The Party the Marines Spoiled in Haditha
The executions are carried out at dawn on Haqlania bridge, the entrance to Haditha. A small crowd usually turns up to watch even though the killings are filmed and made available on DVD in the market the same afternoon.One of last week’s victims was a young man in a black tracksuit.
Like the others he was left on his belly by the blue iron railings at the bridge’s southern end. His severed head rested on his back, facing Baghdad. Children cheered when they heard that the next day’s spectacle would be a double bill: two decapitations. A man named Watban and his brother had been found guilty of spying…
A three-day visit by a reporter working for the Guardian last week established what neither the Iraqi government nor the US military has admitted: Haditha, a farming town of 90,000 people by the Euphrates river, is an insurgent citadel.
That Islamist guerrillas were active in the area was no secret but only now has the extent of their control been revealed … A three-hour drive north from Baghdad, under the nose of an American base, it is a miniature Taliban-like state. Insurgents decide who lives and dies, which salaries get paid, what people wear, what they watch and listen to.
The Guardian reporter did not say he worked for a British newspaper. For their own protection interviewees cannot be named.
There is no fighting here because there is no one to challenge the Islamists. The police station and municipal offices were destroyed last year and US marines make only fleeting visits every few months.
The court caters solely for divorces and marriages. Alleged criminals are punished in the market. The Guardian witnessed a headmaster accused of adultery whipped 190 times with cables. Children laughed as he sobbed and his robe turned crimson.
Two men who robbed a foreign exchange shop were splayed on the ground. Masked men stood on their hands while others broke their arms with rocks. The shopkeeper offered the insurgents a reward but they declined.
DVDs of beheadings on the bridge are distributed free in the souk. Children prefer them to cartoons. “They should not watch such things,” said one grandfather, but parents appeared not to object.
One DVD features a young, blond muscular man who had been disembowelled. He was said to have been a member of a six-strong US sniper team ambushed and killed on August 1. Residents said he had been paraded in town before being executed. (the US army denied that)
There was a rumour that Zarqawi, Washington’s most wanted militant after Osama bin Laden, visited early last week. True or not, residents wanted to believe they had hosted such a celebrity…
Will this get the coverage the accusations against Our Marines have gotten?
Murtha’s accusations give these beasts a free pass to continue their terrorism of the townspeople, the training of the children to be terrorists. Accusations if this nature made to an international audience make the USA appear too weak to break them for fear of the American media. Even when/if an American or Brit has been disembowelled for their entertainment.
I was with them in Husayba as they went house to house in an area where insurgents would booby-trap doors, or lie in wait behind closed doors with an AK-47, basically on suicide missions, just waiting for the Marines to come through and open fire. There were civilians in the city as well, and the Marines were always keenly aware of that fact. How they didn’t fire at shadows, not knowing what was waiting in each house, I don’t know. But they didn’t.
Also, it turns out a drone recording and recordings of radio contacts show the Marines were under small arms fire at the time of the incident that Congressman Murtha calls ‘cold-blooded murder’.
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Thanks to Red Hot Cuppa Politics who is on this story….
New Blog - Murtha Must Go
Blue Crab Boulevard has A Soldier’s View and Backlash and Endangering the Troops
Also getting the word out: Chickenhawk Express, California Conservative, And Rightly So, Flopping Aces, Expose the Left, A Blog for All, Michelle Malkin, All Things Beautiful, Jeremayakovka, The Old Ranter. Sweetness and Light, Macsmind, Squiggler
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May 30th, 2006 at 9:22 pm
Beth, that is one of the best lifts I’ve had in a while, great story, thank you…
May 30th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
Isn’t it though Fred! I was getting ready for bed and saw it and had to throw a post up right away! lol Get the word around!
May 30th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
The Party The Marines Spoiled In Haditha ……
And Blue Star Chronicles has it too, along with a detailed list of WHO else has it……
May 30th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
A Suspicious Piece to the Haditha Puzzle…
Amid a damaging scandal in which United States Marines in November 2005 may have killed Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Iraq, in retaliation for the death of a Marine by an insurgentÂ’s IED (Improvised Explosive Device), a little Iraqi girlÂ’s candid testi…
May 31st, 2006 at 4:27 am
Wednesday Specials…
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May 31st, 2006 at 2:23 pm
[…] And though some commentators like Rep. Murtha have, despite not having bothered to read the official reports, publicly branded the accused Marines as cold-blooded killers who intentionally and deliberately slaughtered helpless civilians who were no threat to them, a slightly more nuanced view of both the Marines and the day’s events is beginning to emerge. Via Beth at Blue Star Chronicles, the Guardian paints a grim picture of conditions in Haditha: The executions are carried out at dawn on Haqlania bridge, the entrance to Haditha. A small crowd usually turns up to watch even though the killings are filmed and made available on DVD in the market the same afternoon. […]
May 31st, 2006 at 2:24 pm
[…] The party the Marines spoiled in Haditha (we should’ve just carpet-bombed the damn place) […]
May 31st, 2006 at 2:25 pm
My turn in Haditha…
I’m just waiting to hear from a wise friend of mine before I unleash the dogs of war on this bullshit idiotarian-driven Haditha story. In the meantime, while I try to compose myself before I end up committing blog suicide because of the Stupidit…
May 31st, 2006 at 6:08 pm
