From McClatchy:

This is how the residents of Haditha recall that day: U.S. Marines were apparently bent on revenge after a roadside bomb killed one of their own. They killed four unarmed men and an unarmed taxi driver. Then they threw grenades and entered two homes. In the Younes' household, they killed eight people, including two toddlers, a 5-year-old and a mother recovering from an appendectomy.

In an adjacent home, they killed seven people, including a 4-year-old and two women, according to death certificates and one of the children who survived. Across the street, residents of two houses shared by a family were pulled out. The men were separated from the women as the Marines asked them about weapons.

Family members said they had one AK-47 in each house, which Iraqi law allows. The Marines forced the women and children into one house at gunpoint, then took four brothers to a back bedroom and executed them, the family said.

Yousef Aid Ahmed was not at home when the killing occurred. He is now the sole breadwinner for his mother and extended family.

His father became ill after the shootings, and later, the family said, went blind from grief. Ailing, he lingered in a small bedroom where his sons were killed. One was gunned down to the left of the bed, a second to the right. The third man's body wound up inside a closet and the fourth was propped against the wardrobe. Despite a fresh coat of paint, the ceiling still bears grey spots where the men's blood spattered. They were all shot in the head.

The relatives seldom go into this room.

The Marines told a different story. Lt. Col. Paul J. Ware, an investigating officer with the Navy Marine Corps Trial Judiciary gave this account: Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, a Marine who acknowledged killing three of the brothers, told investigators that the four brothers were holed up in a back bedroom where the Marines later found two AK-47s. Ware wrote in the report that the evidence made the Iraqi's story implausible and their accounts were inconsistent.

The report didn't say whether there was any evidence that the AK-47s were fired. The report also implied that the family may have made up their story for the $10,000 in compensation for the deaths of civilians and that their credibility should be questioned because they were women and a teenager.

"Witness accounts are not credible," the report said about the case of one Marine accused of killing three of the brothers. "Although $10,000 does not appear to be a large amount of money...such a sum of money was equal to 4 times the average annual salary of a typical resident of Haditha. Prior to making these claims, no payments were made to the Ahmed family."

Relatives said they accepted the money after authorities told them it would help the case. Now they wish they'd never taken the cash.

"Right now I feel hatred that will not fade," said Yousef Aid Ahmed. "It grows every day."

As the McClatchy article explains, it increasingly appears that nothing will happen to the Marines that participated in the Haditha massacre. Someday, the Iraqis will liberate themselves from the predations of the occupation. One can only hope that it happens sooner rather than later.

Labels: "Support the Troops", American Empire, Haditha, Iraqi Deaths, Iraqi Resistance, Occupation of Iraq

The US is seeking to procure the approval of the Iraqi-American security agreement by any means necessary:

The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq's money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent.

US negotiators are using the existence of $20bn in outstanding court judgments against Iraq in the US, to pressure their Iraqi counterparts into accepting the terms of the military deal, details of which were reported for the first time in this newspaper yesterday.

Iraq's foreign reserves are currently protected by a presidential order giving them immunity from judicial attachment but the US side in the talks has suggested that if the UN mandate, under which the money is held, lapses and is not replaced by the new agreement, then Iraq's funds would lose this immunity. The cost to Iraq of this happening would be the immediate loss of $20bn. The US is able to threaten Iraq with the loss of 40 per cent of its foreign exchange reserves because Iraq's independence is still limited by the legacy of UN sanctions and restrictions imposed on Iraq since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the 1990s. This means that Iraq is still considered a threat to international security and stability under Chapter Seven of the UN charter. The US negotiators say the price of Iraq escaping Chapter Seven is to sign up to a new "strategic alliance" with the United States.

As Brecht or Trotsky would say, this is global gangsterism, pure and simple. It is also important to recall that the security agreement, an agreement that would establish permanent American control over Iraq, is just one piece of a larger puzzle. The US is also aggressively pushing the Iraqi government to agree to the privatization of the Iraqi oil industry on terms favorable to transnational oil companies, a proposal vehemently opposed by many Iraqis, including the oil workers union and Moqtada al-Sadr.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Congress passed a bill authorizing continued funding for the war that additionally provided for withdrawing reconstruction funds unless the Iraqi government agreed to the privatization proposal. With the end of the Bush presidency just over the horizon, the endgame , or, more accurately, the conclusion of this stage of the conflict, is now visible. With UN authorization for the occupation of Iraq about to lapse, Bush intends to internationally legitimize by treaty the right of the US to permanently station troops there for any purpose, including offensive military operations outside the country, and the transfer of control over Iraq's most value resource, oil, to foreign investors.

As the recent congressional vote on funding for the war makes clear, don't expect any significant Democratic opposition. Indeed, if Bush succeeds, Democrats may well believe that he will have done them a great favor by taking much of the question of how to deal with Iraq off the table. An incoming President Obama could claim that the Iraqis have voluntarily agreed to a continued US military presence through treaty, leaving him with the relatively minor determination as to the number of troops to be stationed there. Unlike Bush, and probably McCain, Obama would permit the Iraqi government to play act as if it governs independent of the dictates of the US State Department and Pentagon.

