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By Charles Bird Posted in War — Comments (18) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

In an attempt to get up to speed on Haditha, I looked through a number of links to find out what witnesses said and to offer some commentary. Unlike John Murtha, I haven’t judged those Marines guilty because I’d rather wait until the NCIS finishes its investigation. But in the meantime, the following is what I was able to dredge up. It still clocks in at over 9,000 words but there’s still a lot we don’t know.

Lieutenant Colonel Michelle Martin-Hing
Tim McGirk, Time, 3-19-2006:

Lieut. Colonel Michelle Martin-Hing, spokeswoman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq, told Time the involvement of the NCIS does not mean that a crime occurred. And she says the fault for the civilian deaths lies squarely with the insurgents, who "placed noncombatants in the line of fire as the Marines responded to defend themselves."

Comment: That’s what we’d like to find out.

Eman Waleed
Tim McGirk, Time, 3-19-2006:

Eman Waleed, 9, lived in a house 150 yards from the site of the blast, which was strong enough to shatter all the windows in her home. "We heard a big noise that woke us all up," she recalls two months later. "Then we did what we always do when there's an explosion: my father goes into his room with the Koran and prays that the family will be spared any harm." Eman says the rest of the family—her mother, grandfather, grandmother, two brothers, two aunts and two uncles—gathered in the living room. According to military officials familiar with the investigation, the Marines say they came under fire from the direction of the Waleed house immediately after being hit by the IED. A group of Marines headed toward the house. Eman says she "heard a lot of shooting, so none of us went outside. Besides, it was very early, and we were all wearing our nightclothes." When the Marines entered the house, they were shouting in English. "First, they went into my father's room, where he was reading the Koran," she claims, "and we heard shots." According to Eman, the Marines then entered the living room. "I couldn't see their faces very well—only their guns sticking into the doorway. I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny." She claims the troops started firing toward the corner of the room where she and her younger brother Abdul Rahman, 8, were hiding; the other adults shielded the children from the bullets but died in the process. Eman says her leg was hit by a piece of metal and Abdul Rahman was shot near his shoulder. "We were lying there, bleeding, and it hurt so much. Afterward, some Iraqi soldiers came. They carried us in their arms. I was crying, shouting 'Why did you do this to our family?' And one Iraqi soldier tells me, 'We didn't do it. The Americans did.'"

Comment: Her story is compelling. The one question that I have is whether she saw insurgents in or near her house.

Yousif Ahmed
Tim McGirk, Time, 3-19-2006:

The Marines raided a third house, which belongs to a man named Ahmed Ayed. One of Ahmed's five sons, Yousif, who lived in a house next door, told Time that after hearing a prolonged burst of gunfire from his father's house, he rushed over. Iraqi soldiers keeping watch in the garden prevented him from going in. "They told me, 'There's nothing you can do. Don't come closer, or the Americans will kill you too.' The Americans didn't let anybody into the house until 6:30 the next morning." Ayed says that by then the bodies were gone; all the dead had been zipped into U.S. body bags and taken by Marines to a local hospital morgue. "But we could tell from the blood tracks across the floor what happened," Ayed claims. "The Americans gathered my four brothers and took them inside my father's bedroom, to a closet. They killed them inside the closet."

Comment: The assertion that four men were herded into a closet and shot to death is a serious charge, and I await the results of the investigation to see if there’s more to the story.

Dr. Wahid al-Obeidi
Tim McGirk, Time, 3-19-2006:

Dr. Wahid, director of the local hospital in Haditha, who asked that his family name be withheld because, he says, he fears reprisals by U.S. troops, says the Marines brought 24 bodies to his hospital around midnight on Nov. 19. Wahid says the Marines claimed the victims had been killed by shrapnel from the roadside bomb. "But it was obvious to us that there were no organs slashed by shrapnel," Wahid says. "The bullet wounds were very apparent. Most of the victims were shot in the chest and the head--from close range."

Brussels Journal, 3-10-2005:

Dr. Walid Al-Obeidi, the director of Haditha General Hospital and Dr. Jamil Abdul Jabbar, the only surgeon in the Haditha area were arrested for a week, very badly beaten and threatened to face the same treatment in the future by the American troops.

Dr. Walid said "they arrested me in my house in front of my family, covered my eyes, and tied my hands to the back on Oct 5 2005 morning, during the last attack on Haditha (360 kilometers west of Baghdad). They occupied the hospital for 8 days and made it their office. The first day they beat me on my eyes, nose, back, hands, legs... My face was covered with blood. When they removed the tie I could not see. They investigated me until the afternoon. I realized later that I was arrested in the hospital store. Then they tied my hands to the front, and left me for two days. I was moved then to the pharmacy department. They accused me of treating terrorists, and asked for their names.

I told them that I treat patients regardless of their identity, according to my oath as a doctor; even if they were national guards (which we actually I did) or American soldiers. And any way, if I do not want to treat the insurgents, I have no choice, because they were armed and masked. I would do anything they tell to do. Few days later, one of the soldiers came in the room, did not say anything, kicked me again on my face and left".

[...]

Both doctors were threatened if they do not talk, they would receive the same treatment in the future. They were warned of passing any information of the arrest to the media. They were asked who wrote the hostile slogans against the American on the opposite wall of the hospital? What are the names of the insurgents they treated? and what are the bodies’ pictures in the hospital computer?

Dr. Walid said he does not know who wrote on the wall outside the hospital, what the names of the insurgents are, because they were masked. He explained that the dead bodies’ pictures were of unknown people whose bodies were found after the fighting. "We can not keep these bodies forever; we do not have enough cold boxes. So, after two months, we take their pictures and bury them, so that whenever some one from their families comes to ask we show the pictures of the dead bodies".

