Blood Money & Haditha

Andrew Walden points out the glaring inconsistencies involved in the Haditha incident in this article.  Most noticeably the fact that all the eyewitnesses are kids and the effect that "blood money" may have more to do with this thing then first meets the eye. 

First he notices that the only ones talking about this incident is the MSM and political hacks.  The reasons are simple they are the only ones making the rounds is because the investigation isn't completed yet.  Murtha and gang are trying to make a name for themselves while undermining our troops and because the investigation is ongoing the Marines can't rebut their accusations.  Except one:   

Only now, two and a half months after the story broke in the March 19 issue of Time magazine, are the voices of soldiers who question the charges beginning to be heard. Marine Captain James Kimber commanded Lima Company of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment. The troops involved in the incident were from Kilo Company. He tells interviewers that he first learned about the shootings in February when he heard that a Time magazine reporter was asking questions about civilian deaths. Notably, Kimber says he heard nothing about a civilian massacre during weekly meetings with the Haditha City Council and talks with local leaders. "It would have been huge, there would have been no question it would have filtered down to us," he said. "We reported no significant atmospheric change as a result of that day."

Kimber who has been relieved of his command and is back in Camp Pendleton, CA says, “I believe I was a political casualty as a result of the Haditha incident.” Some media accounts indicate that some of the dead were relatives of a Haditha City Council member. The May 12, 2006 edition of Iraq Reconstruction Update carries a photo and short article about Marine officers holding weekly meetings with the Haditha City Council with no mention of the alleged shooting controversy. […]CNN reporter, Arwa Damon, writes:

“I know the Marines that were operating in western al Anbar, from Husayba all the way to Haditha. I went on countless operations in 2005 up and down the Euphrates River Valley. I was pinned on rooftops with them in Ubeydi for hours taking incoming fire, and I've seen them not fire a shot back because they did not have positive identification on a target. I saw their horror when they thought that they finally had identified their target, fired a tank round that went through a wall and into a house filled with civilians. They then rushed to help the wounded — remarkably no one was killed.

“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….”

[…]Who are the accusers? In the haze created by the media frenzy, it may seem that there are reports from eye witnesses to the actual shooting who are not Iraqi locals. This is not true.

[…]The actual eyewitnesses claiming to have seen the shooting as it happened are three Iraqis:

According to a May 27 Washington Post article, “only 13-year-old Safa Younis lived — saved, she said, by her mother's blood spilling onto her, making her look dead when she fell, limp, in a faint….Townspeople led a Washington Post reporter this week to the girl they identified as Safa. Wearing a ponytail and tracksuit, the girl said her mother died trying to gather the girls. The girl burst into tears after a few words. The older couple caring for her apologized and asked the reporter to leave.”

This account differs slightly from an ABC News report which shows a video of Safa Younis. She calmly says yes to leading questions from an off-camera interviewer describing Marines throwing a grenade into the bathroom of her home and killing the other seven members of her family. She responds with amazing composure for one who has witnessed the murder of her parents and siblings. She does not mention her mother’s blood spilling all over her. She says she is 12 years old. Is it staged testimony? This can only be discovered in an investigation or trial.

ITV news March 30 carries yet another interview—this time with a ten-year-old Iraqi girl named Iman Walid. Like Safa, Iman calmly describes the murder of seven members of her family by US Marines in Haditha on November 19. A third person, Aws Fahmi, claims to live next door to the house where the massacre allegedly occurred and also claims to be a friend of the men killed in the taxi. He claims to be an eyewitness.

Andrew then brings up the journalist I blogged about a few days ago who obviously has a bone to pick with the US:

Ali al-Mashhadani, an Iraqi journalist reporting on the Haditha incident was recently re-arrested by the Marines for suspected insurgent ties. He was held for 12 days. Al-Mashhadani had earlier been held for five months beginning August 8, 2005 and ending in January, 2006. According to Reuters, “Among Mashhadani's recent stories was reporting from the town of Haditha in March. Following Time magazine's revelation of accusations that U.S. Marines shot dead 24 civilians there in November, he filmed fresh interviews with local officials and residents that were widely used by international media.” According to the March 19 Time' article:

A day after the incident, a Haditha journalism student videotaped the scene at the local morgue and at the homes where the killings had occurred. The video was obtained by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with the internationally respected Human Rights Watch, and has been shared with Time.

