Saturday, January 6, 2007
Don't Let Them Trick Us into Another War
02:37
Yes, Iran does need fuel.
"the Bush administration has alternately said that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program or wants one. Without being able to prove those claims, the White House has made its case by implication, beginning with the point that Iran has ample oil reserves for its energy needs.
Ford's team commended Iran's decision to build a massive nuclear energy industry, noting in a declassified 1975 strategy paper that Tehran needed to "prepare against the time -- about 15 years in the future -- when Iranian oil production is expected to decline sharply."
Estimates of Iran's oil reserves were smaller then than they are now, but energy experts and U.S. intelligence estimates continue to project that Iran will need an alternative energy source in the coming decades. Iran's population has more than doubled since the 1970s, and its energy demands have increased even more."
"Lacking direct evidence, Bush administration officials argue that Iran's nuclear program must be a cover for bomb-making. Vice President Cheney recently said, "They're already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure why they need nuclear as well to generate energy."
Yet Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and outgoing Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz held key national security posts when the Ford administration made the opposite argument 30 years ago."
http://www.chomsky.info/art...
http://representativepress....
http://www.washingtonpost.c...
What's wrong with Israelis
The writer is far-right himself. He slags the government yet ignores the Military. In Israel, the Military calls the shots. Forget that 'liberal democracy' and equal rights for all crap.
Military law is back
---
What's wrong with Israelis
By Bradley Burston
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. -George Bernard Shaw
What if it's true? What if Israelis deserve no better than Ehud Olmert, Amir Peretz, Avigdor Lieberman, Moshe Katsav, Dan Halutz?
If we are stuck with them, and they have nothing to offer us in the way of governance or personal example, perhaps they can offer us something else. At the very least, maybe they have something to teach us. About ourselves. What's wrong with us.
Take the question of leadership. We know what we want in a leader, the kind of person we'd be fools not to follow. We want someone wiser than we are on issues of life and death, someone better able to see around corners and beyond horizons. We want someone of sounder judgment, superior imagination, someone whose ability exceeds his ambition, someone who cares about the country more than he cares about his chair. Someone who cares about us.
Now look who we've got.
At this point, the top echelon of government, and much of the top leadership of the military, is a collection of one-man fan clubs. Leaders whose followers long ago knew better than to continue to follow them.
Here's where it gets even more depressing.
What if the reason that we tend to get the leaders we most deserve is that we tend to vote for the leaders we most resemble?
The cabinet, the Knesset, the president, the chief rabbinate - they are their constituents in caricature. Us, in a fun house mirror.
If this is the case, it should be a fairly simple matter to divine what's wrong with Israelis. The male ones, at any rate.
First, we apply the Universal Law of Israeli Male Dynamics, which states, referring to behavior in the Gan, or Israeli pre-school:
They never left the Gan.
They can do whatever they want. They can say whatever comes to mind. There are no painful consequences, no significant punishments. They can decide that the sandbox is theirs, and woe to the kid who was there first.
They believe, and they may be right, that they will not be thrown out of the Gan, no matter what they do.
Anything goes.
Witness what is sometimes called the Rabin Principle, that we can battle terrorism as if there were no peace process, and pursue the peace process as if there were no fight against terror.
It doesn't work. In fact, any kid in Gan could probably figure out that it cannot work. But we are so clever, we tell ourselves, that we can make it work.
We won't let the fact that it never works deter us.
Witness Thursday night. As Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is launching one of the most potentially useful and significant summits, on his way to meeting key mediator Hosni Mubarak, the Israel Defense Forces was raiding Ramallah in an operation - carried live on Al Jazeera - that cost four Palestinian deaths. As well as any chance that the summit could help free kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit.
"Things developed in a way that could not have been predicted in advance," Olmert said, in an expression of magic thinking fully worthy of a response to an angry pre-school teacher. "If innocent people were hurt, this was not our intention."
Even in the absence of dramatic events, variations of the Gan axiom abound. A random selection, from the pre-school that meets every Sunday in the Cabinet Room:
THE SNEAK [Namecard: Ehud O.]