The UN, the international HR organizations, WHO, Doctors sans frontiers...and all who it may concern are called upon to do some thing to help these, and other Iraqi doctors, and to prevent similar treatment in the future. Dr.Walid and Dr. Jamil believe that they may face the arrest and beating in the future. They demand that the American troops stop occupying the hospital and destroying it every time the attack Haditha. They also believe that the Iraqi authorities are incapable of protecting them.

Comment: Dr. Walid (or Wahid?) may have taken sides in this episode but you can’t discount that he could be right. The only way to know for sure is to exhume the bodies and conduct autopsies. According to the Times of London, this appears to be taking place.

Walid Abdel Khaliq
Aparisim Ghosh, Time, 5-29-2006:

That there have been three separate enquiries suggests the U.S. military "want to get at the truth," says Walid Abdel Khaliq, the doctor of the Haditha morgue where the victims' bodies were taken.

[...]

For the most part, the residents of al-Subhani welcome the kinder, gentler face of the Marines. But they say the damage done by Terazzas's company on that November morning cannot be undone. "I was an admirer of America," says Khaliq, the morgue doctor. "When those bodies were brought here, it turned upside down my image of that country and its people." Of the Marine with whom he shared bread, Thabet says: "He spoke to me politely, and I respect him for that." But reciprocating the friendly gestures would be asking too much. "As long as they come as bearing guns, we will be reminded of what their colleagues did to our friends and family," says Thabet. "We will not forgive."

Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi
Tim McGirk, Time, 3-19-2006:

A day after the incident, a Haditha journalism student [Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi] videotaped the scene at the local morgue and at the homes where the killings had occurred. The video was obtained by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, and has been shared with TIME. The tape makes for grisly viewing. It 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 and bullet holes as well as the telltale spray of blood. But the video does not reveal the presence of any bullet holes on the outside of the houses, which may cast doubt on the Marines' contention that after the IED exploded, the Marines and the insurgents engaged in a fierce gunfight.

Sweetness & Light, 6-9-2006:

Time’s source, Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi, is not a "young man." He is not a "budding journalism student." And al-Haditha is not separate and apart from the Hammurabi Human Rights Group. Nor is he a man who wanted to remain anonymous because he feared for his safety.

Al-Haditha is 43 years old. He "created" Hammurabi 16 months ago. (Before that he worked directly under the head of Haditha’s hospital, Dr. Walid al-Obeidi, who pronounced that all the victims had been shot at close range.)

In fact, al-Haditha is one of Hammurabi’s only two members. He serves as its "Secretary General" while the only other member, Abdul-Rahman al-Mashhadani, performs as its "Chairman.")

Al-Haditha is the one and only person behind this tape. He made it. And he sat on it for four months before turning it over to Time magazine.

AP, 6-7-2006:

Al-Hadithi's account is mostly in line with other, eyewitness reports. He said he expanded his personal observations at the time with follow-up interviews of other witnesses who saw actions that he could not see from his house. He made repeated visits to the restive town to get information, he said. [Emphasis mine.]

Al-Hadithi, 42, said he had been visiting his family in Haditha in western Iraq for a Muslim holiday when he was awakened on the morning of Nov. 19 by an explosion that he later learned to be a roadside bomb that hit a U.S. convoy of four Humvees, killing one Marine.

A native of the town, al-Hadithi was an administrator in the Haditha's main hospital before he took leave to work with Hammurabi, which was set up 16 months ago.

[...]

In the second home, eight people were killed: Rsayef, his wife, her sister and five children.

"You could tell that someone was killed by the gunfire and then the wailing and screaming of women seconds after the Americans left the house," said al-Hadithi. He said the Marines stormed the house of Ayed Ahmed, the closest to al-Hadithi's own home, at about 10:30 a.m. There, he said, four brothers, all of fighting age, were ordered inside a closet and shot dead. Everyone else was spared, al-Hadithi said.

At about the same time, a man who stepped out of his nearby house to see what was happening at Ayed Ahmed's home was shot and wounded, according to al-Hadithi. Aws Fahmi, 43, was left to bleed on the street for about two hours before a female neighbor dragged him to safety, al-Hadithi told the AP.

Fahmi's family was not able to take him to a hospital until two days later, al-Hadithi said.

Although the shooting stopped, the security sweep, he said, lasted until about 4:30 p.m. and the Marines did not leave the town.

Al-Hadithi said the Marines imposed a three-day closure on Haditha. They allowed relatives to go to the hospital the day after the killings to collect the bodies and bury them following negotiations with the Americans by the head of the local council, Imad Jawad Hamza. Only close relatives took part in the funeral, said al-Hadithi.

Al-Hadithi said 14 people were detained on the day of the killings, including a woman who was soon released. Of the remaining 13, 11 have been freed and two remain in detention.

He said five men were beaten by the Marines during their security sweep.

Al-Hadithi's account is generally consistent with the sequence of events given to the AP last week by a lawyer for relatives of victims.

Some of the discrepancies in the accounts--like the number of Marines involved in the security sweep and estimates of how many of them went inside houses--could have been because they watched the day's events from different homes.

Both men watched from windows at their homes. Al-Hadithi said he had a clear view of two of the houses where killings allegedly took place. Khaled Salem Rsayef, the lawyer, said he could see the site of the roadside bomb as well as the first house stormed by the Marines.

Aparisim Ghosh, Time, 5-29-2006:

Thabet, the human rights worker, feels the same way. "These are people who didn't just kill individuals, they destroyed entire families," he says. "In Islam, the punishment for such a crime is death."

