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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 19, 2006
Contact: Hany Khalil (718) 637-7351 mobile, hanykhalil [at] igc.org

Haditha Massacre Is Iraq's Mai Lai
Atrocities Just Tip of the Iceberg

19 May 2006, New York, New York--Appearing on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on
Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.) confirmed that, in an incident occurring in
Haditha, Iraq, last November, Marines killed 23 Iraqi civilians, including women and
children, "in cold blood" as revenge for the death of a Marine from an IED. Asked by
Matthews, whether by "in cold blood" he meant that the killings were like those in
the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, Murtha said they were. Military sources
consulted by other media outlets have confirmed those claims.

At a press conference on Thursday, May 18, Congressperson John Murtha (D-OH) said,
"It's much worse than reported in Time magazine. There was no firefight. There was
no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the
pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood. And that's what
the report is going to tell."

"The massacre of up to 500 Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai was the tip
of an iceberg of atrocities," said Rahul Mahajan, a United for Peace and Justice
(UFPJ) spokesperson. "The same is true of the Haditha massacre. Although it is the
largest documented example of the deliberate mass murder of civilians (there are
smaller ones), it joins a series of actions that, while short of this degree of
cold-blooded brutality, involve neglect and indifference so pervasive and deep that
it amounts to depraved indifference to Iraqi life."

Reports of the massacre include shooting people and leaving them to bleed to death
on house raids, checkpoint killings, and indiscriminate return fire in crowded
civilian neighborhoods.

Larger-scale offensives like the two assaults on Fallujah in 2004 and, to a lesser
extent, operations in Tall Afar and other northern cities last summer and fall also
caused massive civilian fatalities. In the April 2004 assault on Fallujah, the
lesser of the two, it is estimated that 1,000 people were killed, at least 600 of
whom were civilians.

The Marines involved in the Haditha massacre originally tried to cover it up,
claiming that the unarmed men they killed were insurgents and that the women and
children killed were "collateral damage." Those claims were only challenged because
they were contradicted by video evidence (of the corpses in the morgue). This raises
serious questions about how often incidents like this occur and are successfully
covered up.

According to British officers serving in Iraq, most recently Brigadier Nigel
Aylwin-Foster in an article in Military Review, U.S. troops show a widespread
pattern of institutionalized racism toward Iraqis. This is part of the explanation
of the atrocity. On top of that, the Iraq occupation, like the Vietnam War,
repeatedly leads to "atrocity-producing situations," where crimes like the Haditha
or My Lai massacres become almost inevitable. Marines who are guilty of murder
should be severely punished, but the policy-makers should not be let off the hook.
As long as the occupation continues, crimes like the Haditha massacre will as well.

United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is the largest U.S. peace and justice coalition
with more than 1,400 member groups under its umbrella. Since its founding in October
2002, UFPJ has spurred hundreds of protests and rallies around the country,
including the two largest marches against the Iraq war on February 15, 2003, and
August 29, 2004, during the Republican National Convention.
http://www.unitedforpeace.org

For more information or to arrange interviews with UFPJ spokespeople, contact Hany
Khalil, 718-637-7351.

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