Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Massacre

N&P: Discuss governments, nations, politics and recent related news here.

Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital

Post Reply
Kanastrous
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 6464
Joined: 2007-09-14 11:46pm
Location: SoCal

Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Massacre

Post by Kanastrous »

MSNBC/NYT wrote: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,” Col. 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 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 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, 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 not one Marine has been convicted.

But the accounts are just as striking for what they reveal about the extraordinary strains on the soldiers who were assigned here, their frustrations and their frequently painful encounters with a population they did not understand. In their own words, the report documents the dehumanizing nature of this war, where Marines came to view 20 dead civilians as not “remarkable,” but as routine.
'A new chapter': US officially ends Iraq war

Iraqi civilians were being killed all the time. Maj. Gen. Steve Johnson, the commander of American forces in Anbar, in his own testimony, described it as “a cost of doing business.”

The stress of combat left some soldiers paralyzed, the testimony shows. Troops, traumatized by the rising violence and feeling constantly under siege, grew increasingly twitchy, killing more and more civilians in accidental encounters. Others became so desensitized and inured to the killing that they fired on Iraqi civilians deliberately while their fellow soldiers snapped pictures, and were court-martialed. The bodies piled up at a time when the war had gone horribly wrong.

Charges were dropped against six of the accused Marines in the Haditha episode, one was acquitted and the last remaining case against one Marine is scheduled to go to trial next year.

Image

This image, believed to have been taken a day or two after the Haditha incident, and was made available on June, 2006, by lawyer Khaled Salem Rsayef. It purportedly shows the scene in one of the houses after 24 Iraqis were killed by U.S. Marines.

That sense of American impunity ultimately poisoned any chance for American 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 that had been found, Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the United States 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.

He added: “We take any breach of classified information as an extremely serious matter. In this case, the documents are being reviewed to determine whether an investigation is warranted.” The military said it did not know from which investigation the documents had come, but the papers appear to be from an inquiry by Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell into the events in Haditha. The documents ultimately led to a report that concluded that the Marine Corps’s chain of command engaged in “willful negligence” in failing to investigate the episode and that Marine commanders were far too willing to tolerate civilian casualties. That report, however, did not include the transcripts.

Many of those testifying at bases in Iraq or the United States were clearly under scrutiny for not investigating an atrocity and may have tried to shape their statements to dispel any notion that they had sought to cover up the events. But the accounts also show the consternation of the Marines as they struggled to control an unfamiliar land and its people in what amounted to a constant state of siege from fighters who were nearly indistinguishable from noncombatants.

Some, feeling they were under attack constantly, decided to use force first and ask questions later. If Marines took fire from a building, they would often level it. Drivers who approached checkpoints without stopping were assumed to be suicide bombers.

“When a car doesn’t stop, it crosses the trigger line, Marines engage and, yes, sir, there are people inside the car that are killed that have nothing to do with it,” Sgt. Maj. Edward T. Sax, the battalion’s senior noncommissioned officer, testified.

He added, “I had Marines shoot children in cars and deal with the Marines individually one on one about it because they have a hard time dealing with that.”

Sergeant Major Sax said he would ask the Marines responsible if they had known there had been children in the car. When they said no, he said he would tell them they were not at fault. He said he felt for the Marines who had fired the shots, saying they would carry a lifelong burden.

“It is one thing to kill an insurgent in a head-on fight,” Sergeant Major Sax testified. “It is a whole different thing — and I hate to say it, the way we are raised in America — to injure a female or injure a child or in the worse case, kill a female or kill a child.”
Video: No Exit: Iraq's oil and Iran's influence (on this page)

“They don’t have glasses and stuff,” Col. John Ledoux said. “It really makes you wonder because some of the things that they would do just to keep coming. You know, it’s hard to imagine they would just keep coming, but sometimes they do.”

Such was the environment in 2005, when the Marines from Company K of the Third Battalion, First Marine Regiment from Camp Pendleton, Calif., arrived in Anbar Province, where Haditha is located, many for their second or third tours in Iraq.

The province had become a stronghold for disenfranchised Sunnis and foreign fighters who wanted to expel the United States from Iraq, or just kill as many Americans as possible. Of the 4,483 American deaths in Iraq, 1,335 happened in Anbar.

In 2004, four Blackwater contractors were gunned down and dragged through the streets of Falluja, their bodies burned and hung on a bridge over the Euphrates. Days later, the United States military moved into the city, and chaos ensued in Anbar Province for the next two years as the Americans tried to fight off the insurgents.