[...]

The Marines initially denied that they had killed anybody, claiming 15 Iraqis had been killed, like Terazzas, in the IED explosion. After being confronted with evidence by TIME, the military said the deaths had been an accident — a case of "collateral damage." But the victims' families and other eyewitnesses have always maintained that the Marines acted in revenge for the death of Terazzas. "You could tell they were enraged," says Thabet. "They not only killed people, they smashed furniture, tore down wall hangings, and when they took prisoners, they treated them very roughly. This was not a precise military operation."

[...]

Marines continue to patrol al-Subhani; on Hay al-Sinnani, there are convoys of Humvees practically every other day. There are occasional foot patrols. The week after the massacre [note that the editors of Time have rendered their verdict], the Marines were edgy and hostile. "They would get on top of the roofs of our houses and point their guns around," says Thabet. "They would constantly tell us, 'We know some terrorists have passed this way; where did they go?'" Gradually, the patrols returned to normal.

[...]

Two weeks ago, a Marine on foot patrol came up to Thabet's home, stopped and smiled at Thabet's two little daughters who were playing in the yard. He gave them some candy. Peering into the house, he saw Thabet's sister making fresh Iraqi bread in the oven. "Can I have some?" he asked. Thabet says the rules of Arab hospitality obliged him to invite the soldier into the yard and share his bread. As they ate, the two men made small talk — the Marine spoke some broken Arabic, and Thabet has a little English. When Thabet gave him a business card, which says he works for Hamurabi Human Rights, which produced the incriminating videotape, the Marine grew apologetic. "He told me that the men who killed my neighbors were not typical Marines," Thabet recalls. "Even among the Marines, they are known as the 'Dirty Force.' Then he said, 'For myself, I don't think killing 15 Iraqis is a fair response for the death of one Marine.'"

For the most part, the residents of al-Subhani welcome the kinder, gentler face of the Marines. But they say the damage done by Terazzas's company on that November morning cannot be undone. "I was an admirer of America," says Khaliq, the morgue doctor. "When those bodies were brought here, it turned upside down my image of that country and its people." Of the Marine with whom he shared bread, Thabet says: "He spoke to me politely, and I respect him for that." But reciprocating the friendly gestures would be asking too much. "As long as they come as bearing guns, we will be reminded of what their colleagues did to our friends and family," says Thabet. "We will not forgive."

Comment: I don’t know where "budding" came from, but he was described as a "journalism student", but from which university, who knows. Al-Hadithi may be a journalist, but he’s not an objective or unbiased one, not if he’s already convicted the Marines involved and decided what their sentences should be. I’m sure that investigators are checking al-Hadithi’s video and taking his testimony. Feldman does have a valid question: If the crime was so horrific, why did he sit on the video for four months? Or was it two months? Another question: How can we tell where al-Haditha’s personal observances end and where witnesses’ statements begin?

Al-Hadithi’s credibility as a "journalist" is a bit shaky. Why? In this AP report, al-Hadithi recounted the following:

At about the same time, a man who stepped out of his nearby house to see what was happening at Ayed Ahmed's home was shot and wounded, according to al-Hadithi. Aws Fahmi, 43, was left to bleed on the street for about two hours before a female neighbor dragged him to safety, al-Hadithi told the AP.

Fahmi's family was not able to take him to a hospital until two days later, al-Hadithi said.

Yet, according to the Washington Post, Fahmi was observing events from the comfort of his house:

Aws Fahmi, a Haditha resident who said he watched and listened from his home as Marines went from house to house killing members of three families, recalled hearing his neighbor across the street, Younis Salim Khafif, plead in English for his life and the lives of his family members. "I heard Younis speaking to the Americans, saying: 'I am a friend. I am good,' " Fahmi said. "But they killed him, and his wife and daughters."

Why didn’t Fahmi tell Ellen Knickmeyer that he was shot and left to bleed in the street for two hours? Perhaps because he wasn’t shot? Call me a skeptic, but I think I’ll lean toward Fahmi and discount al-Hadithi’s interpretation of events (hat tip to Rick Moran).

Safa Younis
Jonathan Karl, ABC News, 5-28-2006:

On the new tape shot by an Iraqi journalism student and given to ABC News by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group in Iraq, Younis, soft-spoken, with rounded cheeks and a headscarf, begins by calmly telling the interviewer, "My name is Safa Younis. I'm 12 years old."

The interviewer asks, "What did the American soldiers do when they broke into the house?"

"They knocked at the door," Younis says. "My father went to open it, they shot him dead from behind the door, and then they shot him again after they opened the door." She describes hearing the Marines go through the rest of the house, shooting and setting off a grenade before getting to the bedroom where she was with her mother and siblings.

"Then comes one American soldier and shot [at] us all," she says. "I pretended to be dead -- and he did not know about me."

Comment: The Iraqi journalism student was most likely al-Hadithi, and he gave the videotape directly to ABC News because al-Hadithi is the Hammurabi Human Rights Group.

Abdul-Rahman al-Mashhadani
AP, 6-7-2006:

Hammurabi chairman Abdul-Rahman al-Mashhadani told the AP on Tuesday that his group was investigating other violations of Iraqi civil rights by Western forces in the mainly Sunni Arab provinces of Anbar and Salaheddin to the west and north of Baghdad. He said the group also was looking into violations by Iraqi security forces, militias and tribal clans.

"We are also against terrorism," he said.

[...]

Al-Mashhadani, Hammurabi's chairman, who lectures on economics at Baghdad's al-Mustansiriyah University, said the organization was publicizing the Haditha incident to make sure it's not repeated.