Teacher Evaluation: Good habits of personal hygiene. Plays well with others, until teacher's back is turned. His demeanor is correct, with an undertone of sleaze. Despite what teacher would hope, the sleaze on the exterior belies greater sleaze on the inside.
He will stealthily take whatever he can. He will put it where it cannot be easily found. When it is found, he will have an explanation at the ready. There is more where that came from, but no one can figure out where it is.
THE BULLY [Namecard: Avigdor L.]
Teacher Evaluation: Just as Ehud O. fools people into wondering whether he could possibly be as sleazy as he appears, Avigdor L. is often so verbally abusive that one might mistake it for nothing but idle, if intimidating, bluster. But underestimate him at your peril. He might just be the kind of bully that if you call his bluff, goes ahead and does just what he threatened - and woe the block that he decides to knock off.
THE LOUDMOUTH [Namecard: Amir P.]
Teacher Evaluation: Alternately enchanting and obnoxious, Amir P. talks a good game - often at the top of his lungs. But his undeniable people skills, along with his propensity for high-volume self-promotion, can land him in situations for which he is unprepared and unsuited.
And so it goes. Around the cabinet table sit all the traits to which we have fallen chronic victim:
The Minister of Arrogance and Insecurity.
The Minister of Ambition that Exceeds Ability.
The Deputy Minister for Reckless Glibness.
The Special Advisor for Inattention to Details.
The Minister of Disdain for Accountability.
The Minister of Profligate Tolerance for Corruption.
Finally, no overview of what's wrong with Israelis would be complete without a word on being provincial to the point of pathology.
It is one of the wonders of selective innocence. Left wing, right wing, professor or dropout, provincialism knows no barriers. It is everywhere in this tiny ghetto of a Jewish state.
Once, relatively few Israelis traveled abroad, foreign influences like television were limited, and down-on-the-farm narrowness was eminently understandable. No more. There's something about the provincialism of Israelis that has become a cultural staple, second nature. Effortless.
There's something oddly charming about it, when it's not causing someone pain.
You see it in its sub-cultural forms, in the hermetic self-satisfaction and immunity to criticism as exemplified in such groups as settlers, the ultra-Orthodox, the ultra-left.
You see it on a national level, in the conviction that a world that condemns Israel at every opportunity, and at times unjustly, actually frees it to act any way it damn pleases.
You might say there's something even childlike about it. A certain lack of perspective, that may, in fact, explain everything else.
Military law is back
---
What's wrong with Israelis
By Bradley Burston
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. -George Bernard Shaw
What if it's true? What if Israelis deserve no better than Ehud Olmert, Amir Peretz, Avigdor Lieberman, Moshe Katsav, Dan Halutz?
If we are stuck with them, and they have nothing to offer us in the way of governance or personal example, perhaps they can offer us something else. At the very least, maybe they have something to teach us. About ourselves. What's wrong with us.
Take the question of leadership. We know what we want in a leader, the kind of person we'd be fools not to follow. We want someone wiser than we are on issues of life and death, someone better able to see around corners and beyond horizons. We want someone of sounder judgment, superior imagination, someone whose ability exceeds his ambition, someone who cares about the country more than he cares about his chair. Someone who cares about us.
Now look who we've got.
At this point, the top echelon of government, and much of the top leadership of the military, is a collection of one-man fan clubs. Leaders whose followers long ago knew better than to continue to follow them.
Here's where it gets even more depressing.
What if the reason that we tend to get the leaders we most deserve is that we tend to vote for the leaders we most resemble?
The cabinet, the Knesset, the president, the chief rabbinate - they are their constituents in caricature. Us, in a fun house mirror.
If this is the case, it should be a fairly simple matter to divine what's wrong with Israelis. The male ones, at any rate.
First, we apply the Universal Law of Israeli Male Dynamics, which states, referring to behavior in the Gan, or Israeli pre-school:
They never left the Gan.
