Haditha

From American Gulag

Haditha is located on the Euphrates River and is also home to Iraq's largest and most important hydroelectric facility, the Haditha Dam.

Haditha is a city of approximately 100,000 in the Anbar Province of Iraq. Located approximately 240 km northwest of Baghdad, Haditha has become known for being one of the most dangerous insurgent hotbeds in Iraq during the second Gulf War, particularly through 2006. Its name has also become synonymous with the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians by United States Marines on November 19, 2005.

[edit] The Burden of Proof: The Story of Haditha and How We Can Do Nothing About It

[edit] Introduction

An image from the videotape that broke the Haditha story, shot in one of the bedrooms of the Waleed family.

It began with a videotape. Men, women and children, clad in their nightclothes and riddled with bloody gunshot wounds, laid dead in rooms that were once their modest homes. Now those spaces are marred with shrapnel, bullet holes and blood stains.

These images—among others—bear witness to the events of November 19, 2005, a day that saw the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, a city ravaged by insurgent activity at the height of the Iraq War. Such events have come to seem hauntingly commonplace in this war that has claimed over 80,000 civilian lives, but the Haditha incident continues to stand out—to shock, horrify and beguile—because of the circumstances surrounding the bloodbath that fateful morning.

According to the initial report of the United States Marine Corps, one Marine and 15 civilians were killed by the explosion of an improvised explosive device (IED), while eight insurgents were shot dead by Marines in an ensuing firefight. The videotape—showing bodies wounded not by shrapnel or fire but by gunshots, killed indoors and not in the streets—suggested otherwise. The footage, produced by Haditha resident Taher Thabet al Hadithi, showed only the aftermath of what happened that morning, leaving the precise nature of the killings shrouded in mystery. The implication, however, was clear: 24 Iraqis were executed in Haditha by US Marines, frenzied and enraged in the wake of an explosion that killed one of their comrades. It was a message that many in the United States didn’t want to be heard, and one that many have tried to ignore or subvert. The American people didn’t know whether to demand justice or dismiss what they heard and go on supporting the troops. In the media, there was no in-between.

“We were lying there, bleeding, and it hurt so much,” said Eman Waleed, 9, who watched, wounded and hiding, with her 8-year-old brother as their grandparents, parents, uncles, and 4-year-old brother were killed. “Afterward, some Iraqi soldiers came. They carried us their arms. I was crying, shouting ‘Why did you do this to our family?’

“And one Iraqi soldier tells me, ‘We didn’t do it. The Americans did.’”

[edit] The Evidence and its Critics

TIME's Tim McGirk broke the Haditha story with "One Morning in Haditha" in March 2006, more than four months after the killings.

Eman Waleed, aged 9 at the time of the Haditha attacks, survived an attack when she and her brother were shielded by the rest of their family in a corner of their living room.

It took TIME’s Tim McGirk four months to break the Haditha story. McGirk was in Iraq investigating civilian casualties when he made contact with Thabet and his small human rights group, the Hammurabi Organization, which produced the videotape to TIME’s office in Baghdad some two months after the incident. “They said ‘The Marines did this,’” McGirk recalled, “and I found it very hard to believe.” When approached with the videotape, the military dismissed it as enemy propaganda. “To be honest, I cannot believe you’re buying any of this,” Marine Captain Jeff Pool told McGirk.

The prospects of direct investigation were grim. Two months had passed, but Haditha was still one of the most dangerous places in Iraq, and even Iraqi stringers ran a significant risk of exposure and execution by insurgent forces. While arrangements were made to embed a TIME correspondent with forces in Haditha, ABC’s Bob Woodruff was critically injured while embedded a mere day before McGirk’s planned departure for the assignment. McGirk remembers that Jim Kelly, TIME’s managing editor, “said that it probably wasn’t a good idea for us to go out to Haditha and put our safety in the hands of the men that we were then going to turn around and accuse of having gone on a rampage and killed civilians.”

The only alternative was to get in touch with witnesses in Haditha and bring them to Baghdad, where McGirk met Eman Waleed. Her testimony would become one of the most powerful parts of McGirk’s piece, and also served to convince TIME that there was more to the Haditha videotape than “enemy propaganda.”

“The thing that convinced me that I had to do the story was when we got this 8-year-old girl who came and just told this absolutely horrifying story,” McGirk explained. “She only talked about what she saw, and she saw two Marines in the doorway of the living room.”

Since breaking the story, however, Tim McGirk has been called the “new Mary Mapes,” invoking the CBS producer that put fabricated information about George W. Bush’s service in the National Guard on the air. “The Haditha massacre story could turn out to be as phony as the Bush National Guard documents that scandalized CBS News,” said Roger Aronoff of Accuracy in Media.