"At the same time, we want the victims' families to receive a fair compensation," he said.

Ali al-Mashhadani
Clarice Feldman, American Thinker, 6-9-2006:

(a) On November 20, 2005, Reuters reported that on the previous day an IED killed a US Marine and 15 civilians in Haditha, a town known to be a center of the insurgency, a town as hostile to our forces as the better known Fallujah was. Reuters reported that "immediately after the blast, gunmen opened fire on the convoy" and US and Iraqi forces returned fire, killing 8 insurgents and wounding another in the fight. The paper further reported that "A cameraman working for Reuters in Haditha says bodies had been left lying in the street for hours after the attack." Reuters never named this cameraman but he was almost undoubtedly Ali al-Mashhadani.

(b) Ali al-Mashhadani had been imprisoned for five months before his report because of his ties to insurgents. He was subsequently placed under another 12 days in detention for being a security threat.

Tim McGirk, Time Magazine
Clarice Feldman, American Thinker, 6-9-2006:

(c) Tim McGirk of Time wrote about the incident at Haditha for the March 27 issue of the magazine. He unsuccessfully lobbied his editors to use the term "massacre" in the story. McGirk seems hardly a neutral reporter. He spent the first Thanksgiving after 9/11 in Afghanistandining with the Taliban and concluding of this celebratory meal:

Our missing colleagues finally arrive, and I leave thinking that maybe this evening wasn’t very different from the original Thanksgiving: people from two warring cultures sharing a meal together and realizing, briefly, that we’re not so different after all.

Right, Tim. We all want to enslave women, bend the world to Sharia law, behead nonbelievers and otherwise carry on the honored traditions of the Taliban. A key source for McGirk’s report that US Marines in Haditha had deliberately attacked civilians was Thaer al-Hadithi, whom McGirk inexplicably described as "a budding journalism student". He is a middle-aged man, and was subsequently described by the AP as an "Iraqi investigator."

McGirk also failed to note that Hadithi is "a member and spokesman for the Hammurabi." The chairman of Hammurabi Organization and Hadithi’s partner in publicizing the "massacre" is Abdul–Rahman al-Mashhadani. It is unknown if he is related to Ali al-Mashhadani but their names suggest a possible relationship, and it beggars belief that as Sweetness & Light notes,

"Abdel Rahman al-Mashhadani just happened to be given a video by and unnamed local. And that he then turned it over to Ali al-Mashhadani who just happens to make videos for Reuters."

Hadithi’s story is that was staying near to one of the two houses where the massacre occurred and saw it with his own eyes. According to his version of events he waited one day to videotape what had occurred, though apparently nothing prevented his doing so from the very window he "watched" it from as it took place. More troubling is why he waited months to turn the tape over to anyone.

Staff Sergeant Frank D. Wuterich via his attorney, Neal A. Puckett
Josh White, Washington Post, 6-11-2006:

Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, 26, told his attorney that several civilians were killed Nov. 19 when his squad went after insurgents who were firing at them from inside a house. The Marine said there was no vengeful massacre, but he described a house-to-house hunt that went tragically awry in the middle of a chaotic battlefield. "It will forever be his position that everything they did that day was following their rules of engagement and to protect the lives of Marines," said Neal A. Puckett, who represents Wuterich in the ongoing investigations into the incident. "He's really upset that people believe that he and his Marines are even capable of intentionally killing innocent civilians."

Wuterich's detailed version of what happened in the Haditha neighborhood is the first public account from a Marine who was on the ground when the shootings occurred. As the leader of 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, Wuterich was in the convoy of Humvees that was hit by a roadside bomb. He entered the house from which the Marines believed enemy fire was originating and made the initial radio reports to his company headquarters about what was going on, Puckett said.

[...]

Wuterich's version contradicts that of the Iraqis, who described a massacre of men, women and children after a bomb killed a Marine. Haditha residents have said that innocent civilians were executed, that some begged for their lives before being shot and that children were killed indiscriminately.

Wuterich told his attorney in initial interviews over nearly 12 hours last week that the shootings were the unfortunate result of a methodical sweep for enemies in a firefight. Two attorneys for other Marines involved in the incident said Wuterich's account is consistent with those they had heard from their clients.

[...]

Wuterich, driving the third Humvee in the line, immediately stopped the convoy and got out, Puckett said.

Puckett said that while Wuterich was evaluating the scene, Marines noticed a white, unmarked car full of "military-aged men" lingering near the bomb site. When Marines ordered the men to stop, they ran; Puckett said it was standard procedure at the time for the Marines to shoot suspicious people fleeing a bombing, and the Marines opened fire, killing four or five men.

"The first thing he thought was it could be a vehicle-borne bomb or these guys could be ready to do a drive-by shooting," Puckett said, explaining that the Marines were on alert for such coordinated, multi-stage attacks.

[...]

Wuterich officially reported to his headquarters that there had been a makeshift bomb and called for a Quick Reaction Force, Puckett said. The first group encountered an unexploded bomb on another route -- fueling concerns that insurgents were mounting an attack on the daily morning convoy -- and a second force headed out. That group, including Marines with the 3rd Squad and the platoon's leader, a young second lieutenant, arrived minutes later.

Wuterich told Puckett that no one was emotionally rattled by Terrazas's death because everyone had a job to do, and everyone was concerned about further casualties. As Wuterich began briefing the platoon leader, Puckett said, AK-47 shots rang out from residences on the south side of the road, and the Marines ducked. A corporal with the unit leaned over to Wuterich and said he saw the shots coming from a specific house, and after a discussion with the platoon leader, they decided to clear the house, according to Wuterich's account.

