[Vision2020] Iraq's My Lai Massacre

[rvrcowboy]

"Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and former marine who has become
a fierce critic of the Iraq war, said he had no doubt marines killed
innocent civilians in Haditha and tried to cover up the deaths."

I think it is disgusting for `people like Nick Gier to post this sort of
inflamable material to a public forum.  What are his motives?  Is he trying
to be a part of the solution to a problem or simply attempting to further
the rhetoric and anger?

It is clear what Mr. Gier thinks about our soldiers in Iraq.  He believes
they are cold blooded murders who kill innocent people without provocation.
Why else would he post such a condemnation of them here even bofore they
have had a chance to defend themselves?   He takes the word of people who
live in an area where insurgents daily contrive ways to turn people against
America and our military by fabricating stories and killing others who do
not go along with them.  What sort of man condems our own troops as heinous
murderers and then claims to support them and their families?  Why can't he
wait for the investigation to be completed and the facts to be known before
implicating our own soldiers of these heinous acts on the word of those who
may have other motives in mind, other than getting out the truth?

And just read the words of John Murtha, the great American traitor.  He has
already condemed our troops as murderers and thugs, without waiting for the
facts to be investigated.  Even if his accusations prove to be true, after
investigation, Murtha proves by his own words just how anxious he is to make
America look bad to the rest of the world and support the insurgency by
giving them credibility, even before the actual facts are known.  Don't
these soldiers deserve the same right to defend themselves as anyone else?

Nick Gier is a fake and a fraud if he pretends to care about our troops or
our country.  He is the sort of scum our colleges are wrought with who are
indoctrinating our young people with phillosiphies and ideals against their
own nation.  The very nation that has made it possible for them to attend
the colleges where people like Gier fill them full of bull shit.

One does not have to be an intelluctual or college professor to recognize
the motives of people like Nick Gier.  He makes it clear with his venomous
attacks on our society daily.  He hates everything about our country, our
government and anyone who does not agree with his ultra-liberal stance on
every single issue.

Most of you defended the right of Kanay Mubita to a fair hearing, but you
will likely support the smearing of our own troops by people like Gier and
Murtha.  All the while, pretending that you support the troops!  What a
joke!

Excuse me while I retch!

Dick Sherwin

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <nickgier at adelphia.net>
To: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Monday, May 29, 2006 10:29 AM
Subject: [Vision2020] Iraq's My Lai Massacre


