surprised and shocked and gone — done more to look into it,” he testified, referring to Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. “But at that point in time, I felt that was — had been, for whatever reason, part of that engagement and felt that it was just a cost of doing business on that particular engagement.”
Related One Utah post:
How Much Do We Want to See? (January 9, 2007)
#1 by Richard Warnick on January 5, 2012 - 10:37 am
UPDATE: Last US Marine faces trial over 2005 Iraq killings
#2 by cav on January 5, 2012 - 12:59 pm
And to think these misguided young people, now murderers, could have been helping out down New Orleans way, growing veggies, or building bridges.
Shame on the monsters who keep setting this kinda shit up.
#3 by Richard Warnick on January 5, 2012 - 4:47 pm
There have not been many courts martial, because nearly all of the war crimes were covered up. Time Magazine learned about Haditha, otherwise we probably would not have ever heard about it.
Sadly, I think the abnormally high post-traumatic stress and suicide rates among Iraq veterans is indicative of something wrong that ought to have been dealt with openly.
Nearly 20 veterans commit suicide every day. More U.S. soldiers have committed suicide in the past decade than those who died in combat in Iraq.
#4 by cav on January 8, 2012 - 9:19 am
I’d be remiss in NOT pointing out – It’s not just the republicans who would bring us down, not just the Muslim hoards…
Breaking: Patriot Missiles Seized, Sold To China by Israel (Updates)
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/12/23/breaking-patriot-missiles-seized-sold-to-china-by-israel/?
#5 by Richard Warnick on January 8, 2012 - 12:05 pm
Neither the Patriot missile nor the F-22 fighter work very well – maybe the Israelis and/or Chinese can make improvements and sell them back to us.
#6 by cav on January 8, 2012 - 1:10 pm
Too many weapons of whatever quality for my taste. It’s as though we’re trying to beat Mother Nature’s methane purge to the apocalypse.
#7 by cav on January 8, 2012 - 1:44 pm
Jeff Masters via Climate Progress:
The December Arctic Oscillation index has fluctuated wildly over the past six years, with the two most extreme positive and two most extreme negative values on record. Unfortunately, we don’t understand why the AO varies so much from winter to winter, nor why the AO has taken on such extreme configurations during four of the past six winters.
This is really interesting stuff, as the negative oscillation gives the Arctic sea-ice loss and us a cold mid-latitude Winter while the positive oscillation gives us warm Winter.
Climate models are generally too crude to make skillful predictions on how human-caused climate change may be affecting the AO, or what might happen to the AO in the future. There is research linking an increase in solar activity and sunspots with the positive phase of the AO. Solar activity has increased sharply this winter compared to the past two winters, so perhaps we have seen a strong solar influence on the winter AO…
While we may have a gut-feeling that AGW is somehow responsible we aren’t good enough with our modeling yet to make any connection.
#8 by Richard Warnick on January 10, 2012 - 9:10 am
UPDATE: Marine said ‘shoot first, ask later’ in Iraq civilian slayings
#9 by cav on January 10, 2012 - 11:04 am
in the service of PNAC / murder axis – on lies and the need to promote exactly what Eisenhower cautioned against promoting. Good job guys. Jesus will be preparing a feast for when you are finally reunited.
Proud to be an American.
#10 by cav on January 11, 2012 - 8:54 am
And this ‘junkyard sprawls:
Some longtime lawyers say the overall scarcity of cases related to the financial crisis might be in part because regulators want to avoid scrutiny of their own kind.
“It’s not just one 30-year-old wunderkind who was responsible for the financial crisis,” said Dennis C. Vacco, who was the New York State attorney general in the 1990s and now is a lawyer at Lippes Mathias Wexler & Friedman. “Once you start pulling the string through in these complex cases, you might be surprised what you find at the other end.”
Mr. Vacco continued: “What’s at the end of the string? The defense may be that ‘at the highest echelons of the financial institutions, we were in regular contact with the government.’”
These charges are exceptionally severe. Senior former regulators are willing to be quoted by name asserting that Obama’s (not Bush’s) financial regulatory leaders are blocking lawsuits against fraudulent financial elites and their anti-regulatory co-conspirators because they fear embarrassment. That would be a disgraceful policy. Indeed, it is hard to think of a worse reason for granting the elite white-collar criminals that caused the crisis and the Great Recession immunity from prosecution. The fact that Obama has no response rebutting this grave charge against his administration’s integrity sounds loud, but not proud.
#11 by Richard Warnick on February 2, 2012 - 12:40 pm
UPDATE: Marine Corps closes the book on Haditha.
When I was in the Army a long time ago, reduction in rank was the punishment for refusing to get a haircut!