The stress of combat soon bore down. A legal adviser to the Marine unit stopped taking his medication for obsessive-compulsive disorder and stopped functioning.

“We had the one where Marines had photographed themselves taking shots at people,” Col. R. Kelly testified, saying that they immediately called the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and “confiscated their little camera.” He said the soldiers involved received a court-martial.

All of this set the stage for what happened in Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005.

That morning, a military convoy of four vehicles was heading to an outpost in Haditha when one of the vehicles was hit by a roadside bomb.

Several Marines got out to attend to the wounded, including one who eventually died, while others looked for insurgents who might have set off the bomb. Within a few hours 24 Iraqis — including a 76-year-old man and children between the ages of 3 and 15 — were killed, many inside their homes.

Townspeople contended that the Marines overreacted to the attack and shot civilians, only one of whom was armed. The Marines said they thought they were under attack.

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.”

When Marines arrived on the scene to assess the number of dead bodies, at least one Marine thought it would be a good time to take pictures for his own keeping.

“I know I had one Marine who was taking pictures just to take pictures and I told him to delete all those pictures,” testified a first lieutenant identified as M. D. Frank.

The documents uncovered by The Times — which include handwritten notes from soldiers, waivers by Marines of their right against self-incrimination, diagrams of where dead women and children were found, and pictures of the site where the Marine was killed by a roadside bomb on the day of the massacre — remain classified.

In a meeting with journalists in October, before the military had been told about the discovery of the documents, the American commander in charge of the logistics of the withdrawal said that files from the bases were either transferred to other parts of the military or incinerated.

“We don’t put official paperwork in the trash,” said the commander, Maj. Gen. Thomas Richardson, at the meeting at the American Embassy in Baghdad.

The documents were piled in military trailers and hauled to the junkyard by an Iraqi contractor who was trying to sell off the surplus from American bases, the junkyard attendant said. The attendant said he had no idea what any of the documents were about, only that they were important to the Americans.

He said that over the course of several weeks he had burned dozens and dozens of binders, turning more untold stories about the war into ash.

“What can we do with them?” the attendant said. “These things are worthless to us, but we understand they are important and it is better to burn them to protect the Americans. If they are leaving, it must mean their work here is done.”

Yasir Ghazi contributed reporting.

The article, "Junkyard Gives Up Secret Accounts of Massacre in Iraq," first appeared in The New York Times.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45680863/ns ... upEAnLvh8E

In an f'ing junkyard?! Maybe the USMC ought to consider retiring the Marine Corps Hymn for something more along the lines of the Three Stooges theme.
I find myself endlessly fascinated by your career - Stark, in a fit of Nerd-Validation, November 3, 2011
User avatar
Edi
Dragonlord
Dragonlord
Posts: 12461
Joined: 2002-07-11 12:27am
Location: Helsinki, Finland

Re: Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Mass

Post by Edi »

This story does nothing but practically confirm everything that was said at the time the Haditha massacre was a hot topic. Not that the people who were serving as apologists for it will ever admit to being wrong. It was obvious from the beginning that it was a coverup and this just verifies that.
Warwolf Urban Combat Specialist

Why is it so goddamned hard to get little assholes like you to admit it when you fuck up? Is it pride? What gives you the right to have any pride?
–Darth Wong to vivftp

GOP message? Why don't they just come out of the closet: FASCISTS R' US –Patrick Degan

The GOP has a problem with anyone coming out of the closet. –18-till-I-die
User avatar
Thanas
Magister
Magister
Posts: 30779
Joined: 2004-06-26 07:49pm

Re: Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Mass

Post by Thanas »

Edi wrote:This story does nothing but practically confirm everything that was said at the time the Haditha massacre was a hot topic. Not that the people who were serving as apologists for it will ever admit to being wrong. It was obvious from the beginning that it was a coverup and this just verifies that.
Indeed.

