MATTHEWGOODONLINE

When it comes to war crimes, especially those committed under heightened emotional circumstances, it is utterly impossible for the military of a nation that refuses to adhere to the authority of the International Criminal Court to try their own. But that is precisely what has happened with regards to the Marines involved in the massacre in Haditha in 2005.

As of yesterday, all but two Marines have been cleared of all charges against them concerning the incident. Some point to that as vindication. I, on the other hand, do not, especially given the fact that numerous Iraqi witnesses weren’t even heard from. Why would they be? After all, they’re not ‘credible’ – they’re Iraqis.

You see; you can set a country ‘free’, but viewing its citizens as anything but beneath you is simply out of the question.

So, yesterday, Lt Andrew Grayson, who had been charged with obstruction of justice and making false statements in the aftermath of the incident, walked. The crowd in attendance at the trial at Camp Pendleton cheered when the verdict of Grayson’s acquittal was read. One probably can’t say the same for those in Haditha whose voices weren’t even heard.

For many, what occurred that day is most likely nothing more than a vague media memory now. Since I started writing about the incident several Marines have contacted me and admonished me for my views, claiming that the acquittal of those involved proves that no wrongdoing occurred. My response is always the same – those innocents that died that day will see no justice, nor will the testimonies of those Iraqis that witnessed what happened ever be taken seriously. Given that, how can true justice prevail?

The rule of law? What rule of law? The United States military, and those contractors in the employ of the Pentagon and State Department, have absolutely no right to even utter that phrase when they, themselves, cannot be held accountable for their actions under Iraqi law. The United States has not brought the rule of law to Iraq; it has brought nothing more than hypocritical contradiction.

It comes down to a simple position – do you believe that the Marine Corps can try its own impartially given the already inflammatory state of the war with regards to US domestic perceptions?

My answer? Absolutely not.

On this side of the ocean the incident has been largely forgotten. As for what Iraqis think, what does that ultimately matter? The United States hasn’t taken the disposition of the Iraqi people seriously for some time now, if ever. The Pentagon does not, nor have they ever, even attempted to keep a record of Iraqi civilian casualties. For all intents and purposes they got away with Abu Ghraib. Blackwater, shielded by the protections of the State Department, got away with the Nisour Square massacre. And God knows how many other criminal events have gone unchecked since 2003?

Sure, there have been a few incidents that have led to serious repercussions, such as the rape and murder of a 14 year old girl and her family in 2006 in Mahmoudiya. Due to the extreme nature of that incident, it being the premeditated rape of a minor, severe punishments were handed out. But the same cannot be said of the rapes that took place at Abu Ghraib, nor have those that have first hand knowledge of them ever been taken seriously.

You can throw a few soldiers to the wolves here and there in an attempt to achieve the perception of judicial transparency, but the fact remains that the rule of law is not something that the United States is all that interested in as it applies to the conduct of its personnel in Iraq. In fact, they opted out of the ICC for that very reason.

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.

It will never happen. It doesn’t matter if they’re private contractors or not, they’re still Americans, and that carries more weight than the deliverance of justice, even in a country to which the rule of law was supposedly delivered…

“Iraqi authorities want the U.S. government to sever all contracts in Iraq with Blackwater USA within six months. They also want the firm to pay $8 million in compensation to families of each of the 17 people killed when its guards sprayed a traffic circle with heavy machine gun fire last month.

The demands - part of an Iraqi government report examined by The Associated Press - also called on U.S. authorities to hand over the Blackwater security agents involved in the Sept. 16 shootings to face possible trial in Iraqi courts.

The tone of the Iraqi report appears to signal further strains between the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the White House over the deaths in Nisoor Square - which have prompted a series of U.S. and Iraqi probes and raised questions over the use of private security contractors to guard U.S. diplomats and other officials.”

Deep pockets the US certainly has, and I am certain that financial reparations will be made by the State Department – which ultimately means that US taxpayers will flip the bill for Blackwater’s actions that day. But they’ll not be tried in any Iraqi court, of that I can assure you. Nor will the State Department sever ties with Blackwater until an investigation is completed that clears the State Department of any complicity with regards to the actions of Blackwater during their time in Iraq. To sever ties, which would see Blackwater lose its largest contracts, as The Pentagon would certainly have to follow suit, would be to risk the divulgence of any impugning information that Blackwater might have with regards to State Department or Pentagon complicity. At the very least, it would result in a civil law suit against the government for contractual breach, which would also result in the divulgence of information.

