U.S. Military Probes Killings in Iraq

[verte76]

Here's the whole story: http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=38834

 

[deep]

it looks like war crimes by U. S.

Marines face war crimes probe in 15 civilians' shooting deaths

Tuesday, March 21, 2006
BY BASSEM MROUE
Associated Press

BAGHDAD -- After a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Marine in western Iraq, American troops went into nearby houses and shot dead 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old-girl, residents told the Associated Press yesterday.

The military says about 12 Marines are under investigation for possible war crimes by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service following the Nov. 19 insurgent attack in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad.

The allegations against the Marines were brought forward by Time magazine, which reported this week that it obtained a videotape two months ago taken by a Haditha journalism student that shows the dead still in their nightclothes.

The magazine report mirrored what was told independently to the AP by residents who described what happened as "a massacre."

A military spokeswoman said yesterday the allegations were being taken "very seriously."

Khaled Ahmed Rsayef, whose brother and six other relatives were killed, said the roadside bomb exploded about 7:15 a.m. in the al-Subhani neighborhood, heavily damaging a U.S. Humvee.

A U.S. military statement in November described it as an ambush on a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol that left 15 civilians, eight insurgents and a U.S. Marine dead in the bombing and a subsequent firefight. The statement said the 15 civilians were killed by the blast, a claim that residents denied.

They said the only shooting done after the bombing was by U.S. forces.

"American troops immediately cordoned off the area and raided two nearby houses, shooting at everyone inside," said Rsayef, who didn't witness the events but whose 15-year-old niece says she did. "It was a massacre in every sense of the word."

Rsayef and another resident, former city councilman Imad Jawad Hamza, who spoke with hospital officials and residents, said the first house to be stormed was that of Abdul-Hamid Hassan Ali, which was near the scene of the bombing.

Ali, 76, whose left leg was amputated years ago because of diabetes, died after being shot in the stomach and chest. His wife, Khamisa, 66, was shot in the back. Ali's son, Jahid, 43, was hit in the head and chest. Son Walid, 37, was burned to death after a grenade was thrown into his room, and a third son, 28-year-old Rashid, died after he was shot in the head and chest, Rsayef and Hamza said.

Also among the dead were son Walid's wife, Asma, 32, who was shot in the head, and their son Abdullah, 4, who was shot in the chest, Rsayef and Hamza said.

Walid's 8-year-old daughter, Iman, and his 6-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman, were wounded and U.S. troops took them to Baghdad for treatment. The only person who escaped unharmed was Walid's 5-month-old daughter, Asia. The three children now live with their maternal grandparents, Rsayef and Hamza said.

Rsayef said those killed in the second house were his brother Younis, 43, who was shot in the stomach and chest, and the brother's wife, Aida, 40, who was shot in the neck and chest while still in bed, where she was recuperating from bladder surgery. Their 8-year-old son, Mohammed, bled to death after being shot in the right arm, Rsayef said.

Also killed were Younis' daughters, Nour, 14, who was shot in the head; Seba, 10, who was hit in the chest; Zeinab, 5, shot in the chest and stomach; and Aisha, 3, who was shot in the chest. Hoda Yassin, a visiting relative, also was killed, Rsayef and Hamza said.

The only survivor from Younis' family was his 15-year-old daughter, Safa, who pretended she was dead. She is living with her grandparents, Rsayef said.

The troops then shot and killed four brothers who were walking in the street and five men who were in a car near the scene, Hamza and Rsayef said.

It was not clear if the nine men were involved in the attack, as the military statement said.

According to the Defense Department, the Marine who was killed near Haditha that day was Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20, of El Paso, Texas. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force.

Time said the available evidence did not prove the Marines deliberately killed civilians. The magazine, however, said its investigation showed that walls and ceilings in both houses were pockmarked with shrapnel and bullet holes as well as sprays of blood. The video did not show any bullet holes on the outside of the houses -- holes that might support the military report of a gunbattle.

