US Troops Shooting Any Iraqi Who Moves

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Arbil, Iraq.

The US military is investigating two incidents in which American soldiers killed at least 26 Iraqi civilians and then claimed that they were either guerrillas or had died in cross fire.

The growing evidence of retaliatory killings of unarmed Iraqi families, often including children, by US soldiers seemingly bent on punishing Iraqis after an attack, will spark comparisons with the massacre of Vietnamese villagers at My Lai in 1968.

US troops have been notorious among Iraqis for their willingness to shoot any Iraqi they see in the aftermath of an insurgent attack. But it is only now that convincing and detailed information is becoming available about the killings.

In the most recent incident, in the town of Ishaqi north of Baghdad last week, Iraqi police said that US troops had shot 11 people, including five children, in their home. The local police chief, Colonel Farouq Hussein, said that all the dead had been shot in the head, according to autopsies. "It's a clear and perfect crime," he said. In an incident in the town of Haditha in western Iraq on 19 November last year, US soldiers went on a rampage in a village after a bomb attack and killed at least 15 civilians, according to witnesses and local officials cited by Time magazine in an investigation.

The US military first claimed a roadside bomb had killed a US Marine, Miguel Tarrazas, along with 15 Iraqi civilians caught in the blast. Later, a military statement said "gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire" and in returning fire the Marines killed eight insurgents.

But after Time presented the US military with what Iraqis said had
happened, an official investigation found that 15 of the civilians had been deliberately killed by US soldiers.

The bomb attack on the US Humvee took place at 7.15am. Eman Waleed, a nine-year-old child, lived in a house 150 yards from the explosion. "We heard a big noise that woke us all up," she recalled later. "Then we did what we always do when there's an explosion: my father goes in to his room with the Koran and prays the family will be spared harm."

The Marines claim they heard shots coming from the direction of Waleed's house. They burst in to the house and Eman heard shots from her father's room. They then entered the living room, where the rest of the family was gathered. She said: "I couldn't see their faces very well - only their guns sticking in to the doorway. I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny."

The US soldiers started shooting in to the corner of the room where Eman and her eight-year-old brother, Abdul Rahman, were cowering. The other adults in the room tried to protect the two children with their bodies and were all shot dead. Eman and her brother were both wounded.

"We were lying there, bleeding and it hurt so much. Afterwards some Iraqi soldiers came. They carried us in their arms. I was crying, shouting, 'why did you do this to our family?' And one Iraqi soldier tells me, 'we didn't do it. The Americans did it'."

The Marines' explanation is that they heard the sound of a Kalashnikov being readied to shoot and had then fired their weapons. The Marines say they were fired at from a second house, where they broke down a door, threw in a grenade and opened fire. The eight who died in the second house included the owner, his wife, the owner's sister, a two-year-old son and three young daughters.

In a third house the Marines searched four young men were shot dead. A military investigation decided these were insurgent fighters, along with four others killed in the street.

The Marines later delivered 24 bodies to a hospital in Haditha, claiming they had been killed by shrapnel from a bomb. Dr Wahid, the director of the hospital, said: "It was obvious to us there were no organs slashed by shrapnel. The bullet wounds were very apparent. Most of the victims were shot in the head and chest - from close range."

An US military investigation decided the deaths were "collateral damage". Relatives were paid $2,500 (£1,400) for each of the dead.

http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick03222006.html

Iraqis killed by US troops ‘on rampage’
Hala Jaber and Tony Allen-Mills, New York

Claims of atrocities by soldiers mount

THE villagers of Abu Sifa near the Iraqi town of Balad had become used to the sound of explosions at night as American forces searched the area for suspected insurgents. But one night two weeks ago Issa Harat Khalaf heard a different sound that chilled him to the bone.

Khalaf, a 33-year-old security officer guarding oil pipelines, saw a US helicopter land near his home. American soldiers stormed out of the Chinook and advanced on a house owned by Khalaf’s brother Fayez, firing as they went.

Khalaf ran from his own house and hid in a nearby grove of trees. He saw the soldiers enter his brother’s home and then heard the sound of women and children screaming.

“Then there was a lot of machinegun fire,” he said last week. After that there was the most frightening sound of all — silence, followed by explosions as the soldiers left the house.

Once the troops were gone, Khalaf and his fellow villagers began a frantic search through the ruins of his brother’s home. Abu Sifa was about to join a lengthening list of Iraqi communities claiming to have suffered from American atrocities.

According to Iraqi police, 11 bodies were pulled from the wreckage of the house, among them four women and five children aged between six months and five years. An official police report obtained by a US reporter for Knight Ridder newspapers said: “The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people.”

The Abu Sifa deaths on March 15 were first reported last weekend on the day that Time magazine published the results of a 10-week investigation into an incident last November when US marines killed 15 civilians in their homes in the western Iraqi town of Haditha.

The two incidents are being investigated by US authorities, but persistent eyewitness accounts of rampaging attacks by American troops are fuelling human rights activists’ concerns that Pentagon commanders are failing to curb military excesses in Iraq.

The Pentagon claims to have investigated at least 600 cases of alleged abuse by American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to have disciplined or punished 230 soldiers for improper behaviour. But a study by three New York-based human rights groups, due to be published next month, will claim that most soldiers found guilty of abuse received only “administrative” discipline such as loss of rank or pay, confinement to base or periods of extra duty.

Of the 76 courts martial that the Pentagon is believed to have initiated, only a handful are known to have resulted in jail sentences of more than a year — notably including the architects of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

more, more, more...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2103695,00.html

Unreal!!!!!!!

An often used quote is certainly fitting here: " ... war IS hell ... ".

Doesn't matter who is fighting where, there's always been allegations of wrongdoing by soldiers. The legendary atrocities by the Japanese prior to and during WWII have yet to be addressed. The Japanese are almost in societal denial of that time period. The Jews will never let Western society forget the Holocast. There is more attention paid to the behaviors of soldiers in this conflict than in any other in history. The media is all over this one. Turn the page.

I don't think we need to just chalk this one up to, "War is hell."

The U.S. as a collective often considers itself above these sorts of things, yet are often the first to cry the loudest when other's do it.

We have, in fact, committed these sorts of atrocities many times in the past. But that really isn't the point either, is it?

No, the point it, America is still capable of acting this way. That lesson needs to seep into the collective mindscape of the entire nation, so that we might perhaps make better choices when it comes to war.

The media is all over this one. Turn the page.
Because it usually happens in war is no excuse for it and no reason to ignore it. You have a twisted outlook there...mob mentality

I dont believe it.

Why are we not surprised?

let me guess, since I don't believe something a flaming anti American like guerilla posts from counterpunch.org I am a bush apologist right? I don't believe our troops go around murdering innocent civilians intentionally, that's all. its a bunch of bullshit. Am I saying innocent people don't die? no, I am saying our troops don't do it intentionally, as was implied here. How do I know? because our troops are people like you and me. Would you go in and blow away a whole family for no reason? I wouldn't. we cant expect a dumbass like guerilla who never served and believes the military are a bunch of brain dead robots who do anything they are asked without question like some SS stormtroopers to be able to question the validity of a story that just reaffirms his beliefs. He will just post it and move on to the next web page as usual.

One has to admit the fact that the article is written by someone named Pat Cockburn is pure comedy. That aside, I totally agree with you, Trav.

Had 500lb just posted the first article, I would be inclined to agree with you, but the second one came from the Times, and thus lends credence to the idea.

True.

I'm reading it now.