"There's a threat, and they went to eliminate the threat," Puckett said. A four-man team of Marines, including Wuterich, kicked in the door and found a series of empty rooms, noticing quickly that there was one room with a closed door and people rustling behind it, Puckett said. They then kicked in that door, tossed a fragmentation grenade into the room, and one Marine fired a series of "clearing rounds" through the dust and smoke, killing several people, Puckett said. The Marine who fired the rounds -- Puckett said it was not Wuterich -- had experience clearing numerous houses on a deployment in Fallujah, where Marines had aggressive rules of engagement.

Although it was almost immediately apparent to the Marines that the people dead in the room were men, women and children -- most likely civilians -- they also noticed a back door ajar and believed that insurgents had slipped through to a house nearby, Puckett said. The Marines stealthily moved to the second house, kicking in the door, killing one man inside and then using a frag grenade and more gunfire to clear another room full of people, he said.

Wuterich, not having found the insurgents, told the team to stop and headed back to the platoon leader to reassess the situation, Puckett said, adding that his client knew a number of civilians had just been killed.

[...]

After clearing the second house, Puckett said, Wuterich immediately got on the radio and reported the "collateral damage." When the company radio operator asked him to estimate how many civilians had been killed, he said he thought it was about 12 to 15.

[...]

Wuterich told his attorney that he never reported that the civilians in the houses were killed by the bomb blast and maintains that he never tried to obscure the fact that civilians had been killed in the raids. Whether Wuterich gave false information to his superiors is the focus of one of the military investigations. He said the platoon leader, who was on the scene, never expressed concern about the unit's actions and never tried to hide them.

Marine Corps public affairs officers reported that the civilians had been killed in the bomb blast, a report that Puckett believes was the result of a miscommunication. After going through the houses, Wuterich moved a small group of Marines to the roof of a nearby building to watch the area, Puckett said. At one point, they saw a man in all-black clothing running from one of the houses they had searched. The Marines killed him, Puckett said.

They then noticed another man in all black scurrying between two houses across the street. When they went to investigate, the Marines found a courtyard filled with women and children and asked where the man was, Puckett said.

When the civilians pointed to a third house, the Marines attempted to enter and found a man with an AK-47 inside, flanked by three other men; the first Marine to enter tried to fire his weapon, but it jammed, Puckett said. The Marines then killed those four men.

The unit stayed at the scene for hours, helping to collect bodies as photos were taken. Wuterich, who remains on duty in California, where he lives with his wife and two young daughters, told Puckett that for months no one questioned his actions.

Captain Lucas M. McConnell via his attorney, Kevin B. McDermott
Josh White, Washington Post, 6-11-2006:

Kevin B. McDermott, who is representing Capt. Lucas M. McConnell, the Kilo Company commander, said Wuterich and other Marines informed McConnell on the day of the incident that at least 15 civilians were killed by "a mixture of small-arms fire and shrapnel as a result of grenades" after the Marines responded to an attack from a house.

McConnell was relieved of his command in April for "failure to investigate," according to McDermott. But the lawyer said McConnell told him that he reported the high number of civilian deaths to the 3rd Battalion executive officer that afternoon and that within a few days the battalion's intelligence chief gave a PowerPoint presentation to Marine commanders.

"It wasn't a situation that dawned on him as the captain of Kilo where it was like, 'Okay, guys, we need to conduct a more thorough investigation,' " McDermott said. "Everywhere up the chain, they had ample access to this thing."

[...]

McConnell, the company commander, "knew the number was high" and reported it to the battalion executive officer, a major, according to McDermott, his lawyer. McConnell also said that a Marine intelligence team investigated the civilian deaths and reported their findings to senior Marine commanders, the lawyer said.

Unnamed Marine via his attorney, Gary Myers
Josh White, Washington Post, 6-11-2006:

Gary Myers, a civilian attorney for a Marine who was with Wuterich that day, said the Marines followed standard operating procedures when they "cleared" the houses, using fragmentation grenades and gunshots to respond to an immediate threat.

"I can confirm that that version of events is consistent with our position on this case," Myers said. "What this case comes down to is: What were the rules of engagement, and were they followed?"

Corporal James Crossen
Josh White, Washington Post, 6-11-2006:

On Nov. 19, Wuterich's squad left its headquarters at Firm Base Sparta in Haditha at 7 a.m.on a daily mission to drop off Iraqi army troops at a nearby checkpoint. "It was like any other day, we just had to watch out for IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and any other activity that looked suspicious," said Marine Cpl. James Crossan, 21, in an interview from his home in North Bend, Wash. He was riding in the four-Humvee convoy as it turned left onto Chestnut Road, heading west at 7:15 a.m.

Shortly after the turn, a bomb buried in the road ripped through the last Humvee. The blast instantly killed the driver, Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20. Crossan, who was in the front passenger seat, remembered hearing someone yell, "Get some morphine." Then he passed out.

Barney Porter, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 6-2-2006:

Lieutenant Crossan has already told western media what he saw that day.

LIEUTENANT CROSSAN: I think they were just blinded by hate, when they see TJ blown to pieces, me freakin' stuck underneath the rear wheel, not knowing what happened, and they just lost control.

Debra Feldman, King 5 News, 5-31-2006:

He was seriously injured and one of his good buddies died. Lance Cpl. Miquel Terrazas, TJ, was killed by the blast.

"He was my point man and he was pretty much the guy that I went to if I needed anything," Crossan says now.

Terrazas was so admired that Crossan tattooed his name on his leg as he recuperated from the broken back, shattered bones, and perforated eardrums he suffered in the blast.