There is only one credible reason to condemn violent Iraqi resistance to the US occupation in these circumstances: pacifism. I respect people who attempt to conduct their lives according to the principles of this philosophy, but I must suggest that they have an obligation to the people of Iraq to explain how they can extricate themselves from US dominion non-violently. Oh, by the way, did I mention that a soldier who allegedly ordered the destruction of photographic evidence of the Haditha massacre was found not guilty yesterday? Prosecutors have already declined to bring murder charges against against the killers, relying upon the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter, and the prospect of any convictions appears increasingly unlikely.

Labels: American Empire, Haditha, Iraqi Deaths, Iraqi Resistance, Neoliberalism, Occupation of Iraq

For background on this grisly incident, go here and here and here and here. According to the eyewitness accounts of Iraqis, 24 Iraqis were massacred by Marines after a roadside blast. Consider, for example, this televised interview with a 10 year girl who saw the Marines kill 7 members of her family.

Or, these two accounts from my post of May 29, 2006:

A harrowing eyewitness account of the killings at Haditha in the London Times:

The latest accounts given to The Times paint a gruesome picture of events on November 19. About a quarter of an hour after the attack on Iman’s house, Mohammed Basit, 23, an engineering student, said that he watched as Marines entered the home of his neighbour, Salim Rasif, He peered from a window as the family, including Salim’s wife, sister-in-law and their five children, rushed into a bedroom.

I saw them all gathering in their parents’ room, then we heard a bang which was most likely a hand grenade, then we heard shooting,” he said. Fearing for his life, he moved away from the window.

Throughout the next day the Americans cordoned off Salim and Iman’s homes, which are located about 20 metres apart. The next night Basit and his father slipped inside Salim’s house. “The blood was everywhere in Salim’s bedroom,” Basit said. “I saw organs and flesh on the ground and a liver on the bed. Blood splattered the ceiling. The bullet holes were in the walls and in different parts of the house.

Even the editors of the New York Times have been compelled to get the story:

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 is wife, Aida, and Aida's sister, Huda. She said five children were also killed at that home, all between ages of 10 and 3.

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 she saw American troops kick her family members and that one American shouted in the face of one relative before he was killed.

The Marines initially brought murder charges, but, predictably, these killings of Iraqis by US troops, some of them execution style, no longer merit such serious charges:

After a two-year investigation into the killings of up to 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, the Marine Corps has decided that none of the Marines involved in the incident will be charged with murder. Instead, two enlisted Marines and two Marine officers will face trial in coming months for the killings and for failing to investigate them.

The most serious charges have been leveled against Marine Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, who is scheduled to be arraigned on charges of voluntary manslaughter in California next week, the last step before the case officially moves to trial.

Initially called a massacre by Iraqi residents of Haditha and later characterized as coldblooded murder by a U.S. congressman, the case has turned not on an alleged rampage but on a far more complex analysis of how U.S. troops fight an insurgency in the midst of a population they seek to protect.

The Marine Corps at first charged eight Marines and officers with murder or failing to investigate an apparent war crime. The charges have since been narrowed to four men in the unit, after three were cleared and a fourth was granted immunity to testify.

Wuterich is charged with nine counts of voluntary manslaughter, with the charges alleging that he had an intent to kill and that his actions inside a residential home and on a residential street in November 2005 amounted to unlawful killing "in the heat of sudden passion caused by adequate provocation." Charging documents released this week say he killed at least nine people without properly obtaining positive identification that they were the enemy in the midst of an attack. 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson has been charged with obstructing the investigation.

Wuterich and Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum are the only two shooters that day to face criminal scrutiny; Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, the battalion commander, faces charges that he was derelict in his duty for failing to ask for an investigation.

The charges arise from the Nov. 19, 2005, shootings of as many as 24 innocent civilians who were nearby when a roadside bomb killed a member of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines. Wuterich and others in his unit killed a group of men who were in a white car near the blast and then stormed into two nearby houses, killing unarmed men, women and children after the Marines believed they were taking fire from the homes.

Did you catch it? . . . the case has turned not on an alleged rampage but on a far more complex analysis of how U.S. troops fight an insurgency in the midst of a population they seek to protect . . . An alleged rampage? They burst into people's homes and killed 24 people, some by shooting them dead, others by sitting off a grenade. There are numerous Iraqi eyewitnesses who provided statements to the media and the investigators.

Which is why, of course, it was essential for the case to turn, not on the facts, the brutality of the massacre, but, instead upon the complex analysis of how U. S. troops fight an insurgency. Apparently, the lesson to be drawn from the desultory outcome of the Haditha prosecution is that, at worst, U. S. troops can arbitrarily kill civilians and only face the reduced criminal charge of manslaughter, as Wuterich currently does. Another soldier, Tatum, faces an unspecified charge, a reduced one of some kind, related to the killings. Two others, Chessani and Grayson faces ones related to the need for an investigation and the subsequent obstruction of it. Charges against four others have been dropped.