Politicians who supported McGirk’s story have been called “traitors” by the commentators on the right. As far as the critics were concerned, the story wasn’t based on hard fact and that the left was making a “massacre” for its own gain.

“It really intrigues me that [the left] can put an umbrella over all of our troops and try to make them all look like they were involved in something as horrific as this,” said Glenn Beck of CNN.

[edit] The Events of November 19, 2005

The death of Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas in an IED explosion began the killing spree that claimed the lives of 24 Iraqi civilians.

Every account of the Haditha incident begins with the death of Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas. The driver of the fourth Humvee in a 13-man caravan from Kilo Company of the Third Battalion, First Marines, Terrazas was killed instantly when an IED exploded under his vehicle. His two passengers were badly injured in the blast.

As Kilo Company reacted to the explosion and the death of Terrazas, a number of Iraqi families awoke to the sound of the IED’s deafening blast. "Then we did what we always do when there's an explosion,” Eman Waleed told TIME. “My father goes into his room with the Koran and prays that the family will be spared any harm."

Meanwhile, a taxi carrying four Iraqi students bound for Baghdad came upon the Marine convoy. The Marines ordered the four students and their driver to surrender their car and lay on the ground. According to the testimony of an Iraqi soldier assigned to the company, after searching the vehicle and finding no weapons or explosives, the Marines proceeded to execute the five men.

It was then that reinforcements arrived and the Marines began to systematically enter houses in the neighborhood. According to their testimonies, the Marines came under insurgent fire following the killing of the taxi passengers, directing their attention to the nearby homes. Upon entering the first house, the Marines found the unfortunate family of Eman Waleed.

"First, they went into my father's room, where he was reading the Koran, and we heard shots,” Waleed reported. “I couldn't see their faces very well—only their guns sticking into the doorway. I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny." According to Waleed, she was shielded by her family as they clustered for safety in a corner. While she and her brother survived with relatively minor injuries—gunshot wounds to the shoulder and leg—the adults surrounding them perished.

All told, seven people died in the Waleed home, ranging in age from 4 to 76, including the family’s blind, wheelchair-bound grandfather. Eman and her brother Abdul Rahman survived, as did an aunt, Hiba Abdullah, who managed to escape under fire with a child in her arms.

Moving on to another home, the Marines shot the man who answered the door and threw grenades into the room. The sole survivor, a 12-year-old girl named Safa, reported that Marines—or perhaps a single soldier—sprayed the room with automatic fire, killing her parents, five siblings and an aunt. She survived by fleeing to a bathroom with her mother, who was killed on the run. “I was sorry for staying in the bathroom,” Safa went on to tell Newsweek. “I should have died with the rest of them.” Safa’s younger siblings, 3-year-old Zainab and 2-year-old Aisha, were the youngest victims of the Haditha incident.

Finally, the Marines descended upon the home of the Ayed family. Yousif Ayed, who lived in the building next door, reported hearing gunfire and rushing to his father’s door. There, he was turned away by Iraqi soldiers who were accompanied the Marines. “’Don’t come closer, or the Americans will kill you too,’” Yousif recalled them saying. The family members who were in the home at the time, four of Yousif’s brothers, were later found among the dead.

Returning to see what had become of his brothers, Yousif recalled the carnage. “The Americans didn't let anybody into the house until 6:30 the next morning," he reported. "But we could tell from the blood tracks across the floor what happened. The Americans gathered my four brothers and took them inside my father's bedroom, to a closet. They killed them inside the closet."

[edit] Confirming the Story

Images like this one, taken after the killing of five taxi passengers, were obtained by the NCIS and used in bringing formal charges against the Marines of Kilo Company.

Another image from the Haditha morgue in the aftermath of the killings. November 20, 2005.

TIME’s investigation gave military authorities reason to question their version of the events at Haditha. Shortly before McGirk’s article broke the Haditha story, military spokesman Colonel Barry Johnson suggested that the Marines conduct further investigation of the incident.

“It was obvious to us that there were no organs slashed by shrapnel,” recalled the Iraqi doctor that received the 24 bodies after the incident. “Most of the victims were shot in the chest and the head—from close range.” Nor did the homes of the Iraqis suggest that there had been an outdoor battle: while their interiors, depicted in the Hammurabi video tape, were pockmarked with bullet holes, the exteriors of the buildings were relatively unmarred.