Now some, including Crossan, believe the anger his colleagues felt over that attack may have driven them to kill innocent civilians.

I know in my heart if I was there I possibly could've stopped what happened," Crossan said.

But the military is now investigating whether other members of the close-knit unit expressed their grief in a more immediate and lethal manner.

Several are now under investigation for the murder of 24 civilians immediately after the blast, several of them women and children, some of them in their beds.

Crossan said he doesn’t' think much about those who were killed.

"Probably half of them were bad guys and we just never knew, so it really doesn't cross my mind."

Crossan said the guys in his unit were young and that he was often the calming influence.

While he doesn't condone the apparent rampage, he says he understands why it happened.

"If you see your friend get killed… you're going to do something irrational and all that stuff and they probably just weren't thinking and they killed a bunch of people," he said.

"I feel bad for the guys because they are going to get in trouble and… but other than that I really don't have any emotions for it," he said.

Lance Corporal Ryan Briones
Rone Tempest, Los Angeles, 5-29-2006:

Briones, a wiry, soft-spoken 21-year-old interviewed Sunday at his family home in this Central Valley city, said he was not among the small group of Marines that military investigators have concluded killed the civilians, including children, women and elderly men. However, Briones, who goes by Ryan, said he took photographs of the victims and helped carry their bodies out of their homes as part of the cleanup crew sent in late in the afternoon on the day of the killings.

"They ranged from little babies to adult males and females. I'll never be able to get that out of my head. I can still smell the blood. This left something in my head and heart," Briones said.

He said he erased the digital photos he took at the scene after first providing them to the Haditha Marine command center. He said Navy investigators later interrogated him about the pictures and confiscated his camera.

[...]

Shortly after 7 a.m. on Nov. 19, Briones, who received a Purple Heart during a previous tour in Iraq that included fierce fighting in Fallouja, said his team of five men was called to respond to a roadside bomb explosion about 300 yards outside Kilo Company's Firm Base Sparta, located in an abandoned school.

When they arrived about 10 minutes later at the smoky, chaotic scene in a residential neighborhood, he said he saw the remains of his best friend, Lance Cpl. Miguel "T.J." Terrazas, his body split in half, resting in the destroyed Humvee in which he had been riding.

"He had a giant hole in his chin. His eyes were rolled back up in his skull," Briones recalled of the 20-year-old Texan. Briones said he draped a poncho over the body of his drinking buddy and workout partner and said a short prayer over his body: "Rest in peace. You are my brother by another mother. I love you, man."

After the explosion, Marines began a methodical sweep of homes looking for the bomber or people who knew his identity, according to officials briefed on the investigation. At some point during the sweep, Marines entered three nearby homes, killing the people inside.

But Briones said he didn't see any of this.

"It was such a blur. Smoky and smelled like an explosion," Briones said. "I only saw T.J. because he was right there. I practically walked into him."

He said his team evacuated two other soldiers in Terrazas' unit who were wounded in the explosion, including one, whom he identified as Lance Cpl. James Crossan of Washington state, who was pinned under the wreckage.

Briones and his team, including a Navy medical corpsman he identified as Brian Witt, evacuated the two wounded to a nearby soccer field where they were picked up by a Black Hawk helicopter. He said he and his team then returned to the Sparta home base.

"We went back to the firm base and just waited," Briones said. "A lot of people were mad. Everyone had just had a [terrible] feeling about what had happened to T.J." Still in shock over the death of his best friend, Briones said he retreated to a dark corner of the camp to collect his thoughts. Only 20 at the time, he said he didn't want his even younger 3rd Squad, 3rd Platoon team members to see that he was grieving.

He said he and his team remained at the camp until they were called back to the scene of the explosion about 5:30 p.m. the same day.

When they arrived, Briones said that most of the Marines on the site were sergeants or above, including several officers: "I remember because they didn't have enough lance corporals to deal with the bodies."

Briones said his team was assigned to mark the bodies of the victims by number and place them in body bags. He said a sergeant or a junior officer, he couldn't recall which, asked if any of the Marines carried personal cameras and that he and another Marine, whom he identified as Lance Cpl. Andrew Wright of Novato, said they did.

"You are going to be combat photographers," Briones said they were told.

Briones said he took pictures of at least 15 bodies before his camera batteries died. He said he then helped other Marines remove the bodies and place them in body bags. He said his worst moment, and one that haunts him to this day, was picking up the body of a young girl who was shot in the head.

"I held her out like this," he said, demonstrating with his arms extended, "but her head was bobbing up and down and the insides fell on my legs."

[...]

Ryan Briones said that he and other members of the cleanup crew remained at the site until about 11 p.m. When he came back he said he dropped his Olympus 3.2 megapixel camera by the unmanned Sparta base command operations center. When he returned a few hours later he said it looked like the camera had been moved so he assumed someone had downloaded the pictures and he erased them all.

But whether the photos ever reached authorities, who also have pictures from an intelligence investigation team and another source, is not clear.

Briones also said that he did not want to give the impression that he still had copies of the photographs because he did not want his possessions or those of his family searched by Navy investigators. He said there had been several examples recently of Navy investigators confiscating computers and PlayStation consoles capable of storing photographs.

The photos later became the main focus of questions by investigators who interviewed Briones for several hours in Iraq in March, shortly before he returned home. In the second interrogation, which he said took place at the battalion headquarters at Haditha Dam north of the city of Haditha, investigators showed him photographs of the bodies similar to his but shot from different angles.

