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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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July 2nd,
2007 - Details Surface in Haditha Killings |
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Details Surface in Haditha Killings Hearings and interviews provide a clearer picture of the day in Iraq
when Marines from Camp Pendleton killed 24 civilians. By Tony Perry Los Angeles Times July 2, 2007 Haditha, Iraq - The day that
would produce the biggest case of alleged atrocities by U.S. troops in Iraq
began simply. On Nov. 19, 2005, a squad of
Marines moved out before dawn to take hot chow and a code-changing device to
an outpost a few miles away. They planned to get back while the sun was
barely rising over the Euphrates River. The Marines from Kilo
Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment, had arrived in Haditha six weeks
earlier from Camp Pendleton. In that time, there had been few signs of
insurgents - and Marines had searched dozens of houses without a firefight or
casualty. Still, nearly 50 Marines
from the battalion that preceded them had been killed or severely wounded in
the area that the U.S. calls the Triad - Haditha, Barwanah, Haqlaniya. The
year before, insurgents in Haditha had massacred dozens of Iraqis accused of
collaborating with U.S. troops. Two days before the Nov. 19
convoy, intelligence officers had warned that foreign fighters who entered
from Syria were waiting to ambush Marines in Haditha, 80 miles from the
border, and would probably hide behind civilians. Some of the 12 Marines on
that morning's mission had never been in combat. Others were veterans of
bloody house-to-house fighting the year before in Fallouja. Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, the
squad leader, had never seen combat, but had impressed his superiors as a
mature, natural leader. He was a seeming contradiction: a 25-year-old with a
boyish face and an understated manner - and menacing-looking tattoos on both
forearms. After a lengthy briefing
about the route, the dangers and the tactics to use in case of attack,
Wuterich said simply, "Let's get it done, Marines." With that classic order, the
four-vehicle convoy left Firm Base Sparta about 6 a.m., rolling down a wide
road the Marines had named Route Chestnut. Before the sun rose high,
one Marine and 24 Iraqi civilians would be dead. Nineteen months later, three
enlisted Marines face charges of murder and four officers are charged with
dereliction of duty. At Camp Pendleton,
preliminary hearings are underway on whether the cases should be sent to
courts-martial. Those hearings, and interviews in Haditha and in the U.S.,
have put many new details of that day onto the public record. 'I'm not seeing 4' The terrain of Haditha is
ideally suited for guerrilla warfare. Its terraced streets sloping down to
the Euphrates provide good vantage points for snipers. Many homes have solid
masonry walls in the front and back, perfect for sneaking a look at passing
convoys and then ducking to avoid detection, a tactic Marines call
"turkey-peeking." As the Marines set off, they
scanned the road for explosives and nearby yards for snipers. They saw no
one. The drop-off went smoothly,
and the Marines began the return trip about 7 a.m., shortly after sunrise.
Riding with them were several Iraqi soldiers who were to take part in joint
patrols. Slowly the convoy went down
River Road and then took a left onto Route Chestnut. Near the intersection of
Route Chestnut and the road the Marines call Route Viper, an enormous
explosion erupted beneath the convoy's last vehicle, a Humvee. "I'm not seeing 4, I'm
not seeing 4," yelled Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt, a Fallouja veteran
who was manning the gun turret in the first vehicle. "Fourth vehicle is hit,
T.J.'s dead," yelled Lance Cpl. Rene Rodriguez. T.J. was Cpl. Miguel
Terrazas, 20, a popular Marine with a cheerful, blustery manner. He was from
El Paso, but buddies called him T.J. in reference to rowdy times they had
shared in Tijuana. The blast killed him
instantly. Parts of his torso were strewn 100 yards from the burning Humvee.