They can do whatever they want. They can say whatever comes to mind. There are no painful consequences, no significant punishments. They can decide that the sandbox is theirs, and woe to the kid who was there first.
They believe, and they may be right, that they will not be thrown out of the Gan, no matter what they do.
Anything goes.
Witness what is sometimes called the Rabin Principle, that we can battle terrorism as if there were no peace process, and pursue the peace process as if there were no fight against terror.
It doesn't work. In fact, any kid in Gan could probably figure out that it cannot work. But we are so clever, we tell ourselves, that we can make it work.
We won't let the fact that it never works deter us.
Witness Thursday night. As Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is launching one of the most potentially useful and significant summits, on his way to meeting key mediator Hosni Mubarak, the Israel Defense Forces was raiding Ramallah in an operation - carried live on Al Jazeera - that cost four Palestinian deaths. As well as any chance that the summit could help free kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit.
"Things developed in a way that could not have been predicted in advance," Olmert said, in an expression of magic thinking fully worthy of a response to an angry pre-school teacher. "If innocent people were hurt, this was not our intention."
Even in the absence of dramatic events, variations of the Gan axiom abound. A random selection, from the pre-school that meets every Sunday in the Cabinet Room:
THE SNEAK [Namecard: Ehud O.]
Teacher Evaluation: Good habits of personal hygiene. Plays well with others, until teacher's back is turned. His demeanor is correct, with an undertone of sleaze. Despite what teacher would hope, the sleaze on the exterior belies greater sleaze on the inside.
He will stealthily take whatever he can. He will put it where it cannot be easily found. When it is found, he will have an explanation at the ready. There is more where that came from, but no one can figure out where it is.
THE BULLY [Namecard: Avigdor L.]
Teacher Evaluation: Just as Ehud O. fools people into wondering whether he could possibly be as sleazy as he appears, Avigdor L. is often so verbally abusive that one might mistake it for nothing but idle, if intimidating, bluster. But underestimate him at your peril. He might just be the kind of bully that if you call his bluff, goes ahead and does just what he threatened - and woe the block that he decides to knock off.
THE LOUDMOUTH [Namecard: Amir P.]
Teacher Evaluation: Alternately enchanting and obnoxious, Amir P. talks a good game - often at the top of his lungs. But his undeniable people skills, along with his propensity for high-volume self-promotion, can land him in situations for which he is unprepared and unsuited.
And so it goes. Around the cabinet table sit all the traits to which we have fallen chronic victim:
The Minister of Arrogance and Insecurity.
The Minister of Ambition that Exceeds Ability.
The Deputy Minister for Reckless Glibness.
The Special Advisor for Inattention to Details.
The Minister of Disdain for Accountability.
The Minister of Profligate Tolerance for Corruption.
Finally, no overview of what's wrong with Israelis would be complete without a word on being provincial to the point of pathology.
It is one of the wonders of selective innocence. Left wing, right wing, professor or dropout, provincialism knows no barriers. It is everywhere in this tiny ghetto of a Jewish state.
Once, relatively few Israelis traveled abroad, foreign influences like television were limited, and down-on-the-farm narrowness was eminently understandable. No more. There's something about the provincialism of Israelis that has become a cultural staple, second nature. Effortless.
There's something oddly charming about it, when it's not causing someone pain.
You see it in its sub-cultural forms, in the hermetic self-satisfaction and immunity to criticism as exemplified in such groups as settlers, the ultra-Orthodox, the ultra-left.
You see it on a national level, in the conviction that a world that condemns Israel at every opportunity, and at times unjustly, actually frees it to act any way it damn pleases.
You might say there's something even childlike about it. A certain lack of perspective, that may, in fact, explain everything else.
The Mouse as Hater
01.06.07
The web is abuzz with the latest outrage from ABC/Disney. There is a hate-filled talk radio station here in San Francisco called KSFO, owned by ABC Radio, and a local blogger got ticked off enough by their programming to go and do something about their hate speech.
