What Haditha Really Means

Earthside Comments: All U.S. troops in Iraq should be withdrawn ... now. Whatever good purpose they may have been able to have will now amount to nothing.

That is the sad truth as a result of the reprecussions of the Haditha, Ishaqi and other atrocities. Furthermore, the reputation of the United States, already besmirched by Bush's WMD lies and Abu Ghraib, is now even more befouled by this widening horror.

Earthside has said from the beginning of this military fiasco that there was nothing to win in Iraq -- waging aggressive war is a crime, and crime doesn't pay. But now, we are witnessing the full consequences of Bush's and Cheney's crawl into the immoral muck and sewage of an illegal war.

There will now never be any trust among the Iraqi people towards the U.S. occupiers of their country ... and average Americans will no longer believe that the "mission" is worthy or achievable. No more Americans should die in Iraq; no more Iraqis should die at the hands of Americans ... the Iraqis must now be left to rebuild thier country as they see fit.

The troops should be brought home NOW. If Bush will not issue that order, then he and Cheney should resign and we must find new leaders who will finally do the right thing.

Link: Premier Accuses U.S. of Attacking Civilians in Iraq | New York Times

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki lashed out at the American military on Thursday, denouncing what he characterized as habitual attacks by troops against Iraqi civilians.

As outrage over reports that American marines killed 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha last year continued to shake the new government, the country's senior leaders said that they would demand that American officials turn over their investigative files on the killings and that the Iraqi government would conduct its own inquiry.

In his comments, Mr. Maliki said violence against civilians had become a "daily phenomenon" by many troops in the American-led coalition who "do not respect the Iraqi people."

"They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion," he said. "This is completely unacceptable." Attacks on civilians will play a role in future decisions on how long to ask American forces to remain in Iraq, the prime minister added.

The denunciation was an unusual declaration for a government that remains desperately dependent on American forces to keep some form of order in the country amid a resilient Sunni Arab insurgency in the west, widespread sectarian violence in Baghdad, and deadly feuding among Shiite militias that increasingly control the south.

Link: Officers Likely to Be Charged in Haditha Killings, Sources Say | ABC News

Military sources told ABC News that there are likely to be charges filed against officers up the chain of command in connection with the killing of 24 civilians by U.S. Marines in Haditha, Iraq, in November 2005.

Those who could be charged include senior officers who were not on the scene at the time of the killing but should have known something wrong had happened and done something about it.

Link: Why Haditha Matters | The Nation

What matters about Haditha? After all, Iraq is a place where civilians die every day. Many of them die as a result of insurgent car bombs, or at the hands of Sunni or Shiite militias. Many thousands of others died in US air attacks early in the war (as civilians did recently in airstrikes in another US war zone, Kandahar).

Even in this context there remains a distinctly sickening horror in close-up systematic killing of civilians that's at odds with the declared US mission in Iraq and is repugnant to our national ideals. Even under intense battlefield conditions, troops can instigate atrocities, or they can resist them. In the My Lai massacre, in 1968, Hugh Thompson Jr., an American helicopter pilot, saved many lives by putting himself between the guns of Charlie Company and the villagers whom those behind the guns--led by their officers--were wantonly killing. A generation of future US military officers were taught the details of the My Lai massacre as a particular lesson: What makes war crimes is criminal leadership. Whatever the responsibility of the unit commanders in Haditha, it is George W. Bush as Commander in Chief who has sent the clear message that human rights abuses and violations of international law are justified in the "war on terror."

Link: The Man From Haditha | Robert Dreyfuss/TomPaine.com

The murderous rampage by U.S. Marines in Haditha last November is likely to be remembered a century from now as the emblem of America’s criminal war in Iraq. Its repercussions are only just beginning to be felt at home, as the stunning reality of an hours-long outburst of cold-blooded killing by U.S. troops starts to penetrate the American psyche. But in Iraq, the anger is already building. The mayor of Haditha, a village astride the Euphrates River, calls what happened “a day of human catastrophe” for his city, accusing the United States of “war crimes.”

The hand-picked Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, plans an inquiry. “We will ask for answers not only about Haditha but about any operation ... in which killing happened by mistake and we will hold those who did it responsible,” said Maliki. He suggested that U.S. actions not only in Haditha but in other cases would be investigated by the Iraqi authorities—including the notorious attacks last March when U.S. and Kurdish forces raided a Shiite mosque in Baghdad. Indeed, the nightmare for the Pentagon is “two, three, many Hadithas.”

And, as I found out, unexpectedly, Haditha has a special meaning for the man assigned to represent Iraq in Washington.

Yesterday, at a forum on Iraq arranged by the U.S. Institute for Peace, I asked Samir al-Sumaidaie, Iraq’s ambassador to the United States, about Haditha. In answering, he stepped out of his objective, diplomatic cadence—because Haditha, for Sumaidaie, is personal. “What happened in Haditha is a huge tragedy, for Haditha and for the United States,” he began. “I am from Haditha. I know the people, I know the neighborhood. One of my cousins in Haditha was killed by the Marines in Haditha not long before this.” Quiet and well-spoken, Sunni but not sectarian, Sumaidaie seemed ready to hold the Marines accountable not only for the November, 2005, atrocity but for the killing of his cousin and for other deaths in the town.

Link: U.S. Conducts Three More Probes Into Military's Conduct in Iraq | Bloomberg

The U.S. military, facing allegations that Marines killed civilians in November in western Iraq, is conducting at least three more probes into the conduct of its forces in Iraq, spokesman Major-General William Caldwell said.

The military began a criminal investigation into the Nov. 19 deaths of 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha, west of Baghdad, following a March 27 report by Time Magazine that Marines killed unarmed Iraqis.

"There are three or four at least at this time," Caldwell told reporters in Baghdad in response to a question about how many other such incidents were under investigation. Caldwell didn't have any details of those probes, and didn't know their status, beyond that they're in "the first stages," he told a news conference carried live on the Pentagon Web site.