I can also remember the apologist line of "the insurgents might have shot the civilians themselves to make us look bad" which for some reasons always gets trotted out in these kind of stories.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------
My LPs
Kanastrous
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 6464
Joined: 2007-09-14 11:46pm
Location: SoCal

Re: Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Mass

Post by Kanastrous »

It's kind of two stories in one - confirmatory of the massacre (and documentary confirmation is good, even if we all "knew the truth" already) and also the kind of maybe-inevitable horror-comedy of piles of classified (not to mention embarrassing) US military docs being dumped in open air in a hostile country.
I find myself endlessly fascinated by your career - Stark, in a fit of Nerd-Validation, November 3, 2011
User avatar
Zaune
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 7510
Joined: 2010-06-21 11:05am
Location: In Transit
Contact:

Re: Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Mass

Post by Zaune »

Kanastrous wrote:It's kind of two stories in one - confirmatory of the massacre (and documentary confirmation is good, even if we all "knew the truth" already) and also the kind of maybe-inevitable horror-comedy of piles of classified (not to mention embarrassing) US military docs being dumped in open air in a hostile country.
My guess would be that someone tried to get rid of them on purpose; they couldn't burn them on-base without someone noticing and asking awkward questions, so they smuggled them out and tried to dispose of them elsewhere; maybe that junkyard handles general waste as well as scrap metal, maybe they just sold the night-watchman a large bundle of "old inventory paperwork" for firelighters. Ingenious, really; what were the odds of anyone who could read English well enough to realise what the documents really said happening to pass by, much less a reporter for the New York Times?
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)


Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin


Like my writing? Tip me on Patreon

I Have A Blog
User avatar
Stark
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 36169
Joined: 2002-07-03 09:56pm
Location: Brisbane, Australia

Re: Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Mass

Post by Stark »

Maybe they were treated like classified documents in America; they were sold to a secure disposal company for shredding/buring/keeping away from people.

Only we blew up Iraq, so they just took it to the dump.
User avatar
K. A. Pital
Glamorous Commie
Posts: 20813
Joined: 2003-02-26 11:39am
Location: Elysium

Re: Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Mass

Post by K. A. Pital »

One hell of a macabre comedy. I'm amazed that even now the article is trying to insert apologetic overtones ("the documents also show how stressful war is" - duh).
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...

...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Assalti Frontali
User avatar
Serafina
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 5246
Joined: 2009-01-07 05:37pm
Location: Germany

Re: Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Mass

Post by Serafina »

So, who will go to prison for leaking those documents?
SoS:NBA GALE Force
"Destiny and fate are for those too weak to forge their own futures. Where we are 'supposed' to be is irrelevent." - Sir Nitram
"The world owes you nothing but painful lessons" - CaptainChewbacca
"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." - Wilhelm Stekel
"In 1969 it was easier to send a man to the Moon than to have the public accept a homosexual" - Broomstick

Divine Administration - of Gods and Bureaucracy (Worm/Exalted)
User avatar
Zixinus
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 6663
Joined: 2007-06-19 12:48pm
Location: In Seth the Blitzspear
Contact:

Re: Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Mass

Post by Zixinus »

Ingenious, really; what were the odds of anyone who could read English well enough to realise what the documents really said happening to pass by, much less a reporter for the New York Times?
Anyone with enough common sense that Iraq still has reporters around? You know, in the country that has attracted every war reporter worthy of a name for what is the adult life of many people now?

Also, Iraq was at one point been a British colony and already had a war with the USA before. Not to mention that there are plenty of US contractors there. The idea that there is only a handful of native people there that speak English (the current lingua franc of the world) is a bit absurd.
Credo!
Chat with me on Skype if you want to talk about writing, ideas or if you want a test-reader! PM for address.
User avatar
Zaune
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 7510
Joined: 2010-06-21 11:05am
Location: In Transit
Contact:

Re: Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Mass

Post by Zaune »

Zixinus wrote:Anyone with enough common sense that Iraq still has reporters around? You know, in the country that has attracted every war reporter worthy of a name for what is the adult life of many people now?

Also, Iraq was at one point been a British colony and already had a war with the USA before. Not to mention that there are plenty of US contractors there. The idea that there is only a handful of native people there that speak English (the current lingua franc of the world) is a bit absurd.
Okay, let me rephrase myself. What were the odds of someone who can read English fluently happening to visit some junkyard in the outskirts of Baghdad before the night-watchman had run out of paper to burn?
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)


Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin


Like my writing? Tip me on Patreon

I Have A Blog
User avatar
someone_else
Jedi Knight
Posts: 854
Joined: 2010-02-24 05:32am

Re: Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Mass

Post by someone_else »

man............ they don't even need wikileaks to make known to the world their secrets.