The blogger - Spocko - posted MP3s of some of the nasty shit that KSFO broadcasts and then wrote to the sponsors and advertisers on these programs with links to the audio files. It worked. Several large advertisers are going to remove their sponsorship from KSFO and this got the lawyers at Disney busy.
Disney forced Spocko’s blog offline by dropping a DMCA request on his hosting provider. It seems that these corporations are too big and stupid to learn their lessons: Attacking a blogger is like sticking your hand into a hornets nest.
Now Disney can try to deal with posts like this one on hundreds of blogs all around the world. Good luck, you morons.
And here’s what all of this is about:
Articles with quotes from the broadcasts and statements by Spocko:
ABC/Disney Endorses Hate Speech
…and here are links to the MP3s:
If you listed to even only a few of these, you will understand. This stuff is fascist hate speech of the worst possible kind. No honest company should be associated with vile, nasty shit like that.
Personally, I will finally sell all my Disney stock. We bought Pixar shares back in the day because we really liked what that company stood for. But now that these shares have been converted to Disney stock, I can make a timely statement about what I think of ABC/Disney by selling off the shares of a bunch of fascist enablers.
Posted in Rants
IVINS: It's up to us to stop this war
 | Molly Ivins is a nationally syndicated columnist. |
AUSTIN, Texas (CREATORS) -- The president of the United States does not have the sense God gave a duck -- so it's up to us. You and me, Bubba.
I don't know why Bush is just standing there like a frozen rabbit, but it's time we found out. The fact is WE have to do something about it. This country is being torn apart by an evil and unnecessary war, and it has to be stopped NOW.
This war is being prosecuted in our names, with our money, with our blood, against our will. Polls consistently show that less than 30 percent of the people want to maintain current troop levels. It is obscene and wrong for the president to go against the people in this fashion. And it's doubly wrong for him to send 20,0000 more soldiers into this hellhole, as he reportedly will announce next week.
What happened to the nation that never tortured? The nation that wasn't supposed to start wars of choice? The nation that respected human rights and life? A nation that from the beginning was against tyranny? Where have we gone? How did we let these people take us there? How did we let them fool us?
It's a monstrous idea to put people in prison and keep them there. Since 1215, civil authorities have been obligated to tell people with what they are charged if they're arrested. This administration has done away with rights first enshrined in the Magna Carta nearly 800 years ago, and we've let them do it.
This will be a regular feature of mine, like an old-fashioned newspaper campaign. Every column, I'll write about this war until we find some way to end it. STOP IT NOW. BAM! Every day, we will review some factor we should have gotten right.
So let's take a step back and note, for example, that before the war one of the architects of the entire policy, Paul Wolfowitz, testified to Congress that Iraq had no history of ethnic strife. Sectarian and ethnic strife is a part of the region. And the region is full of examples of Western colonial powers trying to occupy countries, take their resources and take over the administration of their people -- and failing.
The sectarian bloodbath we see daily completely refutes Wolfowitz. And now Bush has given him the World Bank to run. Wonder what he'll do there.
And let's keep in mind that when the Army arrived in Baghdad, we, the television viewers, watched footage of a bunch of enraged and joyous Iraqis pulling down the statue of Saddam Hussein, their repulsive dictator, in Firdos Square. Only one thing was wrong. The event was staged. Taking down the statue was instigated by a Marine colonel, and a PSYOP (psychological operations) unit made it appear to be a spontaneous show of Iraqi joy.
When we later saw the whole square where the statue was located, only 30 to 40 people were there (U.S. soldiers, press and some Iraqis -- and one of several U.S. tanks present pulled the statue down with a cable). We, the television viewers, saw the square being presented as though the people of Iraq had gone into a frenzy, mobbed the square and spontaneously pulled down the statue. Fake images and claims have been a part of this fiasco from the beginning.
We need to cut through all this smoke and mirrors and come up with an exit strategy, forthwith. The Democrats have yet to offer a cohesive plan to get us out of this mess. Of course, it's not their fault -- but the fact is we need leaders who are grown-ups and who are willing to try to fix it. Bush has ignored the actual grown-ups from the Iraq Study Group and the generals and all other experts who are nearly unanimous in the opinion that more troops will not help.
