Haditha Story Falling Apart

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I honestly no longer believe the Murtha version of events regarding Haditha.

Do these allegations come from wanting more blood money or from the unending hatred of the United States?

I’m not sure yet but I do know that the facts about this incident just does not jive with the Murtha version.

Am I ready to pronounce the Marines innocent, not yet. But the pendulum is definitely starting to swing that way.

Look at the curious account by the eyewitness, Eman Waleed:

"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. According to military officials familiar with the investigation, the Marines say they came under fire from the direction of the Waleed house immediately after being hit by the ied. A group of Marines headed toward the house. 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.'"

The first thing that sticks out in this narrative is the fact that she couldn't tell who was shooting….the US, the Iraqi's, or somebody else. She just doesn't know.

The next thing is the discrepancy found by Allah at Hot Air. In the below interview of the same girl the story changes.

Recall that in the first version given to Time she says her father was in one room and everyone else was in the living room. The troops go kill Dad in the bedroom and then shoot everybody else in the living room.

In this interview she changes her story:

**Since I posted this YouTube has remove the video that was at this address: http://www.youtube.com/v/tc5j-i2nMX4

Get that, NOW she says that they threw a grenade under Granddad's bed BUT she had told Time that "I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head."

Allah also wonders how it is she saw the troops throw a grenade under a bed in a different room.

Now lets look at how the story was supposedly "uncovered".

After the incident a video of the bodies is supposedly videotaped by Thaer al-Hadithi.

al-Hadithi is a middle aged man who created the Hammurabi organization. This group believes the US is committing war crimes. al-Hadithi also use to work directly under the same doctor who pronounced the victims had all died of gunshot wounds (This doctor may harbor some ill feelings for the US also).

al-Hadithi makes the tape and then sits on it for months before handing it over to Abdel Rahman al-Mashhadani.

Who is Abdel?

He is al-Hadithi's partner in crime. They both created the Hammurabi Organization.

So Abdel gets the tape and then hands it over to Ali al-Mashhadani (note the similar last name with Abdel).

Now who is Ali al-Mashhadani? He is a journalist with connections to Reuters. He was arrested and imprisoned for 7 months for having pictures that tied him with terrorists. He was released and then given the tape.

The tape and the story was then given to the Human Rights Watch which is also hugely anti-American and funded by none other then George Soros.

Human Rights Watch then gives it to Time.

So EVERY single player in this report holds a grudge or bias against the US. Whether it comes from the doctor who proclaims that the US taking Saddam out of power was not a good thing :

An officer asked dr.Walid what he thinks of the Americans, and he replied “you are occupation troops, I wish that you were friends, but this way, things do not work.”

“Is it not better that we are here?” he asked again.

“No” dr. Walid replied “look at you, heavily armed in your military clothes, you frighten children. You create tension”.

Or from the members of the Hammurabi organization who states that the murder of innocent people happen every day at the hands of the US.

Or from the man who was imprisoned by the US for terrorist ties.

They all have a bone to pick.

Hell, the BBC itself states that the tape comes from a hardline Sunni group opposed to the US forces.

Then you have the residents of the town and the tradition of blood money.

An article from 2004 describes this bizarre tradition:

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.

So following this logic if the US didn't have a fight with the terrorists then the deaths of those tribe members would not have occurred so regardless of who killed the people and why, the coalition must pay the blood money. The thing is that there already was payment made to the families of 15 of the 24 dead. The other 9 were deemed by the US to have engaged in hostilities with the coalition and were not paid for.

Could the release of the video and the story of atrocities be because the tribe believes the other 9 should be paid for?

One final intriguing note. Recall Thaer al-Hadithi? The man who videotaped the hospital scene and sat on the tape for 4 months before giving it to his cohort in Hammurabi. He is a resident of Haditha.

Secretary-General of the Hammurabi Organization for Human Rights and Democracy Monitoring, and also a Haditha resident who witnessed parts of the incident, Thaer al-Hadithi, gives a detailed account of the alleged massacre of 24 Iraqis by U.S. Marines last year, to an Associated Press reporter at the offices of the group in Baghdad, Iraq Tuesday, June 6, 2006.

So could it be that the reason he sat on the tape is because the blood money was being paid to his tribe members. Once news came that 9 of them would not be paid for he releases it?

Furthermore in a May 27th article the WaPo interviewed residents of the town who say they witnessed or heard the carnage. Here is what I reported about this article that day:

This Washington Post article is one such example. They spoke to “eye witnesses” who describe a house to house massacre and then the shooting of a taxi full of men. But then they acknowledge some people say the taxi incident happened first and some people say a 500lb bomb was dropped on a house. The “eyewitnesses” are only identified as residents of the town but remember Haditha is right smack in the middle of a Sunni hotbed of terrorists. Could the “witnesses” have an agenda all their own?