"They wanted to know if the bodies had been moved or tampered with," Briones recalled. He said he had not been interviewed by Navy investigators since his return, although other Marines in his company had been interrogated repeatedly for hours at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service at Camp Horno, part of sprawling Camp Pendleton.

Clarice Feldman, American Thinker, 6-9-2006:

And then there is Lance Cpl. Ryan Briones. He helped evacuate Crossnan and took bodies to the morgue. He was not an eyewitness. He claims he took pictures of the bodies at the morgue and has made various statements about what happened to the pictures and his camera. Aside from the fact that he is not an eyewitness, and his claims about his photographs seem unlikely, his story remained unuttered until he was arrested for stealing a truck, driving under the influence and crashing the stolen vehicle into a house. It was then for the first time that he claimed post traumatic distress and pointed to Haditha as the source of that stress. (His report of taking the bodies to the morgue, moreover, seems inconsistent with the first Reuters report that there were 15 bodies left lying in the street the day after the incident.)

Lance Corporal Andrew Wright
Novato Advance, 5-31-2006:

Lance Cpl. Andrew Wright, a 21-year-old Marine and North Bay Christian Academy graduate, is currently submitting his testimony to investigators in Camp Pendleton about the deaths. Wright's parents, Novato residents Frederick and Patty Wright, say that superior officers asked Wright to take pictures of the dead bodies with his digital camera after the incident.

Khaled Salem Rsayef (attorney for the Rsayef family) and Salam Salem Rsayef, his brother
Hamza Hendawi and Kim Gamel, AP, 6-2-2006:

Meanwhile, a lawyer representing families of Iraqi civilians allegedly killed by U.S. Marines in Haditha said three or four Marines carried out the shooting while 20 more waited outside.

The lawyer, Khaled Salem Rsayef, said Marines ordered four brothers inside a closet and shot them dead. Rsayef said he witnessed U.S. troops responding to the bomb attack from his house. He said he lost several relatives in the alleged massacre, including a sister and her husband, an aunt, an uncle and several cousins. He and his brother, Salam Salem Rsayef, spoke to The Associated Press from the Euphrates River town of 90,000 late Thursday and Friday.

Despite the Iraqi government's insistence of cooperation between the U.S. and Iraqi investigations, the Rsayefs said they and other victims' families turned down a request by U.S. military investigators several months ago to exhume the victims' bodies for forensic tests.

"No way we can ever agree to that," Salam Salem Rsayef said. Under Islamic teachings, exhuming bodies is prohibited, but is allowed on case-by-case basis, sometime after a fatwa, or an edict, from a senior cleric allowing it to proceed.

As relatives and witnesses, the Rsayef brothers met at least four times with U.S.military investigators looking into the killings. The meetings, they said, began in February and were held at Samarra General Hospital. The time and venue of each meeting were relayed in advance to the relatives by doctors at the hospital, they said.

The next meeting is scheduled for Sunday, the two brothers said, suggesting that the U.S.investigations into the 6-month-old affair are not finished.

Khaled Salam Rsayef identified the four brothers shot and killed in a closet as Jamal Ayed Ahmed, 41, a car dealer; Chassib Ayed Ahmed, 27, a traffic policeman; Marwan Ayed Ahmed, 28, an engineer; and Kahtan Ayed Ahmed, 24, a local government employee. He said the U.S. military did not give compensation payments to their families because the brothers were believed to be insurgents.

Rsayef said his account of what happened was based on his personal observations from the rooftop of his home and windows. His house is only several dozen yards away from the three homes raided by Marines. The killings, which he did not witness in person, were recounted to him and other members of his family the following day by survivors.

He said his own home shook violently when the roadside bomb went off at 7:15 a.m. and that intermittent gunfire lasted for about two hours. He could not go out of his house to see for himself, but managed to steal quick glances from his roof and from behind windows.

"About 5 p.m. I emerged with my family carrying white flags," he said. "We wanted to move away from the area fearing that shooting could resume."

Comment: According to the Times of London, the bodies will be exhumed and examined as part of the U.S.military investigation.

Emad Jawad Hamza
Time, 3-19-2006:

Soon after the killings, the mayor of Haditha, Emad Jawad Hamza, led an angry delegation of elders up to the Marine camp beside a dam on the Euphrates River. Hamza says, "The captain admitted that his men had made a mistake. He said that his men thought there were terrorists near the houses, and he didn't give any other reason."

Facts established by military officials
Time, 3-19-2006:

According to the military officials, the series of raids took five hours and left at least 23 people dead. In all, two AK-47s were discovered. The military has classified the 15 victims in the first two houses as noncombatants. It considers the four men killed in the fourth house, as well as four youths killed by the Marines near the site of the roadside bombing, as enemy fighters.

Josh White and Thomas Ricks, Washington Post, 6-2-2006:

NCIS officials said the Nov. 19 incident was not reported to them as a criminal case until nearly four months later -- on March 12 -- and the failure of the Marine Corps to request assistance from investigators sooner could create legal complexities.

Comment: Yes, there are plenty more facts out there. The NCIS investigation started nearly five months after the Haditha incident took place, which is troublesome because recollections fade over time and the evidential trail has gotten cold.

Other Facts
David Martin, CBS News, 6-2-2006:

There was no officer in Haditha. The Marines were under the command of a sergeant with seven years experience. If he was the senior man in the squad, they were all probably in their 20s. We don’t know yet whether the sergeant directed the killings or just allowed them to happen, but we do know that innocent people – young children – were shot dead, so it seems safe to say that if the Marines had been better led, Haditha would not have happened.

Comment: Assuming Martin is accurate, the first two sentences are factual, but his resulting opinions are reasonable.