This video is the source of all the images being spread across the international media purporting to show the aftermath of the Haditha incident. The “internationally respected” Human Rights Watch (HRW) has been accused of anti-Israel bias and is funded by numerous left-wing foundations including George Soros’ Open Society Institute. HRW accuses US forces of “torture” in Iraq and Afghanistan which, in one report, it defines as, “interrogation techniques including hooding, stripping detainees naked, subjecting them to extremes of heat, cold, noise and light, and depriving them of sleep….” HRW advocates putting US soldiers under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court–a foreign-controlled judiciary.

So far we have a Marine officer telling us that during the weeks after the supposed "massacre" NONE of the town's people brought up this event.  Then we have the three children eyewitnesses who have made contradictory statements, and appear to have statements rehearsed.  Finally we have a journalist who was jailed by the coalition for seven months due to his connection with terrorists filming a video for a far left wing group.  Any of this add up?

A key point in dispute is whether the 24 who died in Haditha November 19 were gunned down, as Murtha says, “in cold blood” or were 15 civilians killed by the IED and nine hostiles then killed in a firefight as the Marines claim. The families refuse to allow an exhumation which could possibly answer this key question. According to the June 2 Washington Post, those exhumations may occur soon. The Post continues: “The delay already has presented many hurdles for investigators, who have had to rely on dated information, witnesses and suspects who had months to tailor their stories, and a lack of fairly routine forensic evidence that should have been collected at the time the civilians were killed….”

Without an exhumation all allegations that 15 of the dead were killed by gunfire rather than an IED explosion rely on the death certificates issued by the local Iraqi doctors at the Haditha hospital morgue where the bodies were taken by Briones and other Marines dispatched after the incident. These doctors live under constant threat from terrorist insurgents.

So on top of everything I described NOW we have the families refusing to exhume the bodies for forensic evidence. The only way to find out if these people were indeed shot and executed is to exhume these bodies.  A doctor from the local clinic is not going to cut it, no way no how.  This whole area is full of terrorist sympathizers and to trust this doctor will not work.  They HAVE to be exhumed.  

Andrew then goes on to give an excellent example why these "eyewitnesses" may be anything but: 

There is a possibility that Iraqi eyewitness sources’ credibility may fall apart in the event of a trial. It has happened before in similar cases. The reasons are deep rooted in tribal culture.

A British case which speaks directly to the credibility of tribal witnesses and to the Islamic tribal tradition of “blood money” collapsed November 3, 2005. On trial were seven British soldiers charged with murder stemming from a May, 2003 incident in Ferkah, Iraq. All charges were dismissed after it became clear that the key witnesses were lying in order to gain “blood money”. The BBC describes the collapse of the trial as follows:

“…it has become clear to everyone involved as the trial has progressed that the main Iraqi witnesses had colluded to exaggerate and lie about the incident.”

Three women had admitted lying about being assaulted by British soldiers and one witness had told the court that Mr. Abdullah's family encouraged others to tell lies, Judge Blackett said.

Witnesses some distance from the scene “could not possibly have seen what they said they saw”, he added.

And Iraqi court witnesses had used the case to seek “compensation to what were patently exaggerated claims”, he said.

One witness at the court martial, Samira Rishek, a Marsh-Arab who had claimed to have been brutally beaten by the soldiers while she was pregnant, admitted to the court it was a “wicked lie".

The court heard that Mrs. Rishek, along with other witnesses, was paid $100 a day to give evidence at the trial and that she only agreed to give evidence after being told she would be paid.

BBC correspondent Paul Adams said there was an "underlying sense" that some of the witnesses were "out to try and get something for themselves".

Why all the lies for a paltry $100 per day? It makes sense for a tribal person who believes that the blood money system is the way of the world. A February 2, 2004 BBC article explains the workings of the blood money system in a case involving only Iraqis:

On the side of a road in a ramshackle tent tribal elders have gathered for a court case, but it is not an ordinary law court, it's a tribal court. The case defies logic – one brother has killed another, but the tribe they belonged to is blaming a rival tribe for the killing.

Their argument is that if there had not been a feud with the other tribe, the killing would not have taken place; they are now demanding $20,000 in blood money….

At the tribal court, the discussion is heated, but not about guilt or innocence. Through a complex network of tribal support, both sides know where they stand, now it is just a matter of agreeing the money.

Eventually the price is knocked down to $4,000 and a woman, her value to be determined in later negotiations.

