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Videotape Forces Pentagon to Investigate Claims U.S. Marines Shot Dead 15 Iraqi Civilians

by Democracy Now (reposted)
The U.S. military is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations that marines shot and killed 15 civilians, including seven women and three children, in the Iraqi town of Haditha last November in an apparent act of revenge for the death of a U.S. soldier by a roadside bomb. A videotape obtained by Time Magazine shows that many of the victims were still in their nightclothes when they died. We speak with the Time reporter who broke the story.
The U.S. military is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations that marines shot and killed 15 civilians, including seven women and three children, four months ago in Iraq.

The killings occurred early on the morning of November 19th, after a roadside bomb struck a Humvee carrying US troops in the western Iraqi town of Haditha. The bomb killed one marine and injured two others.

The next day, the Marines said in a statement that 15 Iraqi civilians died in the initial blast. They said that after the explosion, gunmen attacked the US convoy with small arms fire, prompting the Marines to return fire, killing eight insurgents.

But relatives, survivors and doctors who saw the bodies say that is not true. They say the 15 men, women and children were killed when marines burst into their houses after the blast and shot them dead in their nightclothes.

Human rights activists say that if the accusations prove to be true, the incident would rank as the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by US service members since the war began.

Soon after the incident, the mayor of Haditha led an angry delegation up to a nearby Marine camp to seek redress. Their protests were ignored and the US military stood by its original contention, that the civilians were killed by a roadside bomb. The story would have ended there had it not been taken up by Time magazine.

Time obtained a videotape shot in Haditha by an Iraqi journalism student one day after the incident. The tape shows that many of the victims, especially the women and children, were still in their nightclothes when they died. The scenes from inside the houses show that the walls and ceilings are pockmarked with shrapnel, bullet holes and blood.

In January, Time presented a copy of the video along with witness testimony to US military command in Baghdad. A preliminary military investigation was launched. It established that the men, women and children were indeed killed by the marines, though it described the deaths as "collateral damage." Now the case has been referred for criminal investigation by the Navy to establish whether the 12 marines involved were guilty of misconduct.

We are joined by one the reporters for Time magazine who broke the story. Aparisim Ghosh is the chief international correspondent for Time magazine. He has spent the last three and half years in Iraq. He joins us in our firehouse studio.

We called the Pentagon and invited them on the program. Pentagon spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable declined to join us saying it would be "inappropriate" to comment while an investigation is underway.

* Aparisim Ghosh, chief international correspondent for Time magazine.

LISTEN ONLINE:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/21/1418210

Read Time's story "One Morning in Haditha"
http://www.time.com/time/world/printout/0,8816,1174649,00.html
§Killing women and children: the ‘My Lai phase’ of the Iraq war
by SF Bay View (reposted)
Ishaqi, Iraq – What goes through George Bush’s mind when he sees the dead bodies of Iraqi women and children loaded on the back of a pickup truck like garbage? Is there ever a flicker of remorse, a split-second when he fully grasps the magnitude of the horror he has created?

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, one only 7 months old, 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 U.S. military openly admits it attacked the house in Ishaqi where the incident took place. Reuters reports, “Major Ali Ahmed of the Ishaqi police said U.S. 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,” according to Reuters.

“’The bodies, their hands bound, had been dumped in one room before the house was destroyed,’ (Iraqi police Col. Farouq) Hussein said. Police had found spent American issue cartridges in the rubble.”



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

Col. 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 Maj. 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 U.S. 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 the lives of Iraqi women and children are of no real consequence to U.S. officials. As Gen. 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.”

This story was previously published by Information Clearing House at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12404.htm, where there are many more photos. Mike Whitney, who lives in Washington state, can be reached at fergiewhitney [at] msn.com.

http://sfbayview.com/032206/killingwomen032206.shtml
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