Seeking Haditha Reference Materials

I was recently contacted by a US Marine that pointed out that those tried for murder in connection with the Haditha massacre have all be cleared of wrong doing. I, personally, have not come across anything about this, though having been on tour I must admit that my daily access to information is limited. I do not doubt the Marine’s email whatsoever, but I would appreciate it if readers could email me as many different articles concerning this matter as possible. I would very much appreciate it.

Today the President of the United States defended, once again, the war that he, and others, engineered. He spouted the usual nonsense, that to not defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq, which is to say Salafi Jihadis, would result in “surrendering Iraq’s future to al-Qaeda”. Of course, as has been noted by a variety of scholars and regional experts, were the United States to abandon Iraq tomorrow, Salafi Jihadi forces would be the first to be dealt with, and with severe measures. What Mr. Bush doesn’t mention is where the influx of foreign fighters in Iraq stems from. He dare not mention the fact that Saudis compromise a significant number of those foreign fighters currently in Iraq, not to mention Jordanians. That would be singling out nations with which the United States has relations, despite the fact that, in the case of Saudi Arabia, it is a nation that fits the model of a state that the United States has declared “unacceptable” with regards to their desire to spread freedom throughout the world.

Instead, and not surprisingly, the President focused on others…

“President Bush also singled out Iran, Syria and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, accusing them of fomenting violence in Iraq.

Iran, he said, was supplying improvised explosive devices to militants there; Hezbollah was training militants to attack coalition forces in Iraq; and Syria was providing a route for suicide bombers heading for the country.”

If you go back in my del.icio.us archives you’ll find articles replete with contradictory information about Iranian involvement in Iraq. Everything from them allying themselves with Sunni insurgents to Salafi Jihadis to the Mahdi Army. At one point, not too long ago, US officials in Baghdad claimed that Iran was planning to support a summer offensive against occupational forces by arming a variety of different groups, claims that were later challenged, and ones that were linked with a US propaganda campaign aimed at Iran.

The reality is, George Bush has disposed of those that have attempted to warn him, or at least tell him the truth, about what is actually transpiring in Iraq. The ‘surge’ has done nothing but produce more US casualties – in fact, more over the last few months than at any point in the war – and more Iraqi civilian casualties. It has placed the Iraqi government in an even more tenuous position, as have US pressures to do with Iraqi oil legislation, and has helped empower Islamic extremists. US intelligence recently claimed that extremist groups are stronger now than they were prior to 9/11, a claim that the President also denies. Because as we all know, he has far more knowledge of such matters than his own intelligence community. Perhaps, given the ‘bogus’ information that he was fed by them prior to the invasion he simply doesn’t trust them anymore. Then again, maybe the yes men that helped fix post war intelligence around policy are all out of creative ideas.

‘A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi… You know, so what?’

Meanwhile, Leonard Doyle provides some morning reading that might make eating breakfast not the wisest of decisions…

“It is an axiom of American political life that the actions of the US military are beyond criticism. Democrats and Republicans praise the men and women in uniform at every turn. Apart from the odd bad apple at Abu Ghraib, the US military in Iraq is deemed to be doing a heroic job under trying circumstances.

That perception will take a severe knock today with the publication in The Nation magazine of a series of in-depth interviews with 50 combat veterans of the Iraq war from across the US. In the interviews, veterans have described acts of violence in which US forces have abused or killed Iraqi men, women and children with impunity.

The report steers clear of widely reported atrocities, such as the massacre in Haditha in 2005, but instead unearths a pattern of human rights abuses. “It’s not individual atrocity,” Specialist Garett Reppenhagen, a sniper from the 263rd Armour Battalion, said. “It’s the fact that the entire war is an atrocity.”

A number of the troops have returned home bearing mental and physical scars from fighting a war in an environment in which the insurgents are supported by the population. Many of those interviewed have come to oppose the US military presence in Iraq, joining the groundswell of public opinion across the US that views the war as futile.

