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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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September 4th,
2007 - Documents Show Troops Disregarding Rules News article by the Associated
Press |
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Documents Show
Troops Disregarding Rules By Ryan Lenz Associated Press September 4, 2007, 5:49AM New documents released
Tuesday regarding crimes committed by U.S. soldiers against civilians in Iraq
and Afghanistan detail a troubling pattern of troops failing to understand and
follow the rules that govern interrogations and deadly actions. The documents, released by
the American Civil Liberties Union ahead of a lawsuit, total nearly 10,000
pages of courts-martial summaries, transcripts and military investigative
reports about 22 incidents. They show repeated examples of soldiers believing
they were within the law when they killed local citizens. The killings include the
drowning of a man soldiers pushed from a bridge into the Tigris River as
punishment for breaking curfew, and the suffocation during interrogation of a
former Iraqi general believed to be helping insurgents. In the suffocation, soldiers
covered the man's head with a sleeping bag, then wrapped his neck with an
electrical cord for a "stress position" they insisted was an
approved technique. Chief Warrant Officer Lewis
Welshofer was convicted of negligent homicide in the death of Maj. Gen. Abed
Hamed Mowhoush following a January 2006 court-martial that received wide
media attention due to possible CIA involvement in the interrogation. But even after his
conviction, Welshofer insisted his actions were appropriate and standard,
documents show. "The simple fact of the
matter is interrogation is supposed to be stressful or you will get no
information," Welshofer wrote in a letter to the court asking for
clemency. "To put it another way, an interrogation without stress is not
an interrogation - it is a conversation." Welshofer said in the same
letter that he was "within the appropriate constraints that both the
rules of law, and just as importantly - duty, imposed on me." The documents were obtained
through a federal Freedom of Information Act request the ACLU filed with the
military more than a year ago asking for all documents relevant to U.S.
military involvement in the deaths of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Only
the Army responded. Considered against recent
cases, including soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division convicted of
killing detainees in Samarra, Iraq, last year and the ongoing courts-martial
of Marines accused of killing 24 civilians in Haditha, these new examples
shed light on the frequency soldiers and Marines may disregard the rules of
war. Nasrina Bargzie, an attorney
with the ACLU's National Security Project, said the documents also show that
theres an abundance of information being withheld from public scrutiny. "The government has
gone out of its way to hide the human cost of this war," Bargzie said.
Releasing the documents now "paints at least a part of that picture so
people at least know what's going on," she said. The lawsuit seeks to compel
the military to produce all documents related to all incidents of civilian
deaths at the hands of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan since January
2005. The ACLU contends the materials are releasable under federal law. The Defense Department
declined to comment on the lawsuit until it could review its claims. Among the files released to
the ACLU were the court-martial records for two soldiers convicted of assault
in the drowning of a man pushed into the Tigris for violating curfew and
three soldiers convicted in the "mercy killing" of an injured
teenager in Sadr City. The teen had been severely
injured; one soldier explained that he shot and killed the teen "to take
him out of his misery." Other killings included: - A man shot after a search
of his home near Balad uncovered illegal weapons and anti-American
literature. Immediately after the shooting, according to testimony, Sgt. 1st
Class George Diaz, who was convicted of unpremeditated murder, said,
"I'm going to hell for this." Diaz also was convicted of
mistreating a teenage detainee when he forced the youth to hold a smoke
grenade with the pin pulled as Diaz questioned him at gunpoint. - A suspected insurgent in
Iraq by Staff Sgt. Shane Werst, who said the man appeared to be reaching for
a weapon. Werst was acquitted of murder despite acknowledging he had fired
and then planted a chrome Iraqi pistol on the suspect to make his claim of
self defense more believable. In a previously unreported
case, Pfc. James Combs was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for shooting
an Iraqi woman from a guard tower in what he claimed was an accident, though
court documents and testimony indicate his weapon was set to fire multiple
shots despite a regulation advising against such a setting. Another previously
undisclosed case involved Sgt. Ricky Burke, who was charged with murder for
killing a wounded man alongside the road following a firefight. Staff Sgt.
Timothy Nein, a member of Burke's military police company, testified he heard
Burke say before the shooting, "It's payback time." Burke, a member of the
Kentucky National Guard, was found not guilty of the charges that stemmed
from the same battle that led to the first woman since World War II being
awarded the Silver Star. In closing arguments,
Burke's attorneys asked the jury to recommend that soldiers be trained better
for handling detainees. "They are not trained to standard," said an
attorney not identified in the transcript. The attorneys also insisted
that the rules of engagement are clear and in favor of soldiers, contending
that the perception of hostility merits deadly action. Michael Pheneger, a retired Army
intelligence colonel who reviewed the materials for the ACLU, said the
documents suggest many allegations of war crimes in Iraq are not being made
public. "Wars are messy by
their very nature. These are dangerous circumstances, and the fog of war is out
there," said Pheneger, who served in Vietnam. "But it's perfectly
obvious that there is no rule of engagement that would authorize someone to
kill someone in custody." © 2007 The Associated Press External link: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/5105236.html |