Haditha : an Iraqui My Lai ?

[tocqueville]

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1174649,00.html

But the details of what happened that morning in Haditha are more disturbing, disputed and horrific than the military initially reported. According to eyewitnesses and local officials interviewed over the past 10 weeks, the civilians who died in Haditha on Nov. 19 were killed not by a roadside bomb but by the Marines themselves, who went on a rampage in the village after the attack, killing 15 unarmed Iraqis in their homes, including seven women and three children. Human-rights activists say that if the accusations are true, the incident ranks as the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by U.S. service members since the war began.

In January, after Time presented military officials in Baghdad with the Iraqis' accounts of the Marines' actions, the U.S. opened its own investigation, interviewing 28 people, including the Marines, the families of the victims and local doctors. According to military officials, the inquiry acknowledged that, contrary to the military's initial report, the 15 civilians killed on Nov. 19 died at the hands of the Marines, not the insurgents. The military announced last week that the matter has been handed over to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (ncis), which will conduct a criminal investigation to determine whether the troops broke the laws of war by deliberately targeting civilians. Lieut. Colonel Michelle Martin-Hing, spokeswoman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq, told Time the involvement of the ncis does not mean that a crime occurred. And she says the fault for the civilian deaths lies squarely with the insurgents, who "placed noncombatants in the line of fire as the Marines responded to defend themselves."

[Disturbed]

1. NNaval Criminal Investigative Service will conduct

a criminal whitewash. It's always good for the Military to investigage itself.

[DELUSIONAL]

2. fault for civilian deaths lies squarely on Prez bush's shoulders

He wanted to play the war lord -- this is HIS war -- all war related deaths are his fault.

[leftchick]

3. It isn't just Haditha, they slaughtered another family last week

Posted on Sun, Mar. 19, 2006

Iraqi police report details civilians' deaths at hands of U.S. troops

BY MATTHEW SCHOFIELDKnight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi police have accused American troops of executing 11 people, including a 75-year-old woman and a 6-month-old infant, in the aftermath of a raid last Wednesday on a house about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

The villagers were killed after American troops herded them into a single room of the house, according to a police document obtained by Knight Ridder Newspapers. The soldiers also burned three vehicles, killed the villagers' animals and blew up the house, the document said.
A U.S. military spokesman, Major Tim Keefe, said that the U.S. military has no information to support the allegations and that he had not heard of them before a reporter brought them to his attention Sunday.

"We're concerned to hear accusations like that, but it's also highly unlikely that they're true," he said. He added that U.S. forces "take every precaution to keep civilians out of harms' way. The loss of innocent life, especially children, is regrettable."

Accusations that U.S. troops have killed civilians are commonplace in Iraq, though most are judged later to be unfounded or exaggerated. Navy investigators announced last week that they were looking into whether Marines intentionally killed 15 Iraqi civilians - four of them women and five of them children - during fighting last November

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/world/14139070.htm

[dipsydoodle]

4. For those of you too young

to remember My Lai at the time it all came to light use this link : http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/Myl_intro.html

Read down the question about the babies in the ditch and see if you don't well up.

I don't actually think that anyone believed that history could repeat itself - maybe we're all just suckers that way.

[LynnTheDem]

5. Bloody fucking hell...

May God forgive us. No one else is going to.

[LynnTheDem]

6. "fault is with the insurgents" my ass ; the dead were in their own homes.

We're fucking Nazis. We're genociding innocent men, women & kids. The "insurgents" are defending THEIR COUNTRY, THEIR HOMES.

WE INVADED AN INNOCENT NATION. A nation that hadn't been doing ONE DAMN THING TO ANYONE.

WE ARE THE BAD GUYS. WE ARE THE NAZIS.

God damn I am so fucking sick of this bullshit.