This view is echoed in Washington, where increasing numbers of Democrats and Republicans are openly calling for an early withdrawal from Iraq. And the Iraq quagmire has pushed President George Bush’s poll ratings to an all-time low.

Journalists and human rights groups have published numerous reports drawing attention to the killing of Iraqi civilians by US forces. The Nation’s investigation presents for the first time named military witnesses who back those assertions. Some participated themselves.

Through a combination of gung-ho recklessness and criminal behaviour born of panic, a narrative emerges of an army that frequently commits acts of cold-blooded violence. A number of interviewees revealed that the military will attempt to frame innocent bystanders as insurgents, often after panicked American troops have fired into groups of unarmed Iraqis. The veterans said the troops involved would round up any survivors and accuse them of being in the resistance while planting Kalashnikov AK47 rifles beside corpses to make it appear that they had died in combat.

“It would always be an AK because they have so many of these lying around,” said Joe Hatcher, 26, a scout with the 4th Calvary Regiment. He revealed the army also planted 9mm handguns and shovels to make it look like the civilians were shot while digging a hole for a roadside bomb.

“Every good cop carries a throwaway,” Hatcher said of weapons planted on innocent victims in incidents that occurred while he was stationed between Tikrit and Samarra, from February 2004 to March 2005. Any survivors were sent to jail for interrogation.

There were also deaths caused by the reckless behaviour of military convoys. Sgt Kelly Dougherty of the Colorado National Guard described a hit-and-run in which a military convoy ran over a 10-year-old boy and his three donkeys, killing them all. “Judging by the skid marks, they hardly even slowed down. But, I mean… your order is that you never stop.”

The worst abuses seem to have been during raids on private homes when soldiers were hunting insurgents. Thousands of such raids have taken place, usually at dead of night. The veterans point out that most are futile and serve only to terrify the civilians, while generating sympathy for the resistance.

Sgt John Bruhns, 29, of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Armoured Division, described a typical raid. “You want to catch them off guard,” he explained. “You want to catch them in their sleep … You grab the man of the house. You rip him out of bed in front of his wife. You put him up against the wall… Then you go into a room and you tear the room to shreds. You’ll ask ‘Do you have any weapons? Do you have any anti-US propaganda?’

“Normally they’ll say no, because that’s normally the truth,” Sgt Bruhns said. “So you’ll take his sofa cushions and dump them. You’ll open up his closet and you’ll throw all the clothes on the floor and basically leave his house looking like a hurricane just hit it.” And at the end, if the soldiers don’t find anything, they depart with a “Sorry to disturb you. Have a nice evening”.

Sgt Dougherty described her squad leader shooting an Iraqi civilian in the back in 2003. “The mentality of my squad leader was like, ‘Oh, we have to kill them over here so I don’t have to kill them back in Colorado’,” she said. “He just seemed to view every Iraqi as a potential terrorist.”

‘It would always happen. We always got the wrong house…’

“People would make jokes about it, even before we’d go into a raid, like, ‘Oh fuck, we’re gonna get the wrong house’. Cause it would always happen. We always got the wrong house.”

Sergeant Jesus Bocanegra, 25, of Weslaco, Texas 4th Infantry Division. In Tikrit on year-long tour that began in March 2003

“I had to go tell this woman that her husband was actually dead. We gave her money, we gave her, like, 10 crates of water, we gave the kids, I remember, maybe it was soccer balls and toys. We just didn’t really know what else to do.”

Lieutenant Jonathan Morgenstein, 35, of Arlington, Virginia, Marine Corps civil affairs unit. In Ramadi from August 2004 to March 2005

“We were approaching this one house… and we’re approaching, and they had a family dog. And it was barking ferociously, cause it’s doing its job. And my squad leader, just out of nowhere, just shoots it… So I see this dog - I’m a huge animal lover… this dog has, like, these eyes on it and he’s running around spraying blood all over the place. And like, you know, what the hell is going on? The family is sitting right there, with three little children and a mom and a dad, horrified. And I’m at a loss for words.”

