6-05-06, 9:27 am
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld last week failed to completely condemn apparent atrocities under investigation by military officials. When questioned by reporters about reports of a massacre in Haditha, Iraq last November, which included the killing of women and children, according to reports, by US Marines in a 'methodical manner,' Rumsfeld coldly remarked, '[I]n conflicts things happen that shouldn't happen.'
General Donald Campbell, chief of staff of coalition forces in Iraq, echoed Rumsfeld's apparent attempt to make excuses. During combat, Campbell hedged, 'soldiers become stressed; they become fearful.'
Rumsfeld's remarks came as media reports revealed that US military investigators were examining at least two other incidents where eyewitness accounts implicated US military forces in deliberate executions of Iraqi civilians.
On the heels of revelations of a possible massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, news reports indicate that US military officials are admitting that as many as four other incidents of potential atrocities are being investigated.
An attack in Ishaqi, north of Baghdad is one such incident. Video footage of the scene at which eye witnesses spoke of US troops detaining and then killing up to 11 noncombatants, including five children, one of whom was a baby, seems to contradict claims by Pentagon officials that US troops undertook the Ishaqi assault following proper and legal procedures.
The Pentagon admits that the assault, ordered into an area known to be populated by noncombatants, was accompanied by an AC-130 gunship, a weapon, which because of its massive field of fire and killing power, has little ability to discriminate between military targets and innocent bystanders.
Pentagon officials claimed the Ishaqi event was aimed at capturing or killing one Al Qaeda operative. Military spokespersons denied claims that soldiers planted shovels near civilians to give the appearance that they were in the process of burying explosive devices at the time they were killed.
The Haditha and Ishaqi incidents provoked newly appointed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki into an angry response last week. Al-Maliki ordered an independent investigation conducted by Iraqi officials and demanded documents, video footage, and access to US military personnel implicated.
Accusing US forces of committing 'a horrible crime' and of being responsible for such crimes on a daily basis, Al-Maliki said that he believed US troops do not respect the Iraqi people. 'They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on a suspicion or a hunch,' he stated.
Al-Anbaki’s organization is not the first Iraqi human rights organization to raise questions about atrocities by US troops in Iraq. The Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq, a coalition of 20 Iraqi human rights groups, appealed to the UN last summer with its own report detailing eyewitness accounts of a number of atrocities mostly centered on the November 2004 siege of Fallujah.
According to that report, US forces may have killed between 4,000 and 6,000 noncombatants in that city, used banned weapons in the attack on that city, destroyed 30,000 homes, sparked humanitarian crisis of starvation, homelessness, and disease, and mistreated and abused prisoners of war and noncombatants detained under suspicion.
The Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq called for the transfer of security operations to UN and Arabic or other international forces, the establishment of an international investigation committee independent of the US and the UK, and for the highest UN human rights body to conduct its own special investigations.
Iraq war veterans who want to see the troops brought home immediately responded unfavorably to reports of atrocities at Haditha. Camilo Mejia, a member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) executive committee, and who briefly served in Haditha more than a year before last November’s massacre, condemned the whole war and urged openness by the Pentagon on alleged atrocities. 'The entire enterprise is immoral, and that's why the public needs to see these specific examples,' he remarked.
A statement by IVAW last week questioned the conduct of the war. 'The war in Iraq has been more harmful than beneficial to our counterterrorism efforts. And while the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate, this administration continues to say things are going very well,' the statement read.
'We would add,' the veterans’ statement continued, 'that the presence of American troops inflames inter-Iraqi violence, by putting many Iraqis into the role of collaborators with a hostile foreign occupation; and we know as well as anyone that the occupation is perceived as hostile. The massacre at Haditha is emblematic of that.'
IVAW asserted that responsibility for the atrocities at Haditha – and all over Iraq – lie with the war planners and the Bush administration who failed, and continue to fail to be honest with the US public about why we are there and what is happening there.
The 'US government is now taking an entire generation,' the statement concluded, 'and sending them abroad to an unnecessary and illegal war, and bringing them back with the mental and physical wounds of that experience. For the public, ending this war must be a mission of conscience. For many veterans of this war, the war itself has left us with a troubled conscience that will follow us to our last days. The war in Iraq must end.'
--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at