Allegations
Thomas Ricks, Washington Post, 6-1-2006:

The U.S. military investigation of how Marine commanders handled the reporting of events last November in the Iraqi town of Haditha, where troops allegedly killed 24 Iraqi civilians, will conclude that some officers gave false information to their superiors, who then failed to adequately scrutinize reports that should have caught their attention, an Army official said yesterday.

[...]

Bargewell has pursued two lines of investigation: not only whether falsehoods were passed up the chain of command, but also whether senior Marine commanders were derelict in their duty to monitor the actions of subordinates. The inquiry is expected to conclude by the end of this week, the official added. He said there were multiple failures but declined to say whether he would characterize it as a "coverup," as alleged recently by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), a former Marine.

The Bargewell report, which is expected to be delivered to top commanders by the end of the week, is one of two major military investigations into what happened at Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005, and how commanders reacted to the incident. The other is a criminal inquiry by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. That sprawling investigation involves more than 45 agents and is expected to conclude this summer, Pentagon officials and defense lawyers said yesterday. No charges have been filed, but people familiar with the case say they expect charges of homicide, making a false statement and dereliction of duty, among others.

Tony Perry and Julian Barnes, Los Angeles Times, 5-27-2006:

Photographs taken by a Marine intelligence team have convinced investigators that a Marine unit killed as many as 24 unarmed Iraqis, some of them "execution-style," in the insurgent stronghold of Haditha after a roadside bomb killed an American in November, officials close to the investigation said Friday.

[...]

Most of the fatal shots appear to have been fired by only a few of the Marines, possibly a four-man "fire team" led by a sergeant, said officials with knowledge of the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The same sergeant is suspected of filing a false report downplaying the number of Iraqis killed, saying they were killed by an insurgent's bomb and that Marines entered the Iraqis' homes in search of gunmen firing at them. All aspects of his account are contradicted by pictures, statements by Marines to investigators and an inspection of the houses involved, officials said.

Other Marines may face criminal charges for failing to stop the killings or for failing to make accurate reports.

Questions
Dr. Walid said that none of the victims died from shrapnel wounds from the IED, but it seems likely that the victims had shrapnel wounds from "frag" grenades. Nine-year old Eman Waleed "says her leg was hit by a piece of metal." Did U.S.military investigators (or anyone else other than Dr. Walid) exhume the bodies to examine the nature of the injuries? From the Rsayefs’ account, the answer is no. From the Times of London and the Washington Post, the answer is yes and we await the results.

Are the two al-Mashhadanis (one is a Reuters photographer and the other a chairman of Hammurabi Human Rights Group) related? Are they the same person?

It's a little unclear, but I think it was al-Hadithi who shot the video, not Ali al Mashadani.

Al-Hadithi has established that he is not an objective or unbiased "journalism student". Is there any video footage that he has held back? Did he coach any of his witnesses? Did he put up his videos for sale and, if so, did he profit from this venture? Has the Hammurabi Human Rights Group profited from this? Just asking.

There is no mention from Eman Waleed in the Time article whether insurgents were in her house.

There is no mention from Safa Younis in the ABC News link whether insurgents were in her house.

Did the Marines take fire from any of the four houses where they shot its occupants? If so, which houses did the shots come from?

Did the Marines adhere to the rules of engagement? At this point, it’s hard to know, and we should wait until the investigation is complete. It is also a pivotal question.

Were the rules of engagement unduly aggressive? It’s possible. Less aggressive rules would likely save the lives of innocent civilians but they would put more of our soldiers at risk. An argument favoring less harsh RoE is that better relations with the Iraqi people and the Iraqi press are possible. The successful operation at Tal Afar (as I recall) was due in part to a less aggressive stance taken by Marines, and it was where some officers were sent out because they were less than receptive. Army major general Eldon Bargewell is of a similar opinion:

One of Bargewell's conclusions is that the training of troops for Iraq has been flawed, the official said, with too much emphasis on traditional war-fighting skills and insufficient focus on how to wage a counterinsurgency campaign. Currently the director of operations for a top headquarters in Iraq, Bargewell is a career Special Operations officer and therefore more familiar than most regular Army officers with the precepts of counterinsurgency, such as using the minimum amount of force necessary to succeed. Also, as an Army staff sergeant in Vietnam in 1971, Bargewell received the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army's second-highest honor, for actions in combat while a member of long-range reconnaissance team operating deep behind enemy lines.

According to the New York Times, Marine commanders knew that Marines killed civilians at Haditha, not that they died from a roadside bomb as initially reported. Why didn’t the Marine leadership correct the record when they learned the truth? That was a supremely stupid move, or non-move as it were. To this date, the Corps has not changed the official story.

Final comments: Left unsaid in all these events is the tactics used by insurgents, firing from homes of non-combatants and putting civilians’ lives in peril. The American mainstream press seldom if ever places responsibility on the insurgents for how they conduct themselves, which are obvious violations of the rules of war. Iraqis and coalition troops and the mainstream media should expect better of the rejectionists. The insurgents also seem to be aware of the PR benefits they achieve when Americans kill Iraqi civilians in firefights instigated by the rejectionists. I’m sure Iraqi citizens are aware of this, which is perhaps why they aren’t as exercised about it as many are on the American Left. The tactic also happens to be in the al Qaeda playbook (specifically here), which is no surprise. Not that this excuses the unprovoked and deliberate killing of civilians by Americans, of course, if that is what is verified to have occurred.

The media did a disservice by not fully disclosing the affiliations of key witnesses and their involvement subsequent to November 19th, 2005.

A hat tip to Gary Farber for many of the above links. Greyhawk has a timeline, Part I and Part II.