So in the end we have the changing stories by the child witnesses and the residents of the town. We have the curious motivations behind those who taped the bodies and those who pushed the story to Time. We also have the fact that the biased Human Rights Watch told Time that they have a photo depicting civilians kneeling, posing no threat to the troops. Turns out they just heard that this photo existed. No one has the photo.

In the original version of this story, TIME reported that "one of the most damning pieces of evidence investigators have in their possession, John Sifton of Human Rights Watch told Time’s Tim McGirk, is a photo, taken by a Marine with his cell phone that shows Iraqis kneeling — and thus posing no threat — before they were shot." While Sifton did tell TIME that there was photographic evidence, taken by Marines, he had only heard about the specific content of the photos from reports done by NBC, and had no firsthand knowledge. TIME regrets the error.

I don't know about you but the motivations behind all these people and groups make me suspicious.

Now take a look at the first Marine to comment on this incident statements:

Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, 26, told his attorney that several civilians were killed Nov. 19 when his squad went after insurgents who were firing at them from inside a house. The Marine said there was no vengeful massacre, but he described a house-to-house hunt that went tragically awry in the middle of a chaotic battlefield.

"It will forever be his position that everything they did that day was following their rules of engagement and to protect the lives of Marines," said Neal A. Puckett, who represents Wuterich in the ongoing investigations into the incident. "He's really upset that people believe that he and his Marines are even capable of intentionally killing innocent civilians."

Wuterich's detailed version of what happened in the Haditha neighborhood is the first public account from a Marine who was on the ground when the shootings occurred. As the leader of 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, Wuterich was in the convoy of Humvees that was hit by a roadside bomb. He entered the house from which the Marines believed enemy fire was originating and made the initial radio reports to his company headquarters about what was going on, Puckett said.

[…]Wuterich's version contradicts that of the Iraqis, who described a massacre of men, women and children after a bomb killed a Marine. Haditha residents have said that innocent civilians were executed, that some begged for their lives before being shot and that children were killed indiscriminately.

Wuterich told his attorney in initial interviews over nearly 12 hours last week that the shootings were the unfortunate result of a methodical sweep for enemies in a firefight. Two attorneys for other Marines involved in the incident said Wuterich's account is consistent with those they had heard from their clients.

Kevin B. McDermott, who is representing Capt. Lucas M. McConnell, the Kilo Company commander, said Wuterich and other Marines informed McConnell on the day of the incident that at least 15 civilians were killed by "a mixture of small-arms fire and shrapnel as a result of grenades" after the Marines responded to an attack from a house.

[…]Gary Myers, a civilian attorney for a Marine who was with Wuterich that day, said the Marines followed standard operating procedures when they "cleared" the houses, using fragmentation grenades and gunshots to respond to an immediate threat.

"I can confirm that that version of events is consistent with our position on this case," Myers said. "What this case comes down to is: What were the rules of engagement, and were they followed?"

[…]"Once you go back over it, you have to determine if they applied the rules," the Marine official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the Marine Corps does not discuss rules of engagement. "Did they feel threatened? Did they perceive hostile intent or hostile action?"

On Nov. 19, Wuterich's squad left its headquarters at Firm Base Sparta in Haditha at 7 a.m. on a daily mission to drop off Iraqi army troops at a nearby checkpoint. "It was like any other day, we just had to watch out for IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and any other activity that looked suspicious," said Marine Cpl. James Crossan, 21, in an interview from his home in North Bend, Wash. He was riding in the four-Humvee convoy as it turned left onto Chestnut Road, heading west at 7:15 a.m.

Shortly after the turn, a bomb buried in the road ripped through the last Humvee. The blast instantly killed the driver, Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20. Crossan, who was in the front passenger seat, remembered hearing someone yell, "Get some morphine." Then he passed out.

Wuterich, driving the third Humvee in the line, immediately stopped the convoy and got out, Puckett said.

Puckett said that while Wuterich was evaluating the scene, Marines noticed a white, unmarked car full of "military-aged men" lingering near the bomb site. When Marines ordered the men to stop, they ran; Puckett said it was standard procedure at the time for the Marines to shoot suspicious people fleeing a bombing, and the Marines opened fire, killing four or five men.

Is this the taxi where the residents say they just pulled the occupants out and executed them? Hmmm.