Perhaps worst of all, the testimonies of eyewitnesses attested not just to a cover-up, but to the wanton and deliberate killing of innocents. Eman Waleed watched as her blind, disabled grandfather was shot through the head; Hiba Abdullah recalled the Marines laughing as they counted the bodies in her home; Yousif Ayed suspected that his brothers had been crowded together only to be executed in a single gruesome salvo of gunfire. These accounts had grave implications not just on the credibility of the Marine Corps, but on the integrity of American operations in Iraq. Had the war turned decent, patriotic men into cold-blooded killers of the innocent?

The three-week probe that followed found that an IED was indeed not responsible for civilian deaths, but rather that the civilians were killed by Marines. However, the revised report on the incident called the deaths “collateral damage”: accidental killings of civilians that had the misfortune of getting in the way of a firefight. Despite this, the incident was submitted for a formal criminal investigation. Meanwhile, TIME went to press with “One Morning in Haditha.”

“I worry the combination of Abu Ghraib and Haditha will be the My Lai of this generation,” one officer commented to TIME. “Not because Haditha compares to My Lai”—500 civilians were killed there—“but the perception will be that the military is losing the respect of the American people whom we serve.”

Two Americans who seemed to lose respect for the military were Representatives John Kline (R-MN) and Jack Murtha (D-PA), both decorated former Marines who were briefed by the Marine Corps at the conclusion of the first formal investigation. “There’s no doubt that the Marines allegedly involved in doing this… lied about it,” Kline told TIME in May 2006. “They certainly tried to cover it up.”

Murtha’s comments were even harsher. According to Murtha, the Marines of Kilo Company “overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.”

The statement set off a media firestorm, and the right was eager to jump on the Murtha for allegedly blowing things out of proportion. “Murtha, a U.S. congressman, goes on and indicts the entire military on a national program,” Bill O’Reilly complained. “And I'm mad about it.”

Since Murtha made his comments, some of the Marines of Kilo Company have gone so far as to file defamation suits against the congressman. "Congressman Murtha has created this atmosphere that has already concluded guilt,” Mark Zaid, an attorney for the plaintiffs asserted. “He's created this environment that really smells, and he's the only one who has done that."

The suit, brought by Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, is still pending.

Still, it couldn’t be denied that Marines had killed Iraqi civilians, and criminal charges were about to pressed. The question was no longer whether Marines had done something awful in Haditha, but whether they could be blamed for it.

[edit] The Impossible Task of Proving a Crime

Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich is the only enlisted man in Kilo Company still standing trial for the killings at Haditha. Three other soldiers have had their charges dropped in exchange for testimony at Wuterich's court-martial.

Given the "bias" and "prejudice" of evidence against him, Wuterich is unlikely, according to military sources, to be convicted of any charges other than dereliction of duty.

According to Allen Weiner, a professor of international law at Stanford University, it’s unlikely that Haditha will result in any serious legal punishment for the Marines involved. What happened at Haditha, he says, is “ingrained in the way the forces are trained.”

Indeed, Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich—who was singled out as the leader of the assaults—has claimed that he and his men followed the rules of engagement and responded with appropriate force to both real and perceived threats. Shots were fired at the Marines from the houses that were raided, Wuterich maintains, and he told his men to “shoot first and ask questions later.”

In December 2006, Wuterich was charged with 13 counts of unpremeditated murder. Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt faced three counts of unpremeditated murder; Sergeant Sanick de la Cruz faced five counts of unpremeditated murder; and Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum faced two counts of unpremeditated murder and four counts of negligent homicide. Four officers were also charged for such offenses as dereliction of duty in failing to investigate the incident.

Today, only Wuterich and one officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Chessani, face charges in connection with Haditha. Chessani is charged with a single count of dereliction, carrying a maximum penalty of six months in jail, while the charges against Sharratt, de la Cruz, and Tatum have been dropped. De la Cruz and Tatum have agreed to testify in Wuterich’s court-martial in exchange.

The charges against Wuterich himself have been reduced to counts of voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, dereliction of duty and obstruction of justice.

“The evidence is contradictory, the forensic analysis is limited and almost all witnesses have an obvious bias or prejudice,” stated investigating officer Lieutenant Colonel Paul Ware. “The case against SSgt Wuterich that he committed murder is simply not strong enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“What the evidence does point to is that SSgt Wuterich failed to exercise due care in his own actions or in supervising his Marines. I believe the Government will fail to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that SSgt Wuterich committed any offenses other than dereliction of duty,” Ware concluded.

Professor Weiner says that a concrete case for murder would involve showing that the victims “posed no plausible threat” and that the offense involved was “cruelty that could not be justified by the fog of war.” According to the Marine Corps, the fog of war was very thick that November morning in Haditha.

As far charges that the evidence against the Marines is unreliable, Professor Weiner disagrees. In fact, the evidence—the videotape, the testimonies from the survivors—is “totally legitimate,” he claimed.