Specialist Philip Chrystal, 23, of Reno, 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry Brigade. In Kirkuk and Hawija on 11-month tour beginning November 2004

“I’ll tell you the point where I really turned… [there was] this little, you know, pudgy little two-year-old child with the cute little pudgy legs and she has a bullet through her leg… An IED [improvised explosive device] went off, the gun-happy soldiers just started shooting anywhere and the baby got hit. And this baby looked at me… like asking me why. You know, ‘Why do I have a bullet in my leg?’… I was just like, ‘This is, this is it. This is ridiculous’.”

Specialist Michael Harmon, 24, of Brooklyn, 167th Armour Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. In Al-Rashidiya on 13-month tour beginning in April 2003

“I open a bag and I’m trying to get bandages out and the guys in the guard tower are yelling at me, ‘Get that fuck haji out of here,’… our doctor rolls up in an ambulance and from 30 to 40 meters away looks out and says, shakes his head and says, ‘You know, he looks fine, he’s gonna be all right,’ and walks back… kind of like, ‘Get your ass over here and drive me back up to the clinic’. So I’m standing there, and the whole time both this doctor and the guards are yelling at me, you know, to get rid of this guy.”

Specialist Patrick Resta, 29, from Philadelphia, 252nd Armour, 1st Infantry Division. In Jalula for nine months beginning March 2004

‘Every person opened fire on this kid, using the biggest weapons we could find…’

“Here’s some guy, some 14-year-old kid with an AK47, decides he’s going to start shooting at this convoy. It was the most obscene thing you’ve ever seen. Every person got out and opened fire on this kid. Using the biggest weapons we could find, we ripped him to shreds…”

Sergeant Patrick Campbell, 29, of Camarillo, California, 256th Infantry Brigade. In Abu Gharth for 11 months beginning November 2004

“Cover your own butt was the first rule of engagement. Someone could look at me the wrong way and I could claim my safety was in threat.”

Lieutenant Brady Van Engelen, 26, of Washington DC, 1st Armoured Division. Eight-month tour of Baghdad beginning Sept 2003

“I guess while I was there, the general attitude was, ‘A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi… You know, so what?’… [Only when we got home] in… meeting other veterans, it seems like the guilt really takes place, takes root, then.”

Specialist Jeff Englehart, 26, of Grand Junction, Colorado, 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry. In Baquba for a year beginning February 2004

“[The photo] was very graphic… They open the body bags of these prisoners that were shot in the head and [one soldier has] got a spoon. He’s reaching in to scoop out some of his brain, looking at the camera and smiling.”

Specialist Aidan Delgado, 25, of Sarasota, Florida, 320th Military Police Company. Deployed to Talil air base for one year beginning April 2003

“The car was approaching what was in my opinion a very poorly marked checkpoint… and probably didn’t even see the soldiers… The guys got spooked and decided it was a possible threat, so they shot up the car. And they [the bodies] literally sat in the car for the next three days while we drove by them.

Sergeant Dustin Flatt, 33, of Denver, 18th Infantry Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. One-year from February 2004

“The frustration that resulted from our inability to get back at those who were attacking us led to tactics that seemed designed simply to punish the local population…”

Sergeant Camilo Mejía, 31, from Miami, National Guardsman, 1-124 Infantry Battalion, 53rd Infantry Brigade. Six-month tour beginning April 2003

“I just remember thinking, ‘I just brought terror to someone under the American flag’.”

Sergeant Timothy John Westphal, 31, of Denver, 18th Infantry Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. In Tikrit on year-long tour beginning February 2004

“A lot of guys really supported that whole concept that if they don’t speak English and they have darker skin, they’re not as human as us, so we can do what we want.”

Specialist Josh Middleton, 23, of New York City, 2nd Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division. Four-month tour in Baghdad and Mosul beginning December 2004

“I felt like there was this enormous reduction in my compassion for people. The only thing that wound up mattering is myself and the guys that I was with, and everybody else be damned.”

Sergeant Ben Flanders, 28, National Guardsman from Concord, New Hampshire, 172nd Mountain Infantry. In Balad for 11 months beginning March 2004”

Some disturbing new news regarding the Haditha massacre. From The Los Angles Times…

“A staff sergeant testified Thursday that he was ordered to destroy grisly pictures of women and children killed by Marines so that the images would not be part of a statement being prepared for an investigative officer and a magazine reporter.

