MATTHEWGOODONLINE

Wars are replete with confusions and contradictions. One of the most bizarrely overlooked is the ability of modern major powers, even if ultimately resigned to defeat, to never be faced with answering for their actions or truly seek swift and irrefutable justice on behalf of those that were wronged during their occupations of foreign lands.

Iraq, like Vietnam, has produced war crimes. Some have been committed by US personnel based on policy, some by soldiers gone array, and some by mercenaries based on the inability of those who employ them to apply proper oversight. In all three cases, the United States reserves the right to condemn and hold accountable others guilty of such crimes. But when the mirror is turned in on itself, the same cannot be said with vigor, or even realistic assertion.

Some time ago I was emailed and asked why I hadn’t mentioned that those charged in connection to the Haditha massacre had been acquitted. I was questioned as to whether I would be retracting my initial remarks about the incident, being that the acquittals somehow suggested to that individual that the event itself had been blown out of proportion or that what occurred that day, for all intents and purposes, didn’t.

This, at long last, is my response.

Back Stories And Precedent

During the Vietnam War, an incident took place in the small adjoining villages of My Lai and My Khe in which 347 unarmed Vietnamese civilians, most of them women and children, were massacred. Prior to their executions, many of them were either raped or tortured, with numerous bodies being mutilated afterwards.

On November 12th, 1969, Seymour Hersh broke the story of the now infamous My Lai Massacre, having interviewed Second Lieutenant William Calley who had by then been charged with several counts of premeditated murder. It should be noted that the entire incident would never have come to light had Ron Ridenhour, a soldier that had heard first hand accounts of the massacre from soldiers present that day, not sent letters to various politicians, including President Nixon. Ridenhour’s letters were sent a year after the massacre took place. The only individual that gave it serious attention was Morris Udall, then a Congressman from Arizona.

Of all those that took part in the events of March 16th, 1968, only one would ever serve time in jail. The rest, including those in command positions, would receive acquittals or be beyond prosecution because they had been discharged. Lieutenant William Calley, whom Hersh had initially interviewed for his story, was sentenced to life in prison, but two days later was released by Presidential order on the grounds of a pending appeal. Ultimately, Calley would serve just four and a half months at Fort Leavenworth.

Were the same actions confronted at war crimes tribunals following the Second World War, those guilty of them, be they German or Japanese, would have faced the gallows. But in the context of Vietnam, even though the United States would find itself ultimately defeated, those that were responsible for war crimes would only ever face an internal form of justice that was not in the practice of selling out its own. They would never face Vietnamese justice for their crimes or international justice.

The Façade

What makes Western powers immune to the judicial ramifications of their actions on both local and international scales? Interestingly, to many it is impossible to conceive of any US soldier being tried for war crimes by an international tribunal or local government in the context of a conflict such as Iraq or Afghanistan, the prevalent belief being that they’d not receive proper justice. But then, isn’t the same true when they are faced with being tried for crimes by their own government or military?

Sure, in the case of Abu Ghraib a few token scapegoats were given prison sentences to allude to the existence of transparency, but the reality remains that no military intelligence personnel or member of the Pentagon or Department of Defense were ever held accountable, let alone anyone in the administration itself. It was swept away as a tragic occurrence that had no root in policy or mismanagement when, in fact, it was steeped in both.

In the case of the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, and the murder of her family, by US troops, justice was again only handed out after the incident hit the headlines. All of those tried by the military cut deals, receiving sentences between 5 and 110 years in length. Even the soldier that received the longest sentence, Pfc. Jesse Spielman, will be eligible for parole in a decade. The supposed ringleader of the incident, having been discharged before it came to light, is being tried in a court in Kentucky where he has plead not guilty.

Were the afore mentioned crimes to have been committed during the Second World War, those responsible, as well as the command infrastructure in place, would have faced prison or the gallows.