His severed legs remained in the driver's seat. Lance Cpl. James Crossan,
20, and Lance Cpl. Salvador Guzman, 19, were wounded - Crossan blown out the
right door and pinned under metal debris. Brian Whitt, a Navy corpsman,
rushed to him with morphine. "Help me, Doc," said
Crossan, barely conscious. Both Guzman and Crossan would survive. Wuterich took charge. He
called Sparta to report that Marines were "in contact" with the
enemy. At Sparta, another group,
called a quick-reaction force, was standing by, prepared to race to the aid
of the squad that had left. First Lt. William Kallop, the platoon commander,
was part of that unit. It was the 24-year-old Kallop's first combat
experience. Meanwhile, a white Opel
sedan approached the scene of the blast, with five young Iraqi men inside. Marines shouted for the car
to halt and pointed their M-16s at the windshield. The car stopped, and the
five men got out. To this point, no details of
the day are in dispute. From this point on, there would be much to question. The five Iraqis were quickly
riddled with bullets by the Marines. Wuterich told his superiors that night
that the five had begun to run away. Under Marine rules of engagement, if
suspected bombers run from the scene of an attack, they can be shot, even in
the back. Wuterich said that he and
Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz, 23, shot the five because they suspected them of
being spotters or triggermen. For months, Dela Cruz backed
Wuterich. But then he was charged with murder. Prosecutors offered to drop
the charge in exchange for his testimony. At a hearing at Camp Pendleton in
early May, he gave a new account. The five were standing
still, with their fingers locked behind their necks, when Wuterich began
firing, he said. "They were just standing, looking around, had hands
up," he testified. Dela Cruz admitted that he
"sprayed" the bodies while they were on the ground and then, in a
show of anger, urinated on one of them. He said Wuterich told him to lie and
say that the Iraqi soldiers the squad was transporting had killed the five. Minutes after the five men
had been killed, Kallop arrived. He did not ask why the Marines had opened
fire. "We had stuff going on,
and I wasn't going to say, 'Stop the presses. Take me step by step,'"
Kallop said, testifying this month in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Kallop said that Wuterich
told him gunshots had been coming from the south and that he gave the order
to search a row of houses about 100 yards across a vacant lot. "I decided that the
houses were most likely where fire was coming from, and I told Sgt. Wuterich
to 'clear south,' " Kallop said. Whether Wuterich's squad was
under fire after the bomb blast remains uncertain. Some Marines told
investigators they heard shots, others said they did not. Kallop remained crouched
behind a Humvee for protection. Wuterich and two veterans of Fallouja -
Sharratt, 21, and Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum, 24 - headed for the houses. "They did not have
grief in their eyes," Kallop said. "They were operating as we
trained them." 'Where are the bad guys?' Wuterich and Tatum later
told superiors that when they entered the first house, they heard the
"racking" sound of an AK-47 being cocked for firing and responded
by lobbing grenades and firing their M-16s. They said they saw an insurgent
fleeing from the first house to the second, and followed him with more
grenades and gunfire. Within minutes, 15 civilians
inside were dead, including three women and seven children. An old man's legs were
severed by a grenade. Another man was shot in the eye. A child was
decapitated by gunfire or grenade blasts. Several victims apparently were
sitting with their backs to a wall when shot, investigators later determined. Some of the dead children,
ranging in age from 2 to 13, were on a bed. The women appeared to have been
trying to shield them. A teenage girl was shot in the head. Only after the gunfire was
over did Kallop approach the houses, accompanied by Cpl. Hector Salinas, a
member of Wuterich's squad. Kallop testified that he was shocked when he
found no weapons inside the houses and that none of the males wore the kind
of military garb associated with insurgents. "I looked at Cpl.