So, like I said, it's up to you and me, Bubba. We need to make sure that the new Congress curbs executive power, which has been so misused, and asserts its own power to make this situation change. Now.
Click here for more from Creators Syndicate.
Editor’s E-Mail May Be Used in Anthrax Suit Against The Times
January 6, 2007
Editor’s E-Mail May Be Used in Suit Against The Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS
ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 5 — A lawyer for a former government scientist who is suing The New York Times for defamation over a series of columns about the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001 said Friday in court that he was prepared to introduce an internal e-mail message from a senior Times editor that raised questions about one of the columns.
The lawyer, Mark A. Grannis, said the columns written by Nicholas D. Kristof about the federal investigation of the mailings unfairly damaged the reputation of his client, Dr. Stephen A. Hatfill, a former germ warfare scientist.
Dr. Hatfill’s lawyers have said the columns wrongfully suggested that he was responsible for the attacks.
--MORE--
Editor’s E-Mail May Be Used in Suit Against The Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS
ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 5 — A lawyer for a former government scientist who is suing The New York Times for defamation over a series of columns about the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001 said Friday in court that he was prepared to introduce an internal e-mail message from a senior Times editor that raised questions about one of the columns.
The lawyer, Mark A. Grannis, said the columns written by Nicholas D. Kristof about the federal investigation of the mailings unfairly damaged the reputation of his client, Dr. Stephen A. Hatfill, a former germ warfare scientist.
Dr. Hatfill’s lawyers have said the columns wrongfully suggested that he was responsible for the attacks.
--MORE--
Death in Haditha
Eyewitness Accounts in Report Indicate Marines Gunned Down Unarmed Iraqis in the Aftermath of a Roadside Bombing in 2005
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 6, 2007; A01
U.S. Marines gunned down five unarmed Iraqis who stumbled onto the scene of a 2005 roadside bombing in Haditha, Iraq, according to eyewitness accounts that are part of a lengthy investigative report obtained by The Washington Post.
Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, the squad's leader, shot the men one by one after Marines ordered them out of a white taxi in the moments following the explosion, which killed one Marine and injured two others, witnesses told investigators. Another Marine fired rounds into their bodies as they lay on the ground.
"The taxi's five occupants exited the vehicle and according to U.S. and Iraqi witnesses, were shot by Wuterich as they stood, unarmed, next to the vehicle approximately ten feet in front of him," said a report by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service on the incident that runs thousands of pages.
One of the witnesses, Sgt. Asad Amer Mashoot, a 26-year-old Iraqi soldier who was in the Marine convoy, told investigators he watched in horror as the four students and the taxi driver fell. "They didn't even try to run away," he said. "We were afraid from Marines and we saw them behaving like crazy. They were yelling and screaming."
The shootings were the first in a series of violent reactions by Marines on the morning of Nov. 19, 2005 that left 24 civilians -- many of them women and children -- dead, in what some human rights groups and Iraqis have called a massacre by U.S. troops.
The report, which relied on hundreds of interviews with Marines, Iraqi soldiers and civilian survivors conducted months after the incident, presents a fragmented and sometimes conflicting chronicle of the violence that day. But taken together, the accounts provide evidence that as the Marines came under attack, they responded in ways that are difficult to reconcile with their rules of engagement.
Four Marines were charged with murder last month in connection with the civilian deaths in Haditha: Wuterich, who faces 13 counts of unpremeditated murder; Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz; Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt; and Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum. Each faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted.
Through their lawyers, three have argued that they behaved appropriately while taking fire on a chaotic battlefield, and that the civilian deaths were a regrettable but unavoidable part of warfare in an especially dangerous area. Dela Cruz's attorney has declined to comment.
The Marine Corps also has charged four officers with failing to investigate and fully report the slayings: Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, Capt. Lucas M. McConnell, Capt. Randy W. Stone and Lt. Andrew A. Grayson.