Haditha

The reality of Haditha is that we may never know what actually occurred that day. The initial US military press release reads…

“A US marine and 15 civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb in Haditha. Immediately following the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small arms fire. Iraqi army soldiers and marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another.

Interestingly, no civilians were killed that day by an IED explosion, as was confirmed by the wounds sustained by the victims, be it the five individuals killed in the taxi, four students and the driver, or those killed in four nearby houses that were stormed by US troops.

Video taken by Taher Thabet, the founder of the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, shows women and children with bullet holes in them, which is consistent with reports made by the director of the local hospital. In fact, the wounds of those killed were inconsistent with shrapnel wounds which would have been present had an IED been the cause of death.

At this point one has to ask the question – is this the result of immense internal confusion or something altogether different? If the official press release stated that 15 civilians were killed by an IED explosion, but that it was later discovered that the majority of those killed were found in houses and had wounds completely inconsistent with the affects of such an explosion, then how was that initial conclusion drawn? To me, this one element renders the validity of everything that came afterwards suspect.

In a 2006 report written by Major General Eldon Bargewell regarding the incident, Bargewell included the following…

“Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get ‘the job done’ no matter what it takes. These comments had the potential to desensitize the Marines to concern for the Iraqi populace and portray them all as the enemy even if they are noncombatants.”

To me, such a conclusion speaks volumes, and it is certainly backed up by the testimony of Sergeant Sanick P. Dela Cruz, who was granted immunity in exchange for his testimony.

Dela Cruz asserted that he watched Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich shoot five Iraqis that were attempting to surrender, that both of them had fired into the bodies after they were dead, and that Dela Cruz then relieved himself on one of the corpses. This was, of course, after Lieutenant William Kallop, who ordered the assault on the four houses, testified that the rules of engagement were followed that day and that nothing suspect occurred.

Added to this convolution is the testimony of Major Dana Hyatt. Hyatt testified that eight of those killed that day were insurgents, four of whom were in the taxi, with the remaining four being killed in a single house. The problem, of course, is that nineteen of those killed that day were killed in three other adjacent houses and included women and children.

Of those killed in the taxi, four were students from the Technical Institute in Saqlawiyah – Mohammed Mahmoud, Akram Flayeh, Khalid al-Zawi, and Wajdi al-Zawi. Ahmed Khidher, the fifth victim, was the taxi driver.

Of the houses, only one contained four men, all of them brothers – Jamal, Chasib, Marwan, and Qahtan Ahmed. The other residences were occupied by civilians as young as one and as old as seventy-six. Between you and me, I honestly can’t remember the last time that I saw an infant fire a weapon, but maybe things are different in Iraq. In this case that logic would also apply to a three year old, a four year old, two five year olds, and two eight year olds.

The fact that the various charges brought against those involved have been dropped does not come as a surprise to me. What does is this…

The incident took place on November 19th, 2005. The official military press release, which claimed that 15 people had been killed by an explosion produced by an IED, was released the next day. Since then, the evidence has shown that that press release was entirely inaccurate and wholly based on a Marine Corps communiqué, which was issued the day of the massacre. On March 19th, 2006, the United States military confirmed that, contrary to that initial report, 15 civilians were accidentally killed due to the actions of Marines and not an IED. In the testimony that would follow in the years following the incident, there was no reiteration of the initial statement that involved the IED scenario as the chief cause of civilian deaths.

Again, I could care less who was acquitted. The question remains, how do you go from an initial ground report to a press release a day later to the uncovering that both were fraudulent without suspicion remaining ever-present?

Two things are for certain regarding what happened that day in Haditha. The military, given the convolution of events and testimony, was afforded the ability to spare their own, the damage having already been done with regards to Iraqi public perception. The second is that when an assault on a group of houses by professional soldiers results in the deaths of infants and old ladies, and it is claimed by those that commanded it that it was done ‘by the book’, then the time has come to question whose book it is and who it does, and does not, apply to.

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