The testimony by Staff Sgt. Justin Laughner, taken under a grant of immunity, is the first evidence suggesting that any Marine officer may have engaged in a coverup in the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians in 2005.

Other testimony has suggested that officers made only a superficial review before deciding that the deaths were combat-related and thus no war crimes investigation was required.

At the Article 32 inquiry, similar to a preliminary hearing, for a former battalion commander, Laughner testified hat he felt the order to destroy the pictures, which he said was given by Lt. Andrew Grayson, amounted to obstruction of justice but that he complied and later lied when asked whether any pictures had been taken.

“It was wrong,” Laughner said. “Somebody was asking for them [the pictures], and we’re not going to give them to them? It’s not right, but I didn’t say anything.”

Although Laughner deleted the pictures from his computer, the images remained on his digital camera and are now part of the criminal case against four officers and three enlisted Marines.

Although Laughner deleted the pictures from his computer, the images remained on his digital camera and are now part of the criminal case against four officers and three enlisted Marines.

Grayson is charged with dereliction of duty and obstruction of justice in the aftermath of the killings, which occurred in the Iraqi town of Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005. The three other officers — including the former commander of the Marine battalion involved, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani — are charged with dereliction of duty for not calling for a war-crimes investigation.

At the inquiry on Chessani’s conduct, Laughner said that he had no evidence the lieutenant colonel ever saw the photographs or knew of their existence.

Laughner had taken the pictures in the hours after the killings.

Three months later, when he and Grayson were preparing a statement for high-ranking officers and a Time magazine reporter, Grayson told him to delete the pictures, Laughner testified Thursday.

The statement they prepared reiterated the Marines’ official position that the deaths were the result of crossfire after Marines were attacked by insurgents. Laughner and Grayson were part of an intelligence team assigned to work with the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, in Haditha.

Team members interview civilians and, among other things, review the scene of civilian deaths to gather information that can be helpful to Marines.

Laughner arrived several hours after a roadside bomb had killed a Marine from the battalion’s Kilo Company. After that blast, Marines killed five young men outside their car and, after being ordered to search for insurgents in nearby houses, killed 19 civilians. Laughner testified that Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, who led the troops involved in the shootings, told him that the men in the car had “engaged” the Marines with weapons, that Marines encountered an insurgent firing at them in one house, and that AK-47s were found in the houses. Prosecutors say all three assertions are lies.”

While the USS Chafee is shelling the Somali coast, reports of more civilian deaths at the hands of NATO forces in Afghanistan are surfacing, and US Marine Major General Richard Huck has testified that all his superiors, including Gen. George W. Casey Jr. knew about the massacre in Haditha within hours of it happening - General Sir Michael Rose, the UK’s former Army Commander, has called for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, stating that he believes that there is no way the war can be won…

“There is no way we are going to win the war and (we should) withdraw and accept defeat because we are going to lose on a more important level if we don’t,” he said.

Though the coalition could not simply “cut and run,” Rose said announcing a withdrawal date would help to dampen down the violence between Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions.

“Give them a date and it is amazing how people and political parties will stop fighting each other and start working towards a peaceful transfer of power,” he said.

Rose was speaking at the annual Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts in Hay-on-Wye, on the Welsh border with England.

The retired general who has written a book on the American War of Independence, made comparisons with the 1775-1783 conflict between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies.

He said: “How was it a small and extremely determined body of insurgents, thieves and deserters could inflict such a strategic and potentially disastrous defeat on the most powerful nation in the world?

“The answer will be familiar to anybody who is looking at what is happening in Iraq today.”

Yesterday saw the deaths of 114 Iraqis, 3 GI’s, with some 87 Iraqis wounded besides. As it was for US forces, last month was also extremely costly for Iraqis (more so than their occupiers, of course). Texas’ Star-Telegram has more.

G8 Protest Turns Violent, Again

Leave it to a handful of extremists to tarnish the largely peaceful protest being held at the anti-globalization summit in Rostock, Germany. Because as we’re all aware, lighting cars on fire and peeling up paving stones to hurl at the police is a sure fire way to get things accomplished.