I heard a report today that the soldiers first said the people were killed by a roadside bomb

Now they have changed their story to- insurgents were using these people as shields.

this does not add up

an 8 year old girl tells how they came into the house and shot her grand father as he was praying

and shot the rest of the family including
women and children (a two year old, twelfth trimester abortion?)

 

[verte76]

This doesn't make us look good, to say the least. This is getting old.

 

[deep]

hi verte76


i guess everyone just accepts that the U. S. is committing War Crimes

and is indifferent to murdering children

US troops investigated over Iraqi massacres
By Patrick Cockburn in Arbil
Published: 22 March 2006

The US military is investigating two incidents in which American soldiers killed at least 26 Iraqi civilians and then claimed that they were either guerrillas or had died in cross fire.

The growing evidence of retaliatory killings of unarmed Iraqi families, often including children, by US soldiers seemingly bent on punishing Iraqis after an attack, will spark comparisons with the massacre of Vietnamese villagers at My Lai in 1968.

US troops have been notorious among Iraqis for their willingness to shoot any Iraqi they see in the aftermath of an insurgent attack. But it is only now that convincing and detailed information is becoming available about the killings.

In the most recent incident, in the town of Ishaqi north of Baghdad last week, Iraqi police said that US troops had shot 11 people, including five children, in their home. The local police chief, Colonel Farouq Hussein, said that all the dead had been shot in the head, according to autopsies. "It's a clear and perfect crime," he said. In an incident in the town of Haditha in western Iraq on 19 November last year, US soldiers went on a rampage in a village after a bomb attack and killed at least 15 civilians, according to witnesses and local officials cited by Time magazine in an investigation.

The US military first claimed a roadside bomb had killed a US Marine, Miguel Tarrazas, along with 15 Iraqi civilians caught in the blast. Later, a military statement said "gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire" and in returning fire the Marines killed eight insurgents.

But after Time presented the US military with what Iraqis said had happened, an official investigation found that 15 of the civilians had been deliberately killed by US soldiers.

The bomb attack on the US Humvee took place at 7.15am. Eman Waleed, a nine-year-old child, lived in a house 150 yards from the explosion. "We heard a big noise that woke us all up," she recalled later. "Then we did what we always do when there's an explosion: my father goes in to his room with the Koran and prays the family will be spared harm."

The Marines claim they heard shots coming from the direction of Waleed's house. They burst in to the house and Eman heard shots from her father's room. They then entered the living room, where the rest of the family was gathered. She said: "I couldn't see their faces very well - only their guns sticking in to the doorway. I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny."

The US soldiers started shooting in to the corner of the room where Eman and her eight-year-old brother, Abdul Rahman, were cowering. The other adults in the room tried to protect the two children with their bodies and were all shot dead. Eman and her brother were both wounded.

"We were lying there, bleeding and it hurt so much. Afterwards some Iraqi soldiers came. They carried us in 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 it'."

The Marines' explanation is that they heard the sound of a Kalashnikov being readied to shoot and had then fired their weapons. The Marines say they were fired at from a second house, where they broke down a door, threw in a grenade and opened fire. The eight who died in the second house included the owner, his wife, the owner's sister, a two-year-old son and three young daughters.

In a third house the Marines searched four young men were shot dead. A military investigation decided these were insurgent fighters, along with four others killed in the street.

The Marines later delivered 24 bodies to a hospital in Haditha, claiming they had been killed by shrapnel from a bomb. Dr Wahid, the director of the hospital, said: "It was obvious to us there were no organs slashed by shrapnel. The bullet wounds were very apparent. Most of the victims were shot in the head and chest - from close range."

An US military investigation decided the deaths were "collateral damage". Relatives were paid $2,500 (£1,400) for each of the dead.

 

[nbcrusader]

Killing of innocent civilians is obviously wrong and the US military does take action against wrong doers.

However, the difference between a civilian and an insurgent is only a weapon in hand. As soon as an insurgent drops the weapon, it can be claimed that they are a civilian.

