Sensitive Documents in Haditha Massacre Found in Baghdad Junkyard

Who need Wikileaks when this is the modus operandi of our own armed forces?

Iraqi civilians killed due to ‘extreme pressures on our Marines’ Photo courtesy: Middle East Online

(SALEM) - Sensitive documents detailing the suspected massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians by Marines at Haditha, Iraq, on 19 November 2005, were recently discovered in a trailer parked in a Baghdad junkyard, by a New York Times reporter. They reported that reams of documents were being burned by an Iraqi as fuel to cook a dinner of smoked carp.

There are some stories that former Marines just hate writing about, mainly because we know in our hearts that the spirit of the U.S. Marines is totally unmatched by their country's political ambitions, directives and orders. This incident as many recall, began with an encounter between Marines, and several Iraqi teenagers and an adult male in a taxi cab.

The Marines are said to have shot all of the Iraqis in the taxi dead, and then moved to a building where they entered with the apparent belief that someone there had fired at them. A nine-year old girl survived to tell the story. A single AK-47 rifle was found in the building, however that was legal for the family to possess as a self-defense weapon.

Marines don't get to pick their battles or wars, and if the conflict is bad enough, terrible things will result from placing the most hardcore, effective fighting force in the world, in grueling conditions where they are tasked for long periods. Iraq, like both Afghanistan and Vietnam, provided the U.S. with a fairly indiscernible enemy, since much of the resistance came from the very places the Marines occupied.

In its recent departure from Iraq, U.S. forces failed to destroy some of the most sensitive documents imaginable. The services of Julian Assange and Wikileaks are hardly needed when this is the modus operandi of our own armed forces.

The recovered documents go well beyond the Marine incident at Haditha; they also reveal helicopter routes, radar installations and sensitive operational data that was never meant to fall into the public domain.

I know some of the families of the Marines involved in the terrible events at Haditha, and part of that story involves questionable legal representation and violations of the rights of the charged Marines. Their crimes may have been real, yet failing to be treated with equal justice just compounds tragedy upon tragedy.

The problems in the investigation and subsequent court proceedings, led to the Marines not receiving convictions for the violence that left 24 Iraqi civilians dead, and that lack of atonement is viewed by many experts as one of the primary reasons for the present withdrawal of military forces in Iraq.

The New York Times wrote:

“

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. That is one of the main reasons that all American combat troops are leaving by the weekend.

”

The documents also tell the story of the strain placed on individuals fighting in Iraq during the harshest years.

These Americans were plunged into a hostile environment where they did not understand the people and culture. The recovered information reveals the dehumanizing side of the war in Iraq, ...where Marines came to view 20 dead civilians as not 'remarkable, but as routine,' one high ranking officer says in the newly published interviews.

I have included the shortcut links to several of the interviews filed by the NY Times, and a link to their story which I have only given you a snapshot of. Special thanks to Gordon Duff of Veterans Today who passed this one along and didn't want to work on it, and I understand, because even if the worst about this incident is true, the actions in no way typify the real mission of U.S. Marines and maybe, hopefully, in the future the country's political leaders will not be so quick to involve them in wars that are and were clearly without necessity.

Selected Testimony From the Haditha Investigation - Second Interview of Col. T. Cariker NY Times

Selected Testimony From the Haditha Investigation - Interview With Chief Warrant Officer K. R. Norwood NY Times

Selected Testimony From the Haditha Investigation - Interview of Maj. Gen. Steve Johnson NY Times