[…] Amid a damaging scandal in which United States Marines in November 2005 may have killed Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Iraq, in retaliation for the death of a Marine by an insurgent’s IED (Improvised Explosive Device), a little Iraqi girl’s candid testimony of the events may shed some light on what actually happened. The girl is 9 year old Eman Waleed, and she lost almost her entire immediate family in the killings.THE BACKGROUND:March 27, 2006 edition of Time Magazine reported in the article One Morning in Haditha:Here’s what all participants agree on: At around 7:15 a.m. on Nov. 19, a U.S. humvee was struck by a powerful improvised explosive device (IED) attached to a large propane canister, triggered by remote control. The bomb killed Terrazas, who was driving, and injured two other Marines. For U.S. troops, Haditha, set among date-palm groves along the Euphrates River, was inhospitable territory; every day the Marines found scores of bombs buried in the dirt roads near their base. Eman Waleed, 9, lived in a house 150 yards from the site of the blast, which was strong enough to shatter all the windows in her home. “We heard a big noise that woke us all up,” she recalls two months later. “Then we did what we always do when there’s an explosion: my father goes into his room with the Koran and prays that the family will be spared any harm.” Eman says the rest of the family—her mother, grandfather, grandmother, two brothers, two aunts and two uncles—gathered in the living room.Eman says she “heard a lot of shooting, so none of us went outside. Besides, it was very early, and we were all wearing our nightclothes.” When the Marines entered the house, they were shouting in English. “First, they went into my father’s room, where he was reading the Koran,” she claims, “and we heard shots.” According to Eman, the Marines then entered the living room. “I couldn’t see their faces very well—only their guns sticking into the doorway. I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny.” She claims the troops started firing toward the corner of the room where she and her younger brother Abdul Rahman, 8, were hiding; the other adults shielded the children from the bullets but died in the process. Eman says her leg was hit by a piece of metal and Abdul Rahman was shot near his shoulder. “We were lying there, bleeding, and it hurt so much. Afterward, 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.’”CNN ran footage of an interview with Eman Waleed that gives this surprising insight: (THE TRANSCRIPT)Narrator: But there is an intriguing variation in Eman’s account the 3rd time she tells it. She says she was expecting the bomb.Eman: “I was planning to go to school. I was about to get out of bed. I KNEW THE BOMB WOULD EXPLODE SO I COVERED MY EARS. The bomb exploded. The bomb struck an armoured vehicle. I don’t know if it was a Hum-V or an armoured vehicle. When the bomb exploded, they came straight to our house.”Narrator: The question is, was her expectation of the explosion a premonition, a fear based on the sound of the passing convoy? Or was it based on some knowledge? The interviewer does not follow up. He says the 9 year old got confused and got her story mixed up.She was “expecting the bomb to go off”? How could that be unless she had known ahead of time? And how would Eman know? It is possible that she *knew* for some other reason, but her comment is very suspicious.Having some knowledge of the tactics used by insurgents from my husband’s year in the Al Rashid district of Baghdad from May 2003 to February 2004 with the 82nd Airborne Division, the likely conclusion is that she knew the bomb would go off because her father may have been an insurgent, or was helping them. He may have talked about planting the IED. That is unclear. It is also likely this is the reason Eman’s father was found “praying” when the Marines, who knew just where to find someone with “prior knowledge” of the IED bombing, was to avoid retribution. Another possible explanation is that insurgents and/or terrorists killed the civilians themselves. It is not an unusual tactic for terrorists or insurgents to murder civilians, including women and children, and threaten the survivors with a similar fate if they do not blame it on US troops. In November 2004 when Marines enaged in the battle for Fallujah, this is exactly what happened. Insurgents went from house to house murdering civilians in cold blood. Unfortunately, this is not unusual.This in no way excuses the Marines’ actions, if indeed they did kill unarmed civilians. With the investigations ongoing, it is irresponsible to accuse US Marines until they have been found guilty. Remember the deadly riots that erupted throughout the Middle East in May 2005 when Newsweek falsely reported that US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, desecrated the Quran and “flushed it down the toilet”? It’s already starting again. Time Magazine offers a description of the fallout due to the article:Insurgent groups have actually made more of the massacre. Within days of TIME’s story (which was picked up by the Arab media), pamphlets appeared in Haditha, congratulating “those who participated in exposing the dirty deeds of the Americans.” The pamphlets were released by a group using the name “Islamic Resistance” — a cover for the terrorist group Ansar al-Sunnah. TIME’s story was cited in websites and Internet bulletin boards known to be used by insurgent groups. The families say they have never been contacted by any insurgents. Aljazeera is on top of the story as well: “Haditha Massacre Is Iraq’s Mai Lai ”Why not leave the accusations to our enemies and give the benefit of the doubt to the Marines until the facts are in?Michelle Malkin Expose the Left Iowa Voice Blue Star Chronicles Michelle Malkin Amy ProctorTrackback URL: http://amyproctor.squarespace.com/blog/trackback/514875 Posted on Tuesday, May 30, 2006 at 09:38PM by Amy Proctor | 11 Comments | 2 References […]
May 31st, 2006 at 6:44 pm
Gladiator, American Style…
Katy sent this link via email.
Thank you Katy.
Follow the link and turn up the volume. There are some GREAT pictures and the music is just right.
Gladiator, American Style
……
June 2nd, 2006 at 12:04 pm
[…] angry about innocent death, be angry at the right people. // posted by Rightwingsparkle @ 11:43 AM postCount(’114900801473240560′); |postCountTB(’114900801473240560′); […]
June 3rd, 2006 at 5:43 am
[…] […]
June 3rd, 2006 at 11:56 am
[…] Heres’ a blog called Blue Star Chronicles that lists some questionable points about the Haditha incident: http://bluestarchronicles.com/2006/05/30/the-party-the-marines-spoiled -in-haditha/ […]
December 28th, 2006 at 10:18 pm
What Everybody’s Talking About…
The Butcher of Baghdad canÂ’t escape his fate….