Salinas and said, 'What the crap? Where are the bad guys?' " Kallop
said. "He looked as surprised as I was." Still, Kallop asked few
questions of Wuterich and the others. "Maybe because I wanted to keep on
pushing on what I was doing and come back when I had a chance," he said. Wuterich, Sharratt and
Salinas then decided to "clear" houses on the north side of the
crossroads. Sharratt said that men had
been spotted turkey-peeking over a wall. That, he said, was enough to
indicate hostile intent. In the first house, they
were greeted by women and children, Sharratt said. But in the second, he
said, he heard the sound of AK-47 racking and saw a man with an AK-47 in a
doorway. "I jumped back and bumped
into Sgt. Wuterich," he said. "After that my training took over,
and everything that my first sergeants and squad leaders had ever taught me
came into play." He said his machine gun
jammed so he pulled out his 9-millimeter handgun and began blasting. "After I ran out of
ammo, I yelled, 'I'm out,' and Sgt. Wuterich entered the room and fired his
M-16 at the men too," Sharratt said. Four Iraqi brothers lay dead
- three on the floor, one in a closet. The three had each been shot in the
head. The brother in the closet was killed by M-16 fire. Sharratt said he took two
AK-47s from the dead men and gave them to Tatum. Although there are records
of two AK-47s being seized that day near Chestnut and Viper, the Marine
assigned to collect captured weapons testified that he did not know whether
they were seized as Sharratt said, or came from somewhere else. Relatives of the dead
brothers told investigators they witnessed Marines herding the four into a
back bedroom and then heard shots being fired. Wuterich and Sharratt have
denied their account; Sharratt passed a lie detector test on the issue,
according to documents presented at his preliminary hearing. Commander arrives Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani,
the commander of the 3rd Battalion, was in his command center at the
10-story-tall Haditha Dam, 12 miles away, listening to radio reports from the
scene. His actions, and those of
his fellow officers over the next few hours, would bring into question the
attitude of Marine commanders toward the killings. Were they covering up for
their men or simply trying to survive a violent, chaotic day? Chessani was on his third
tour in Iraq. He had served as a battalion executive officer during the April
2004 fight in Fallouja and then as a regimental operations officer during the
November 2004 fight in that city, both times earning high ratings from his
bosses. Now Chessani had his own
battalion and his troops were "in contact" for the first time in
Haditha. Chessani ordered the launch of an unmanned aerial surveillance
vehicle called Scan-Eagle. By the time the craft was
airborne, the action at Chestnut and Viper was largely over. As Chessani and
other officers watched on large screens, Scan-Eagle beamed back video of
another engagement, an intense gun battle at a palm grove about 1,000 yards
from the intersection. The battle seesawed. Marines
sent as reinforcements were ambushed. The insurgents were well armed, firing
AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. Insurgents were seen running
from one place to another. One was spotted going into a house, then emerging
in different clothes and carrying a baby. The Marines nodded: typical
insurgent ploy, hiding behind women and children. They assumed the same
tactic had been used by the insurgents who they believed had fired at the
Marines at Chestnut and Viper after the bombing that killed Terrazas. That blast "was the
cataclysmic event that started the day's events," said Maj. Sam
Carrasco, the battalion operations officer. The Marines ended it with a blast
of their own - a 500-pound bomb on a house in the palm grove. Chessani arrived at the
grove in the afternoon. Nine of his Marines had been wounded there, none
fatally. He inspected the rubble and looked at the spots where the Marines
had been hit. But when he suggested
driving to the houses where Wuterich and his squad had killed the civilians,
Sgt. Maj. Edward Sax, the battalion's senior enlisted man, noted that it was
getting late and warned against remaining "outside the wire" after
dark. Besides, everything they
needed to know about the Chestnut-and-Viper skirmish was already known, Sax
said. Insurgents attacked and Marines responded. The pair went to Sparta and
then back to battalion headquarters at the dam. By nightfall, Chessani's
analysis was set. His Marines, he decided, had been subjected to a
"complex, coordinated attack" starting with the bombing that killed
Terrazas, the kind of ambush they had been warned by intelligence officers to
expect. What he was hearing from the
Marines fit the scenario: The Iraqi men in the Opel had attempted to flee,
shots were coming from the houses, weapons were found in the car and the