The Marines told investigators that they believed they were authorized to fire freely inside two houses they raided in the minutes following the taxi shootings, after concluding that insurgents were firing on them. After an officer ordered them to "take" one of the homes and Wuterich commanded them to "shoot first, ask questions later," the Marines considered the houses "hostile," according to sworn statements to investigators.
Marine officials have accused the troops of failing to identify their targets before using grenades and guns to kill 14 unarmed people in the houses, including several young children in their pajamas, in a span of about 10 minutes, according to the documents.
Safah Yunis Salem, 13, who said she played dead to avoid being shot, was the only person to survive the Marine attack on the second house. Her sister Aisha, 3, was shot in the leg and died; her brother Zainab, 5, was killed by a shot to the head. She said she lost five other members of her family in the room, including her mother.
"He fired and killed everybody," Safah said. "The American fired and killed everybody."
Numerous Marine officers in the chain of command in Iraq -- including a major general -- knew about the civilian deaths almost immediately but did not launch an investigation for months, according to interview transcripts. Some lower-level officers did not believe that the Marines had done anything inappropriate, while high-ranking officers had limited information about the incident and did not inquire further.
Neal Puckett, one of Wuterich's attorneys, declined to comment on the case yesterday, saying he is "deeply disturbed that any media have access to what sounds like the entire investigation."
Wuterich told investigators in a February interview: "I want to make clear that we did not go in intentionally to spray everyone we saw. We were taking fire."
Marine Corps and NCIS officials declined to comment on details of the case because it is ongoing.
A Routine Mission Turns ViolentThe report provides a detailed narrative of the events leading to the violence in Haditha. The day began about 6 a.m., when Lance Cpl. Salvador A. Guzman Jr. awoke at Firm Base Sparta and members of his squad learned they would be bringing fresh Iraqi troops to a traffic checkpoint in Haditha. He bumped into Lance Cpl. Miguel "T.J." Terrazas, who joked that "we were going to get hit by an improvised explosive device one day because we travel so much," Guzman told investigators.
The Marines left the base at about 6:45 a.m. and made the personnel changes by about 7 a.m.; then they turned their four-vehicle convoy around and headed back. Sharratt, in the turret of the first Humvee, waved a white sedan over to the side of "Route Chestnut," and as it slid to the south shoulder a blast rocked the neighborhood.
Terrazas, who was driving the fourth Humvee, was killed instantly by the remotely detonated propane tank, which shredded the front of the vehicle and launched it into the middle of the road. Another Marine, severely injured, was trapped in the wreckage.
Marines who rushed to help told investigators they took enemy rifle fire from several locations on the north and south sides of the road. Navy Hospitalman Brian D. Whitt said he could see bullet impacts near his feet and noticed men with rifles disappearing from atop a house to the north. Some of the fire appeared to be coming from behind the white taxi.
The Marines concurred that they were under fire from all sides, indicating that the incident was part of a complex insurgent attack that lasted much of the day.
One Marine and two Iraqi soldiers told investigators that the men who had been in the taxi were standing in a line outside it, some with their hands in the air, when Wuterich began to fire on them.
Wuterich said the men got out of the car, and he shot them because he considered them a threat. But Dela Cruz said the men were standing in a line when they started to fall.
"As I crossed the median I saw one of the Iraqi civilians, who was standing in the center of the line, drop to the ground," Dela Cruz told investigators. "Immediately afterwards another Iraqi standing by him raised his hands to his head. I then heard other small arms fire and looked to my left and saw Sgt. Wuterich kneeling on one knee and shooting his M16 in the direction of the Iraqi civilians."
Dela Cruz told investigators that he pumped bullets into the bodies of the Iraqi men after they were on the ground and later urinated on one of them.
Minutes later, a Quick Reaction Force arrived from the Marine base, bringing Lt. William T. Kallop, the first officer on the scene. Kallop told investigators he began to receive enemy fire almost immediately. About that time, Cpl. Hector A. Salinas spotted a man firing at the squad from the corner of a house on the south side of the road.