Wuterich officially reported to his headquarters that there had been a makeshift bomb and called for a Quick Reaction Force, Puckett said. The first group encountered an unexploded bomb on another route — fueling concerns that insurgents were mounting an attack on the daily morning convoy — and a second force headed out. That group, including Marines with the 3rd Squad and the platoon's leader, a young second lieutenant, arrived minutes later.

Wuterich told Puckett that no one was emotionally rattled by Terrazas's death because everyone had a job to do, and everyone was concerned about further casualties. As Wuterich began briefing the platoon leader, Puckett said, AK-47 shots rang out from residences on the south side of the road, and the Marines ducked.

A corporal with the unit leaned over to Wuterich and said he saw the shots coming from a specific house, and after a discussion with the platoon leader, they decided to clear the house, according to Wuterich's account.

"There's a threat, and they went to eliminate the threat," Puckett said.

A four-man team of Marines, including Wuterich, kicked in the door and found a series of empty rooms, noticing quickly that there was one room with a closed door and people rustling behind it, Puckett said. They then kicked in that door, tossed a fragmentation grenade into the room, and one Marine fired a series of "clearing rounds" through the dust and smoke, killing several people, Puckett said.

[…]Although it was almost immediately apparent to the Marines that the people dead in the room were men, women and children — most likely civilians — they also noticed a back door ajar and believed that insurgents had slipped through to a house nearby, Puckett said. The Marines stealthily moved to the second house, kicking in the door, killing one man inside and then using a frag grenade and more gunfire to clear another room full of people, he said.

Wuterich, not having found the insurgents, told the team to stop and headed back to the platoon leader to reassess the situation, Puckett said, adding that his client knew a number of civilians had just been killed.

[…]Marine Reserve Lt. Jonathan Morgenstein, who served in Anbar province from August 2004 to March 2005, said that the account offered by Wuterich's attorney surprised him a bit.

"When I was in Iraq," Morgenstein said, "the Anbar-wide ROEs [rules of engagement] did not say we had the authority to knock down any door, throw in a hand grenade and kill everyone." Still, he said, if someone in a house in Haditha was shooting at them, the Marines' response may have been within procedure. "If they felt they took fire from that house, then that may be authorized."

Question? Who in the hell is this reserve Lt. and why is he being interviewed for this report? Shouldn't a soldier who understands the ROE as CURRENTLY used in Iraq be interviewed. Not someone who came home over 16 months ago.

A Marine who served near Haditha in November said it was not unusual for Marines to respond to attacks "running and gunning" and that it was standard practice to spray rooms with gunfire when threatened. "It may be a bad tactic, but it works," he said. "It keeps you alive."

After clearing the second house, Puckett said, Wuterich immediately got on the radio and reported the "collateral damage." When the company radio operator asked him to estimate how many civilians had been killed, he said he thought it was about 12 to 15.

McConnell, the company commander, "knew the number was high" and reported it to the battalion executive officer, a major, according to McDermott, his lawyer. McConnell also said that a Marine intelligence team investigated the civilian deaths and reported their findings to senior Marine commanders, the lawyer said.

Wuterich told his attorney that he never reported that the civilians in the houses were killed by the bomb blast and maintains that he never tried to obscure the fact that civilians had been killed in the raids. Whether Wuterich gave false information to his superiors is the focus of one of the military investigations. He said the platoon leader, who was on the scene, never expressed concern about the unit's actions and never tried to hide them.

The reports of a "cover-up" can be easily vetted based on the communications between the brass in these units. It won't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out. If what he is saying is true then the rest of his story may become that much more believable.

Allah at Hot Air notices this part of the story:

After going through the houses, Wuterich moved a small group of Marines to the roof of a nearby building to watch the area, Puckett said. At one point, they saw a man in all-black clothing running from one of the houses they had searched. The Marines killed him, Puckett said.

They then noticed another man in all black scurrying between two houses across the street. When they went to investigate, the Marines found a courtyard filled with women and children and asked where the man was, Puckett said.

When the civilians pointed to a third house, the Marines attempted to enter and found a man with an AK-47 inside, flanked by three other men; the first Marine to enter tried to fire his weapon, but it jammed, Puckett said. The Marines then killed those four men.

If these were guys bent on a rampage of slaughter, why did they not kill all these women and children?

This whole story is falling apart at the seams, and Murtha will have to stand tall if his verdict of murder against the Marines is found to be false.

So EVERY single player in this report holds a grudge or bias against the US. Whether it comes from the doctor who proclaims that the US taking Saddam out of power was not a good thing.

Or from the members of the Hammurabi organization who states that the murder of innocent people happen every day at the hands of the US.

Or from the man who was imprisoned by the US for terrorist ties.

They all have a bone to pick.

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