houses, Marines clearing the houses were confronted by insurgents with
AK-47s. "Investigation was not
in our lexicon," said 1st Lt. Adam Mathes, Kilo Company executive
officer. "Our understanding is that we were set up in a situation where
it was kill or be killed." Investigators and
prosecutors would eventually label as false each of the assertions that
Chessani had accepted uncritically as fact. No weapons were found near the
car, no AK-47 shell casings could be confirmed as being in the houses, and no
signs existed that insurgents had been firing from them, according to testimony. Reliving the day In the nighttime hours, as
Marines reassembled at Sparta, officers and senior enlisted men concentrated
on trying to help the young Marines cope with the violence that had been done
to their own. Some Marines had tears in their eyes. Others were writing
letters to their families or sitting silently. "We had to get ready
the next day to go outside the wire again," Kallop said. Late that night, Kallop
wondered aloud about whether his order to Wuterich to "clear south"
had been interpreted to mean the Marines could employ the tactics used in
Fallouja. "He said he didn't know
if when he said, 'Clear the houses,' … he'd given an order to kill
everyone," Mathes testified. Officers ordered Marines to
take the bodies from the three houses near Chestnut and Viper to the city
morgue. Previous battalions had always just left the bodies of Iraqis they
had killed where they had fallen. "We're better than
that; we clean up after ourselves," Mathes said. Marines who balked at
removing the bodies were told to shut up and go back to work. Iraqis at the
morgue vomited when they saw the dead children. Even before the bodies were
removed, officers were filing required reports with their superiors at the
regimental and division headquarters about the civilian deaths. None
presented a full picture. One report, over Chessani's
signature, indicated incorrectly that Chessani had inspected the scene of the
civilian deaths. The report, sent about midnight, did not mention that the
civilians had been family members killed inside their homes, nor did it
mention any doubts Kallop may have expressed. On Nov. 22, Maj. Gen.
Richard Huck, then commander of the 2nd Marine Division, came to Haditha. He
left satisfied that the civilian deaths were combat-related, and that a
briefing he received provided a "plausible sequence of events." But by late January, the
official version was being challenged, first by the Haditha town council,
which asserted that Marines had "executed" the civilians, and then
by a Time magazine reporter who interviewed Iraqi survivors. Army Col. Gregory Watt was
assigned to do a quick look. Carrasco, the battalion operations officer, went
to Chessani and suggested that the Marine Corps might consider doing its own
investigation. Chessani, who was seated at
his desk, whirled around and reacted with uncharacteristic anger. "My
men are not murderers!" he shouted. Later he apologized for his
outburst, but his view did not change. In early March, Watt
recommended that the Naval Criminal Investigative Service be called in. 'He loved his Marines' The NCIS agents took the
simple investigative steps that Marines had failed to take: interview Iraqi
witnesses, examine bullet holes, review autopsy records and pictures of the
bodies. They challenged the accounts of the enlisted Marines who said they
had fired the fatal shots in self-defense. When the battalion returned
to Camp Pendleton a month later, Chessani, who had been nominated for a
Bronze Star and seemed on track to become a general, was relieved of command
along with one of his subordinates, Capt. Lucas M. McConnell, the Kilo Company
commander. In December, the Marine
Corps charged Wuterich, Sharratt, Tatum and Dela Cruz with murder. Chessani;
McConnell; 1st Lt. Andrew A. Grayson, an intelligence officer; and Capt.
Randy W. Stone, a battalion lawyer, were charged with dereliction of duty for
not investigating whether a war crime had been committed. Charges against Dela Cruz
were dropped in exchange for his testimony. Article 32 hearings, akin to
preliminary hearings, are underway in the remaining cases. In each, a hearing
officer will recommend to Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of Marine
Forces Central Command, whether the case should go to court-martial, be
dropped or be handled through administrative punishment. Last month, prosecutors
urged that Chessani's case go to trial to prove that "the Marine Corps
can investigate itself." They allege that Chessani, now 43, had reacted
like a father unable to believe his sons could do wrong. Said Lt. Col. Sean Sullivan,
the lead prosecutor: "The battalion commander had such a mind-set that
he loved his Marines so much, had so much faith in them, that he could not
believe that they could murder civilians." External link: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-haditha2jul02,1,5927314.story |