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 |  Subject: Secret papers shed light on savage US killings as troops pull out  Fri Dec 16, 2011 5:28 am | |
| Civilian deaths were seen as the cost of doing business, writes Michael 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's time in Iraq: the 2005 massacre by marines of Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha.
''I mean, whether it's 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,'' Colonel 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 ''grenade 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 US troops prepared to leave Iraq.
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Instead, they were discovered 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's 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 and 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 no Marine was prosecuted. That is one of the main reasons all US combat troops are leaving by this weekend.
The accounts are also striking for what they reveal about the extraordinary strains on the soldiers assigned here, their frustrations and their frequently painful encounters with a population they did not understand.
In their own words, the report documents the dehumanising nature of this war, where marines came to view 20 dead civilians as not ''remarkable'' but as routine. Iraqi civilians were being killed all the time.
Major General Steve Johnson, the commander of US forces in Anbar province, in his own testimony, described it as ''a cost of doing business''.
The stress of combat left some soldiers paralysed, the testimony shows. Troops, traumatised by the rising violence and feeling constantly under siege, grew increasingly twitchy, killing more and more civilians in accidental encounters.
Others became so desensitised and inured to the killing that they fired on Iraqi civilians deliberately while their fellow soldiers snapped pictures - and were court-martialled. The bodies piled up at a time the war had gone horribly wrong.
Charges were dropped against six of the accused marines in the Haditha episode, another was acquitted and the last remaining case against one Marine is scheduled for trial next year.
That sense of impunity ultimately poisoned any chance for US 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 found, Colonel Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the US military in Iraq, said that many of the documents remained classified and should have been destroyed.
''Despite the way in which they were improperly discarded and came into your possession, we are not at liberty to discuss classified information,'' he said.
The marines from Company K of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, who arrived in Anbar province in 2005 found themselves under a constant state of siege from guerilla fighters who were nearly indistinguishable from noncombatants.
The province had become a stronghold for disenfranchised Sunnis and foreign fighters who wanted to expel the US from Iraq, or just kill as many Americans as possible. Of the 4483 US deaths in Iraq, 1335 happened in Anbar.
On the morning of November 19, 2005, a military convoy of four vehicles was heading to an outpost in Haditha when one vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb. Several marines got out to attend to the wounded while others looked for insurgents.
One Marine eventually died. Within a few hours, 24 Iraqis - including children aged between three and 15 - were killed, many inside their homes.
Townspeople contended the marines overreacted and shot civilians, only one of whom was armed. The marines said they thought they were under attack.
As to the initial reports arriving, saying more than 20 civilians had been killed, the marines receiving them said they were not surprised by the high civilian toll.
''I meant, it wasn't remarkable, based off of the area I wouldn't say remarkable, sir,'' Chief Warrant Officer K.R. Norwood testified.
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.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/secret-papers-shed-light-on-killings-as-troops-pull-out-20111215-1owq9.html#ixzz1ggynjp43
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