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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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April 20th,
2008 - Rules of Engagement Ignored in Haditha Case |
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Rules of
Engagement Ignored in Haditha Case By Lauren Salem The Beacon April 20, 2008 On March 28, the US military
dropped all charges against Stephen Tatum, a marine, who was involved in the
civilian killings in Haditha, Iraq, on November 19, 2005. Tatum was charged with
"two counts of involuntary manslaughter, of unarmed children, reckless
endangerment and aggravated assault" according to the BBC News.
Spokespeople for the Marine Corps said that they dropped all charges "in
order to continue to pursue the truth-seeking process into the Haditha
incident." "I'm not satisfied with
the outcome because the punishments don't come close to the crimes committed
in Haditha," Abdul Rahman Al-Mashhadani, a member of the Hammurabi Human
Rights Organization, said in the Frontline feature "Rules of
Engagement." "We expected that the soldiers would be exonerated. I
thought the soldiers would be let off or...claim insanity." According to official
reports of the incident in question, after a roadside bombing, U.S. marines
were told to clear all the houses around the area. Tatum claimed during his
trial that he was told by his squad leader to treat the houses as hostile,
according to the Frontline report. Tatum said that he heard shots had been
fired before he entered the house, so he threw a grenade into the room he
thought the shots were coming from. "The grenade just went
off, dust was in the air, smoke was in the air, couldn't really make out much
more than targets," Tatum said. As a result 3 men, 2 women, and a child,
all unarmed innocent victims, died, because Tatum failed to positively
identify them. Rules of engagement require
that soldiers must positively identify enemies before firing. According to
Gary Solis, Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law School; Marine (Ret.),
'positive identification' means simply that: "Before you can fire on an
individual, you must positively identify that individual as representing a
threat to you or your fellow Marines or soldiers." Tatum proceeded into a
second house using the same procedure and never took more than 2-3 steps into
any of the rooms, which resulted in the death of five more children and two
more women, according to the Frontline story. Tatum said he did not see the
women and children and only fired because he was coming to the aid of a
fellow marine who was all ready shooting. The prosecution argued
during the trial that the marines should not have used aggressive
house-clearing tactics and they presented evidence that there was enough
light for soldiers to identify the women and children before shooting. "I'm not comfortable
with the fact that women and children died that day," Tatum said in his
Frontline interview. I know I might have had a part in it. I don't know if my
rounds impacted anybody. That is a burden I will have to bear." Tatum should have received
some form of punishment, because it was clear that he was not following the
"rules of engagement," one of which includes positive
identification. The rules of engagement entitle every solider the right to defend
themselves against threats, but also tells them when and against who they can
use deadly forces against. If the military and
government courts choose not to prosecute soldiers who violate such important
and long-standing rules, the United States could face a military that runs
amok. Defense of the nation is about discipline and following orders, both of
which seemed, at least in the moment at Haditha, absent. Based on the evidence, this
was not a situation that required deadly force and maybe Tatum would have
realized that if he actually looked at the people he was about to kill. The
courts and military personnel need to carefully examine the potential
fall-out from a decision to drop the charges in this case. External link: http://tinyurl.com/3mwrmm |