"Salinas then stated that he could see the enemy so Kallop told them to 'take the house,' " according to an NCIS summary of an interview with Kallop. The interview provides the first evidence that an officer ordered the attack.
Richard McNeil, a lawyer who represents Kallop, declined to comment about him or his role, but he warned that "typically in an NCIS investigation, the narratives are always slanted to the interpretation of the government."
Wuterich, Salinas, Tatum and Lance Cpl. Humberto M. Mendoza formed a team to attack the house, launching grenades first and then busting through the door.
"I told them to treat it as a hostile environment," Wuterich told investigators. "I told them to shoot first, ask questions later."
Defense attorneys have argued that the men were following their "rules of engagement" when they shot into the homes, using effective techniques in a difficult environment.
The Marine division's rules-of-engagement card in effect at the time in western Iraq instructed Marines to "ALWAYS minimize collateral damage" and said that targets must be positively identified as threats before a Marine can open fire. It also told Marines that "nothing on this card prevents you from using all force necessary to defend yourself."
After entering the first house through a kitchen, Tatum told investigators, he heard what he believed was an AK-47 rifle being "racked," or readied to fire, around a corner. He and Salinas tossed grenades into the room, according to the documents. Waleed Hasan, 37, was killed. Khamisa Ali, 66, was shot dead in the hallway before four others were killed in a bedroom by grenades and rifle fire.
Nine-year-old Eman Hamed told investigators that a grenade landed near her grandfather's bed and exploded, sending shrapnel through the room. Her mother and 4-year-old brother were killed as she huddled, injured, with another brother, Abid, 6, who survived. "All rooms," Abid told investigators. "They were shooting in all rooms."
Several Marines said they quickly cleared the home by fire, shooting through the dust, debris and darkness to eliminate what they believed was a threat.
From there, Wuterich, Mendoza and Tatum said, they moved to a second house after suspecting that insurgents might have escaped. Mendoza told investigators that the Marines approached the second house the same way they did the first, treating it as hostile, according to his sworn statement. Mendoza said he shot a man, 43-year-old Yunis Rasif, through the house's glass kitchen door.
"I fired because I had been told the house was hostile and I was following my training that all individuals in a hostile house are to be shot," Mendoza told investigators. The Marines then entered the house and tossed grenades before firing into a back bedroom, which they later found was filled with women and children.
"Knowing what I know now, I feel badly about killing Iraqi civilians who may have been innocent, but I stand fast in my decisions that day, as I reacted to the threats that I perceived at the time," Tatum said. "I did not shoot randomly with the intent to harm innocent Iraqi civilians."
Jack Zimmerman, Tatum's attorney, declined to comment yesterday but decried the publication of the documents. "The ethical rules that govern lawyers prohibit me from even discussing the matter," he said.
Mashoot, the Iraqi soldier who was with the Marines, said he thought the attack on the houses was warranted because the entire convoy was taking fire. Investigators noted that he believed the Marines "had justification" because they were "defending themselves."
Another group of Marines, including Dela Cruz, simultaneously went to the north side of the road and found a dwelling that they believed was the "trigger house" for the roadside bomb. They took several Iraqis into custody, according to the documents, but did not shoot anyone in a search of several houses. Another man was shot after Marines observed him running along a ridgeline.
A few hours later, Sharratt, Wuterich and Salinas approached a third and fourth house after noticing men they said were peering at them suspiciously.
The investigative reports show that what happened there is unclear. Iraqi witnesses said the Marines angrily separated men and women into two lines before marching the men into the fourth house and shooting them. The three Marines told investigators they were searching for the men they had seen and separated the women into a safe area before Wuterich and Sharratt entered the house.
Sharratt told investigators that he saw a man raise an AK-47 rifle as if to shoot him. Sharratt said his gun jammed, but he grabbed his 9mm handgun and shot the attacker. He told investigators he saw another man with a rifle and shot him and two others because he "felt threatened." Wuterich also shot at the men, he said.
Sharratt has been charged with unpremeditated murder in three of the slayings.
Gary Myers, a lawyer representing Sharratt, declined to comment yesterday.