what will be next time? nuke launch codes? :lol:
I'm nobody. Nobody at all. But the secrets of the universe don't mind. They reveal themselves to nobodies who care.
--
Stereotypical spacecraft are pressurized.
Less realistic spacecraft are pressurized to hold breathing atmosphere.
Realistic spacecraft are pressurized because they are flying propellant tanks. -Isaac Kuo

--
Good art has function as well as form. I hesitate to spend more than $50 on decorations of any kind unless they can be used to pummel an intruder into submission. -Sriad
User avatar
Thanas
Magister
Magister
Posts: 30779
Joined: 2004-06-26 07:49pm

Re: Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Mass

Post by Thanas »

Kanastrous wrote:and also the kind of maybe-inevitable horror-comedy of piles of classified (not to mention embarrassing) US military docs being dumped in open air in a hostile country.
Oh boo hoo for the US military.


Also, anybody want to take a bet that this won't result in any consequence whatsoever?

Guess massacred brown people are just the cost of doing business for the US.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------
My LPs
Kanastrous
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 6464
Joined: 2007-09-14 11:46pm
Location: SoCal

Re: Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Mass

Post by Kanastrous »

^ wasn't intended to elicit sympathy, you know.
I find myself endlessly fascinated by your career - Stark, in a fit of Nerd-Validation, November 3, 2011
User avatar
Thanas
Magister
Magister
Posts: 30779
Joined: 2004-06-26 07:49pm

Re: Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Mass

Post by Thanas »

Kanastrous wrote:^ wasn't intended to elicit sympathy, you know.
Yeah, but the article is full of it. Oh no, the poor troops were so stressed. Gosh, I just don't know...I think they couldn't help themselves. They just had to shoot all those children and seniors in wheelchairs.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------
My LPs
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
FUCKING DICK-STABBER!
Posts: 21222
Joined: 2003-05-11 08:39am
Location: Bleeding breasts and stabbing dicks since 2003
Contact:

Re: Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Mass

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

I for one am glad that information regarding the injustices of terrorists have been brought to light, and despite the slim chances of this ever happening, nonetheless we can hope that the perpetrators of this act - and those who enabled them, shielded them, and acted as accessories to violence, terror and murder - will be brought to justice in the name of the freedoms and democracies of the liberated god-fearing people of Iraq. May truth, justice and the Iraqi way persevere against the loose cannons who have inflicted such a reign of violence and fear in that great freedom-loving country. God bless you, and God bless the Iraqi people. :)
Image "DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source)
shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people :D - PeZook
Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic
Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
User avatar
Illuminatus Primus
All Seeing Eye
Posts: 15774
Joined: 2002-10-12 02:52pm
Location: Gainesville, Florida, USA
Contact:

Re: Classified Docs Turn Up in Iraqi Junkyard - Haditha Mass

Post by Illuminatus Primus »

They don't care that these things get out. Look at US history generally. The goal of state secrecy is to prevent the domestic population from knowing what's really going on so they can be obliged to support policies they otherwise would not. For decades everyone else in the world knows the U.S. regularly bombs civilians, sends arms, cash, and help to some of the most vicious killers and wetworkers in the world, supports police states, ad nausuem. U.S. state secrecy is really about helping the domestic Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightement mass media accomplish its functions of apologizing and justifying the ruling class' policies. In this, and akin cases, the U.S. media and political establishment treats any accusation of U.S. state crimes as having to meet the standards of proof of criminal court (notice this standard is non-existent on Official Enemies, where literally any scuttlebutt gets promoted to the credibility of the Constitution) before you can even discuss the atrocities.

Whether Iraqis and foreigners realize it is really immaterial. The Brookings Institute and major liberal think tanks do professional studies of public opinion in the Middle East regularly, and know that is a matter of public acceptance the U.S. is a brutal imperial power which operates with impunity and regularly flouts international law and commits war crimes. The U.S. has no mass support, and no credibility over there. It does not concern policymakers. What concerns them is whether the U.S. population would continue to be cajoled into passively accepting their imperial policies, such that the breadth of policy options remains as wide as possible for decision-making elites.
"You know what the problem with Hollywood is. They make shit. Unbelievable. Unremarkable. Shit." - Gabriel Shear, Swordfish

"This statement, in its utterly clueless hubristic stupidity, cannot be improved upon. I merely quote it in admiration of its perfection." - Garibaldi in reply to an incredibly stupid post.

The Fifth Illuminatus Primus | Warsie | Skeptical Empiricist | Florida Gator | Sustainability Advocate | Libertarian Socialist |
Image
Post Reply