Word: haditha
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When I heard the news that four U.S. Marines were charged for their alleged role in the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians in the western town of Haditha in Nov. 2005, it marked the end of a personal odyssey...
...investigation into the Haditha tragedy started with a simple Google search. I checked back to see what the U.S. Marines said had happened on Nov.19th. In a three-paragraph communiqu?, the Marines claimed that a roadside bomb on a convoy of Humvees had killed one Marine, wounded two others and had also killed 15 Iraqi civilians...
...During the months after the Haditha story broke, I became the target of bloggers, self-proclaimed patriots, for supposedly dragging the fine reputation of the Marines through the mud. Nothing about this story made me feel good save for one thing: until TIME's investigation, one of the Marines - the squad leader, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich - was in line to receive a medal for heroism for what he did that terrible day. According to press reports, the recommendation says that Wuterich, 26, displayed "calm and confident decisiveness that day and doubtlessly prevented further injury or death to fellow Marines...
...interests of the U.S. military in Iraq, right now, demand not only that justice be done over the Haditha killings, but also that it be seen to be done - by Iraqis as well as by Americans. That may help explain the extensive indictment, announced Thursday at Camp Pendleton, California - four Marines charged with murder in the killing of 24 Iraqis, and another four officers charged with dereliction of duty for not relaying accurate information about the killings up the chain of command. The charges send a sharp message of zero tolerance for abuses of civilians to U.S. uniformed personnel...
...Iraq, the Haditha revelations simply reinforced existing negative perceptions of the U.S. mission, and it's unlikely that even by throwing the book at the men responsible, the U.S. military will earn the goodwill of the civilian population - particularly the Sunnis, who were the victims in Haditha. What's more, graphic descriptions of U.S. soldiers allegedly gunning down innocents - 10 of them women and children - in an apparent frenzy of violent frustration at their inability to find an enemy camouflaging himself in the civilian population are unlikely to help raise the morale of a U.S. public grown weary of what...