At First, No InquiryThe military did not launch an inquiry of the Haditha deaths until a Time magazine reporter began to inquire about the incident two months later. Marine officers told investigators the reason was simple: Nothing in the reports they received from the field caused them to believe that a probe was warranted.
Investigators appear to have found little evidence that Marines on the ground or at headquarters tried to conceal the day's events. But Dela Cruz told investigators that Wuterich asked him to back up claims that the men in the taxi were trying to flee before they were shot.
Puckett, Wuterich's lawyer, challenged Dela Cruz's assertion: "Staff Sergeant Wuterich adamantly denies asking anybody to lie or change their story."
The documents show that Marines in Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, reported the incident to their base as it was happening and made clear that there were a significant number of civilian casualties. Though at first the Marines classified eight of the civilians as insurgents, they quickly reported that at least 15 civilians had been killed in what they called "crossfire" with the enemy.
The events came amid heavy insurgent attacks in Haditha that day that ultimately prompted Marines to call in airstrikes on suspected insurgent homes. The hectic nature of the day caused some early reports to be confused and inaccurate, Marines told investigators.
The Kilo Company commander, McConnell, told his Marines on the day of the attacks that they had done a good job, according to an investigative summary in the NCIS report. Investigators wrote that McConnell did not want to question his Marines on a day they lost a comrade but that he informed his superiors about the civilian deaths.
"There was never a hint whatsoever that these kids did anything improper. Not one," said Kevin McDermott, a lawyer who represents McConnell.
Marine officers said Chessani, the Marines' battalion commander, informed his superior, the regimental commander, of the civilian casualties the day they occurred and was told by that officer, Col. Stephen W. Davis, that no investigation was needed.
"There was nothing out of the ordinary about any of this, including the number of civilian dead, that would have triggered anything in my mind that was out of the norm," Davis told military investigators, according to a transcript. "There is nothing about this incident that jumped out at any point to us."
Maj. Gen. Richard A. Huck, the division commander, told investigators he learned about the civilian casualties on the day they occurred and believed that they were the result of a roadside bomb and the ensuing gunbattle between Marines and insurgents. Huck visited Haditha three days later and was briefed on the incident.
"Nothing in the brief caused any concern to me," Huck told investigators. "I do not recall if the brief discussed the number of Iraqis killed that day, but I do recall the brief discussing Marines clearing houses following the IED attack."
McConnell and Chessani have been charged in the case; Huck and Davis have not. Attempts to reach Chessani or an attorney for him were not successful.
In December 2005, the Marines authorized $38,000 in condolence payments to the families of the civilians killed in the first two houses, and Chessani, in early February, explained the payments in a memo. "The enemy chose the time and place of his ambush. Without callous disregard for the lives of innocent bystanders, the enemy would not have chosen to fight from the bedrooms and living rooms of civilian-occupied houses," he wrote.
The official inquiry began two weeks later, after the Time reporter sent a list of questions about the incident to Marine officials in Iraq. In his e-mail, the reporter raised the possibility that Marines had massacred civilians and executed the men from the taxi, based in part on a videotape made by an activist a day after the incident.
Huck told investigators he dismissed the allegations, believing they were part of an insurgent campaign to smear the Marines. Other Marine officers, such as Davis, also believed that the allegations were outlandish.
But Maj. Samuel H. Carrasco, then a battalion operations officer, said he and the battalion executive officer suggested an investigation to Chessani. Carrasco told investigators that "Lt. Col. Chessani then shouted, 'My men are not murderers.' "
The first investigation, by Army Col. Gregory Watt, ordered by Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, then the top field commander in Iraq, essentially supported the Marines' accounts of events. Watt determined that the troops had reason to be suspicious of the men in the white car and concluded that while they did not positively identify targets in the houses, it might have been "unrealistic to expect" on the battlefield that day.
He also found no indication that the Marines "intentionally targeted, engaged and killed noncombatants," but he suggested a criminal investigation nonetheless. The NCIS investigation began March 12, leading to last month's charges.
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