For many Iraqis it's a system that works, and in a violent region recompense appears much more practical than locking someone away.

The logic in the British case and possibly in Haditha is simple: If the coalition did not have a fight with the insurgents, the deaths would not have occurred. The deaths cause a loss in the resources of the tribe. The tribe cannot file a claim with Zarqawi, he might chop their heads off, therefore it is the coalition that owes blood money. In the eyes of tribal people such as Haditha residents, this debt is owed regardless of who actually killed the 24 people in Haditha or the circumstances of those deaths. The payment of blood money is not an admission of guilt; it is a balancing of tribal obligations.

What tribal Iraqis would understand as blood money has in fact already been paid by US military representatives in Haditha. According to the May 31 New York Times payments totaling $38,000 were made “within weeks of the shootings” to the families of 15 of the 24 dead. The Times continues:

In an interview Tuesday, Maj. Dana Hyatt, the officer who made the payments, said he was told by superiors to compensate the relatives of 15 victims, but was told that rest of those killed had been deemed to have committed hostile acts, leaving their families ineligible for compensation.

After the initial payments were made, however, those families demanded similar payments, insisting their relatives had not attacked the marines, Major Hyatt said….

The list of 15 victims deemed to be noncombatants was put together by intelligence personnel attached to the battalion, Major Hyatt said. Those victims were related to a Haditha city council member, he said. The American military sometimes pays compensation to relatives of civilian victims.

The relatives of each victim were paid a total of $2,500, the maximum allowed under Marine rules, along with $250 payments for two children who were wounded. Major Hyatt said he also compensated the families for damage to two houses.

"I didn't say we had made a mistake," Major Hyatt said, describing what he had told the city council member who was representing the victims. "I said I'm being told I can make payments for these 15 because they were deemed not to be involved in combat."

The description of compensation “within weeks” of November 19 places the payments in December. Time magazine says it was early January when they gave US military spokesman Col. Barry Johnson, a copy of a video of the Haditha aftermath. That would place the release of the video to Time just after the payment of compensation to the families of the 15 Haditha residents killed. Could the release of the video have been motivated by demands for blood money for the families of the other nine?

Very intriguing.  Could this whole thing be over blood money?  Seeing how this system is deeply rooted in this culture and the fact that 9 of the families did not get paid, this very well could be the case.

Are lies being told to obtain blood money payments? Some insight comes in this response to the collapse of the British trial by Stephan Holland, a Baghdad-based US contractor.

I’ve been in Iraq for about 18 months now performing construction management. It is simply not possible for me to exaggerate the massive amounts of lies we wade through every single day. There is no way – absolutely none – to determine facts from bulls*** ….

It is not even considered lying to them; it is more akin to being clever – like keeping your cards close to your chest. And they don’t just lie to westerners. They believe that appearances–saving face–are of paramount importance. They lie to each other all the time about anything in order to leverage others on a deal or manipulate an outcome of some sort or cover up some major or minor embarrassment. It’s just how they do things, period.

I’m not trying to disparage them here. I get along great with a lot of them. But even among those that I like, if something happens (on the job) I’ll get 50 wildly different stories, every time. There’s no comparison to it in any other part of the world where I’ve worked. The lying is ubiquitous and constant.

The British Ministry of Defense spent the equivalent of about $18 million on the investigation and the trial which collapsed in November, 2005—29 months after the initial incident. The Haditha charges could also collapse, but not until the media and politicians have enjoyed months of free reign to slander US combat troops’ conduct in Iraq. This could be very demoralizing to US troops who may feel their combat operations will be dissected under a microscope by investigators who do not share their risk. If the British case is a model then the investigation will be followed by a trial which could drag out until early 2008. Investigators must to dig out the truth so the sacrifices made by our troops in Iraq are not swept away in a sea of lies.

And a sea of lies this may very well be. 

Others Blogging:

• Sweetness & Light
• Rantingprofs
• Hot Air
• Michelle Malkin
• Atlas Shrugs
• Sweetness & Light
• Enviromental Republicans
• Big Dog's Weblog

So far we have a Marine officer telling us that during the weeks after the supposed “massacre” NONE of the town’s people brought up this event. Then we have the three children eyewitnesses who have made contradictory statements, and appear to have statements rehearsed. Finally we have a journalist who was jailed by the coalition for seven months due to his connection with terrorists filming a video for a far left wing group. Any of this add up?

Curt

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