The Daily Background

As you might have noticed, there’s one particular major news story that I haven’t been talking about recently. Yes, I’m talking about the Haditha Massacre.

In case you haven’t heard about the story, and have been living on Mars for the last few days (by the way, if you actually are on Mars, give the Bush family a call, I’m sure they’d be very interested), this story is about an apparent massacre committed by U.S. Marines late last year that was allegedly covered up by the military. I’ve been holding off writing about it because I was hoping there would be some official word on the final report which has yet to be released, but at this point I might as well just write about it.

Decorated war hero/ 37 year veteran/ former U.S. Marine/ Retired Colonel/conservative House Democrat John Murtha (who is an individual hated consistently among Republican pundits) has been very outspoken on this issue, and has worked to raise awareness and bring it near to the center of attention these past couple of days.

My guess as to why he is so frequently attacked by the right-wing (despite his extremely honorable service record, and traditionally socially conservative stance on several issues), is that he represents a real threat to the idea which is propelled by Republicans that Democrats are weak on the military or are somehow less patriotic than conservatives.

In any case, here’s the story in a nutshell. Back on the 19th of November 2005, an IED (improvised explosive device– a roadside bomb) exploded near a group of U.S. Marines out on patrol, killing one of the men. The surviving Marines did not call for medical help and instead apparently ended up killing no less than 24 Iraqi men, women, and children who were nearby– though unrelated and unarmed. The Pentagon claimed that the civilians were killed by the IED blast initially, and seems to have covered up the incident, or at least tried to.

In March of this year, TIME Magazine broke the story of the massacre, and prompted a new investigation of the incident by the military. The Iraqi government is taking the incident very seriously and is also planning to look into the incident. The U.S. Senate will take up the issue as well.

The report is almost complete now, and congressman John Murtha has been told by military commanders from the Pentagon that it will conclude that two dozen civilians were killed in cold blood by American troops. The question now, Murtha says, is who covered the incident up, and why? (Murtha asked on ABC’s This Week “Who covered it up, why did they cover it up, why did they wait so long? We don’t know how far it goes. It goes right up the chain of command.”)

The Congressman who has perhaps the closest ties with military commanders as anyone in either the House or the Senate says that he has reason to believe that the coverup was arranged very high up, rank wise. The President for his part learned of the massacre from TIME, according to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow.

He notes that families of the Iraqis were paid to stay quiet or as compensation for their loss by the American military– something that needs to be authorized at a high level after a full investigation and conclusion of wrongdoing has been done. Now, the initial investigation concluded that the Marines had done nothing wrong, so why would the families be compensated for wrongful death? There had to have been a coverup.

Marines who were sent to clean up the incident (not coverup, but literally clean up the blood and bodies) have suffered severe trauma from seeing the gruesome fatalities which were comprised of unarmed women and children. One Marine who was involved in the cleanup described the process of moving a child who was shot in the head “I held her out like this, but her head was bobbing up and down and the insides fell on my legs.”

As for the impacts of this incident– it’s difficult to gauge exactly at this point, largely due to the fact that the official report has not been released yet (although its contents are all but certain, based on the accounts of congressmen who have been briefed already, including Murtha, and senior level Pentagon officials).

Murtha for his part has said that when news of the incident will be more negative to U.S. image abroad than the infamous Abu Ghraib torture scandal, and says the situation is analogous to the My Lai Massacre of the Vietnam War (although the numbers are of course significantly less than the Vietnam incident, which was also covered up initially by the military– incidentally by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was in the armed forces at the time). Human rights advocates have also compared the massacre to My Lai.

According to CNN, some lawmakers “have been told to brace for the fallout from potential charges of murder and cover-up.” I understand that some of the Marines involved could be facing charges of first degree murder, which is punishable by execution as you know. Of course, the cold blooded killing of unarmed civillians in conflict is considered a war crime under the Geneva Convention.

I’ll of course be covering this story as it develops, and we should expect to hear a great deal more about this in the coming days, weeks, and months. This is a very, very big story. By the way, firstly Wikipedia has a Haditha Massacre article about the story (which is constantly being updated as the story develops), and secondly YouTube has a video of a young girl (whose family was killed by Marines) interviewed by ITV about the incident, which she witnessed.

Filed under: Iraq Related, Z-TDB Blog