 

[Irvine511]

However, the difference between a civilian and an insurgent is only a weapon in hand. As soon as an insurgent drops the weapon, it can be claimed that they are a civilian.

this is indeed logically sound, and certainly the rule-of-thumb employed by the IDF.

but where has it gotten them?

 

[AliEnvy]

but where has it gotten them?

Signing $2500 cheques for dead children who were barely taller than the guns that killed them.

 

[snowbunny00774]

Killing of innocent civilians is obviously wrong and the US military does take action against wrong doers.

However, the difference between a civilian and an insurgent is only a weapon in hand. As soon as an insurgent drops the weapon, it can be claimed that they are a civilian.

I am glad the children were smart enough to drop their weapons and claim to be civilians. Luckily $2500 buys a replacement for the ones that weren't that fast.

 

[Scarletwine]

There's also this story about killing of civilians. The toddlers were shot in the head in a seeming revenge or error killing.


http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12404.htm
...
March 15 was another defining moment in America’s downward moral-spiral in Iraq. Eleven members of an Iraqi family were killed in a wanton act of slaughter executed by American occupiers. Photos taken at the scene show the lifeless bodies of young children, barely old enough to walk, lying motionless in the back of a flatbed truck while their fathers moan inconsolably at their side.

What parent can look at these photographs and not be consumed with rage?

The US military openly admits it attacked the house in Ishaqi where the incident took place. Reuters reports that, “Major Ali Ahmed of the Ishaqi police said US forces landed on the roof of the house in the early hours and shot the 11 occupants, including five children.”

“After they left the house they blew it up”, he said. “The bodies, their hands bound, had been dumped in one room before the house was destroyed,” (policeman) Hussein said. Police had found spent American issue cartridges in the rubble.” (Reuters)

The autopsy report at the Tikrit hospital said, “All the victims had gunshot wounds to the head”.

Iraqi policeman Farouq Hussein noted, “It is a clear and perfect crime without any doubt”.

The evidence provided by Reuters suggests that we have entered the “My Lai phase” of the Iraq war, where the pretensions about democracy and liberation are stripped-away and replaced with the gratuitous butchery of women and children. The carnage in Ishaqi illustrates the growing recklessness and desperation of Washington’s failed crusade.

Military spokesman Major Tim O’ Keefe justified the attack saying they were searching for “a foreign fighter facilitator” for Al Qaida in Iraq. He added, “Troops were engaged by enemy fire as they approached the building. Coalition Forces returned fire utilizing both air and ground assets….Two women and one child were killed. The building was destroyed.”

In fact, 11 women and children were killed and there’s no evidence to verify that the house was being used as an Al Qaida safe-house.

The US military made similar claims after bombing raids in January and December when a total of 17 family members were killed.

The grim fact is that is that the lives of Iraqi women and children are of no real consequence to US officials. As General Tommy Franks boasted, “We don’t do body counts”. The victims of American aggression are simply dismissed as collateral damage undeserving of any further acknowledgement.

The story has received scant attention in the establishment media, which prefers to highlight the stumbling oratory of our Dear Leader as he reaffirms our commitment to western “pro-life” values.

In truth, George Bush is as responsible for the deaths of those children as if he had put a gun to their heads himself and shot them one by one.

At present, we have no way of knowing how frequently these attacks on civilians are taking place. The Pentagon strategy of removing independent journalists from the battlefield has created a news-vacuum that makes it impossible to know with confidence the extent of the casualties or the level of the devastation. The few incidents like this that find their way into the mainstream create a troubling picture of military adventurism and brutality that is no longer anchored to any identifiable moral principle or vision of resolution. It is simply violence randomly dispersed on a massive scale; traumatizing the Iraqi people and bringing the United States into greater disrepute.

There were no Al Qaida fighters in the home in Ishaqi. The attack was just another lethal blunder by a blinkered military fighting an invisible enemy.

“The killed family was not part of the resistance; they were women and children,” said Ahmed Khalaf. “The Americans promised us a better life, but we only get death.”