> May 29, 2006, New York Times
> Iraqis' Accounts Link Marines to the Mass Killing of Civilians
> By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and MONA MAHMOUD
>
> BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 28 — Hiba Abdullah survived the killings by American
troops in Haditha last Nov. 19, but said seven others at her father-in-law's
home did not. She said American troops shot and killed her husband, Rashid
Abdul Hamid. They killed her father-in-law, Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali, a
77-year-old in a wheelchair, shooting him in the chest and abdomen, she
said.
>
> Her sister-in-law, Asma, "collapsed when her husband was killed in front
of her eyes," Ms. Abdullah said. As Asma fell, she dropped her 5-month-old
infant. Ms. Abdullah said she picked up the baby girl and sprinted out of
the house, and when she returned, Asma was dead.
>
> Four people who identified themselves as survivors of the killings in
Haditha, including some who had never spoken publicly, described the
killings to an Iraqi writer and historian who was recruited by The New York
Times to travel to Haditha and interview survivors and witnesses of what
military officials have said appear to be unjustified killings of two dozen
Iraqis by marines. Some in Congress fear the killings could do greater harm
to the image of the United States military around the world than the Abu
Ghraib prison scandal.
>
> The four survivors' accounts could not be independently corroborated, and
it was unclear in some cases whether they actually saw the killings. But
much of what they said was consistent with broad outlines of the events of
that day provided by military and government officials who have been briefed
on the military's investigations into the killings, which the officials have
said are likely to lead to charges that may include murder and a cover-up of
what really happened.
>
> The name of the Iraqi who conducted the interviews for The Times is being
withheld for his own safety, because insurgents often make a target of
Iraqis deemed collaborators.
>
> Haditha, a sand-swept farming town flecked with date palms on the upper
Euphrates River, is in one of Iraq's most dangerous areas, ridden with
insurgents in the heart of Sunni-dominated Anbar Province.
>
> Three months earlier, 20 marines from a different unit were killed around
Haditha over a three-day span. Fourteen were killed by a bomb that destroyed
their troop carrier. Six others, all snipers, were ambushed and killed on a
foot patrol. Insurgents appeared later to rejoice and boast about the sniper
ambush, releasing a video over the Internet that appeared to show the attack
and the mangled and burned body of a dead American serviceman.
>
> Haditha is under the control of insurgents that include Tawhid and Jihad,
a name that has been used by the terrorist organization of Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, said Miysar al-Dulaimi, a human rights lawyer who has relatives
in Haditha and who returned there two days after the killings and spoke to
witnesses and neighbors. Mr. Dulaimi said that outside their bases, the
Americans controlled almost nothing.
>
> "People are so scared," he said. "They have lost confidence in the
Americans. If the Americans show up in the neighborhood the insurgents will
come and take away people they accuse of being stooges of the Americans."
>
> But just over six months ago, 24 people in the Subhani district of Haditha
faced a different death, witnesses and survivors say.
>
> The killings began after 7:15 a.m., as the neighborhood was stirring
awake, when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb in Subhani that killed
Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas of El Paso, Tex., as his patrol drove through the
area.
>
> According to one United States defense official, who declined to be
identified because details of the investigation are not supposed to be
revealed, most of the subsequent killings are believed to have been
committed by a handful of marines led by a staff sergeant who was their
squad leader, although other marines are also under investigation.
>
> In the home Ms. Abdullah escaped from, she said American troops also shot
and killed a 4-year-old nephew named Abdullah Walid. She said her
mother-in-law, Khumaysa Tuma Ali, 66, died after being shot in the back. Two
brothers-in-law, Jahid Abdul Hamid Hassan and Walid Abdul Hamid Hassan, were
also killed, she said.
>
> In addition to Ms. Abdullah and Asma's baby, two others survived. One,
9-year-old Iman Walid Abdul Hamid, said she ran quickly, still clad in her
pajamas, to hide under the bed with her younger brother, Abdul Rahman Walid
Abdul Hamid, when she saw what was happening.
>
> "We were scared and could not move for two hours. I tried to hide under
the bed," she said, but both her and her brother, Abdul Rahman, were hit
with shrapnel.
>
> Abdul Rahman, 7, said very little about that day. "When they killed my
father Walid, I hid in bed," he said.
>
> Hiba Abdullah assumed the two children had died, but she said they were
later found at a local hospital.
>
> One Haditha victim was an elderly man, close to 80 years old, killed in
his wheelchair as he appeared to be holding a Koran, according to the United
States defense official, who described information collected during the
investigation. An elderly woman was also killed, as were a mother and a
child who were "in what appeared to be a prayer position," the official
said.
>
> Some victims had single gunshot wounds to the head, and at least one home
where people were shot to death had no bullet marks on the walls,
inconsistent with a clearing operation that would typically leave bullet
holes, the official added.
>
> Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who leads the Armed Services
Committee, pledged Sunday to hold hearings on the Haditha killings as soon
as the military investigation is concluded.
>
> "I'll do exactly what we did with Abu Ghraib," he said on the ABC News
program "This Week," referring to hearings. He added that there were serious
questions of "what was the immediate reaction of the senior officers in the
Marine Corps."
>
> Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and former marine who has become
a fierce critic of the Iraq war, said he had no doubt marines killed
innocent civilians in Haditha and tried to cover up the deaths. Marine Corps
officials, he said on the same television program, have told him that troops
shot one woman "in cold blood" who was bending over her child begging for
mercy.
>
> In all, 19 people were killed in three separate homes in Haditha, and 5
were killed after they approached the scene in a taxi, survivors and people
in the neighborhood said.
>
> Hiba Abdullah said that after the killings in her father-in-law's home,
the American troops moved to the house of a neighbor, Younis Salim Nisaif.
She said he was killed along with his wife, Aida, and Aida's sister, Huda.
She said five children were also killed at that home, all 3 to 14 years old.
>
> There was one survivor, Safa Younis Salim, 13, who in an interview said
she lived by faking her death. "I pretended that I was dead when my
brother's body fell on me and he was bleeding like a faucet," she said. She
said that she saw American troops kick her family members and that one
American shouted in the face of one relative before he was killed.
>
> Military officials declined Sunday to comment on details of the killings
described by survivors. "The investigations are ongoing, therefore any
comment at this time would be inappropriate and could undermine the
investigatory and possible legal process," said Lt. Col. Sean Gibson, a
Marine spokesman.
>
> David P. Sheldon, a defense lawyer advising a marine under investigation
in the case, said what was publicly known about the case "raises a
disturbing picture, but I think the situation was very confusing." He added
that "the insurgent pressure in that part of Iraq has been particularly
virulent" which caused "a very stressful environment."
>
> Three days before a roadside bomb attack that preceded the Nov. 19
killings, another marine from the same unit had been killed when a bomb
detonated under his vehicle in Haditha. It was the first combat death that
the unit, the Third Battalion of the First Marine Regiment, had suffered on
that deployment to Iraq.
>
> Neighbors said that in the third home assaulted on Nov. 19, four brothers
were killed by American troops. The wife of one of the brothers, who would
identify herself only as the widow of a brother named Jamal, said the four
victims were all between the ages of 20 and 38.
>
> The troops forced women in the home to leave at gunpoint, the widow said.
Afterward, she said the women heard gunshots coming from the home, but the
troops forbade them from returning. Eventually, she said, they went inside
and found the bodies of Jamal and three brothers, Marwan, Jassib and
Kahatan.
>
> Mr. Dulaimi, the human rights lawyer who traveled to Haditha two days
after the killings, said neighbors told him the father of the four victims
and owner of the home was Ayad Ahmed al-Gharria, who does odd jobs and has a
shop in Haditha. The neighbors, Mr. Dulaimi said, told him the troops killed
Marwan first. The three other brothers were killed after they came to see
what was happening, he said.
>
> Five more Iraqi men died that day after they approached the American
troops in a taxi, according to people in the neighborhood. Four were
students and the fifth was the driver of the taxi, and all were between the
ages of 18 and 25, they said.
>
> After the killings, Mr. Dulaimi said Haditha clerics and elders led a
protest march on the American base near a dam on the Euphrates. From the
city's mosques, Mr. Dulaimi said, clerics condemned the killings and said
the Americans "promise they will bring peace and security to this country,
but what has happened is they are spreading panic, fear and terror among the
people."
>
> One person from the neighborhood, Salim Abdullah, said relatives from two
of the families had taken compensation payments of as much as $2,500 per
victim from American officials who later visited. Relatives of other victims
have not taken payments, he said.
>
> The United States defense official said the payments were also a focus of
investigators trying to determine whether the killings were improperly
covered up. On "This Week," Representative Murtha suggested that the
decision to make payments was strong evidence that Marine officers up the
chain of command had knowledge of the events. "That doesn't happen at the
lowest level," he said. "That happens at the highest level before they make
a decision to make payments to the families."
>
> The Marines also face an inquiry into the killing of an Iraqi man on April
26 near Hamandiyah, west of Baghdad. A preliminary inquiry found "sufficient
information" for a criminal investigation, the Marines said. Representative
Murtha said a marine fired an AK-47 rifle so there would be spent cartridges
near the body, making it look as if the victim had been firing a weapon.
>
> A spokesman for the First Marine Division, Lt. Lawton King, said several
marines suspected of involvement in the incident had been put in the brig at
Camp Pendleton, Calif., or restricted to the base.
>
> An Iraqi reporter contributed reporting from Haditha for this article, and
David S. Cloud and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.
>
>
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