“In my mind,” he continued, “it’s circumstantial evidence” that tells you who did the killing and how the victims died. On the other hand, it doesn’t tell you anything about whether those targets were legitimate ones.

Regardless of who was killed, Weiner believes, Marines are trained to bring overwhelming force upon their targets when they feel threatened. It is not out of the question that what had been done only became clear to the Marines after the shots had been fired.

“I think they know they did something wrong,” Weiner observed. But that isn’t enough to show that they did it with the murder of women and children in mind, nor does it go to show that a huge conspiracy was assembled to keep the event quiet.

“I think of Watergate when I think of a ‘cover-up,’” said Weiner. What happened at Haditha was a misreporting of what happened, “and the officers involved let it lie.” If anyone should be held responsible for what happened in Haditha, Weiner thinks, it should be officers. “Nobody can change the incentive calculus better than officers,” he noted.

Officers, however, aren’t charged with murder in cases like these. They didn’t pull the trigger. Instead, they are charged with dereliction of duty, and they serve six-month prison sentences if they are convicted.

[edit] Conclusion: What Happened is Clear; Why it Happened Never Will Be

This all began with a videotape, with its footage of bodies in nightclothes and desecrated homes. Slowly but surely, witnesses were heard and plotlines were pieced together, retracing the events of the Haditha incident. By now, what happened that day has become clear. A 13-man caravan from Kilo Company suffered the loss of a beloved comrade in a roadside bombing, and their reaction was to kill 24 civilians.

Whether those killings were perpetrated in “cold blood,” as Congressman Murtha put it, can never and will never be proven. It’s a central concept of American law that it takes a guilty act and a guilty mind to be convicted of a crime. Without knowing the minds of the soldiers who fired their weapons on civilians in Haditha that day, we can never be sure of what effect the fog of war had on their actions.

It’s unsatisfying to the human rights advocate, but the Haditha story will likely end with Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich being convicted with dereliction of duty, if anything at all. As angry as the world might be with the killing of two, three, and four-year-old children by American Marines, there’s nothing that we—or our legal system—can do about it.

[edit] The Victims of the Haditha Incident

From Iraq Body Count.

The Waleed Family: Abdul Hameed Hassan Ali, 76; Khameesa Toama Ali, 65; Jahid Abdul Hameed Hassan, 43; Waleed Abdul Hameed Hassan, 35; Rasheed Abdul Hameed Hassan, 30; Asmaa Salman Raseef, 32; Abdullah Waleed Abdul Hameed, 4.

The Younis Family: Younis Salim Khalif, 43; Aeda Yasin Ahmed, 35; Hoda Yassin, 28; Noor Younis Salim, 14; Sabaa Younis Salim, 9; Muhammed Younis Salim, 8; Zainab Younis Salim, 3; Aisha Younis Salim, 2.

The Ayed Family: Marwan Ayed Ahmed, 28; Kahtan Ayed Ahmed, 24; Chassid Ayed Ahmed, 27; Jamal Ayed Ahmed, 41.

The Taxi: Khalid Ayada al-Zawi, 27; Wajdi Ayada al-Zawi, 22; Mohammed Battal Mahmoud, 21; Akram Hamid Flayeh, 21; Ahmed Khidher, 25.

[edit] References

One Morning in Haditha, TIME

The Shame of Kilo Company, TIME

Probing a Bloodbath, Newsweek

Report on Haditha Condemns Marines, Washington Post

A Matter of Time, AJR

Rules of Engagement, Vanity Fair

What Happened at Haditha?, BBC Online

TIME Magazine Massacres the Truth, Accuracy in Media

Media Conservatives Attack Murtha Over Haditha Comments, MediaMatters

No Murder Charges Recommended for Wuterich, Sweetness and Light

Interview: Tim McGirk, by Paul McLeary

Interview: Allen Weiner, by Britt Kovachevich

Bresnahan, John. “Wuterich Continues Murtha Lawsuit Despite Manslaughter Charges.” CBS News 8 Jan. 2008.

Perry, John. “Marine Cleared in Haditha Case.” Los Angeles Times 29 Mar. 2008.

Ricks, Thomas. “In Haditha Killings, Details Came Slowly.” Washington Post 4 Jun. 2006.

White, Josh and Sonya Geis. “Four Marines Charged in Haditha Killings.” Washington Post 22 Dec. 2006.

White, Josh. “Marine Names Murtha in Defamation Suit.” Washington Post 2 Aug. 2006.

Zielbauer, Paul von. “Case Against U.S. Marine is Dismissed.” New York Times 29 Mar. 2008.