One suspects that the charges may have been dropped against many of the soldiers involved, and reduced against Wuterrich, Grayson and Tatum, because it would have resulted in a full airing of the rules of engagement for U. S. troops in Iraq. It is common for the attorneys representing soldiers facing serious discipline to claim that the actions of their clients, no matter how grotesque, are consistent with them. In other words, the rules of engagement place no restriction upon the use of deadly force against anyone or anything in event of an attack.

Note, for example, the remarks of one of Wuterich's defense attorneys:

Mark Zaid, one of Wuterich's defense attorneys, said the charges show there was no "massacre" and that the case highlights how difficult it is for U.S. troops to make tough battlefield decisions. He said Wuterich and the other Marines were following their rules of engagement when they shot and killed their targets in Haditha, with unfortunate -- but not illegal -- consequences.

"Every Marine, period, is trained with the intent to kill," Zaid said. "What everyone will realize at the end of the day is that the characterization of the events was nothing like reality, that the training the troops on the ground received was primarily responsible for what happened, and that the fog of war sometimes ends up with terrible results."

In any event, the Haditha killings exposed a face of the occupation that one rarely encounters in the U. S. They constitute the most extreme manifestation of the violence and degradation that U. S. troops inflict upon Iraqis as a matter of course. But don't expect anyone in the U. S. media and political system to emphasize it, or even acknowledge it, that's something that only Iraqis need to know.

Labels: Haditha, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Sadomasochism

ORIGINAL POST: As if pouring through floodgates, more accounts of the Marine atrocity at Haditha:

After the roadside bombing, the Marines arrived first at the door of Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali, 89, an amputee who used a wheelchair. They shot him, then turned their guns on his three sons and their families, survivors said.

Waleed Abdul Hameed, a 48-year-old worker in Al Anbar's religious affairs office, was among the first of the family members to be gunned down. His 9-year-old daughter, Eman, said she was still wearing her pajamas when the Marines arrived. Her 7-year-old brother, Abdul Rahman, said he hid his face with a blanket when his father was shot.

A few minutes later, the boy saw his mother fall to the ground, dying. I saw her while she was crying," he said. "She fell down on the floor bleeding." Speaking days ago in Haditha, months after the attacks, the boy broke into tears, covered his eyes with his hands, and began to mutter to himself.

At his side, his elder sister began to speak again. Eman described how the two had waited for help, the bodies of their family members sprawled on the floor. We were scared," she said. "I tried to hide under the bed." With shrapnel injuries to her legs, she lay still for two hours.

When the shooting began, Eman's aunt, Hibba Abdullah snatched her 5-month-old niece off the floor. The baby's mother had dropped her in shock after seeing her husband gunned down. Clutching the child, Abdullah ran out of the house. She and the baby, Aasiya, survived. The baby's mother "completely collapsed when they killed her husband in front of her," Abdullah said. "I ran away carrying Aasiya outside the house, but when the Americans returned they killed Asma, the mother of the child."

For much more, read this article in today's Los Angeles Times.

No doubt, many find these stories unpleasant and disturbing, even repellant, but there is a moral imperative associated with the publication of these Iraqi accounts of the slaughter at Haditha. One of the most troubling aspects of the media coverage of the war, and the response of many Americans to it, has been the refusal to acknowledge individual Iraqis when they describe what they have experienced. Usually, as with checkpoint shootings, Abu Ghraib, air strikes and, now, Haditha, Iraqi acccounts are only accepted once corroborated by the US military. Otherwise, they are ignored, or, if published, followed with a disclaimer rarely, if ever, attached to the statements of the US military: it could not be independently verified.

Am I the only person who recognizes the richness of the irony here? The US military launches an invasion of Iraq based upon false information about Saddam, al-Qaeda, and the presence of WMDs, and frequently attempts to justify the occupation by exaggerating the presence of "foreign fighters" (other Arabs, not US, UK and other military participants in the coalition), while paying to plant stories about the purported positive aspects of the occupation in the Iraqi media, but it is the accounts of Iraqis themselves that must be subject to independent confirmation.

Even Americans opposed to the war find it difficult to emphathize with Iraqis as victims of this conflict. On this site, and others, such as Eli Stephens' Left I on the News, I have frequently encountered the troubling tendency of evading the enormity of the violence inflicted upon Iraqis by making it general, and detached from any American responsibility by rendering it as some kind of objective, elemental condition, while the numerically much lesser brutalities inflicted upon American troops receives a heartfelt, specific response.

It commonly goes something like this (after a comment or post describing a detailed episode of brutality inflicted upon Iraqis by US troops): yes, war is a terrible thing, and innocents are invaribly killed and maimed, and it is horrible that our troops are over there, and find themselves inevitably caught up in such situations.

Get it? The Iraqis aren't being killed by Americans, they are being killed by that awful, perpetual condition known as war, analoguous to being killed in an earthquake or a hurricane, while war is simultanously victimizing our troops by involuntarily compelling them to commit such appalling acts. In other words, "they were just following orders" has been dressed in the clothes of metaphysics, the loss of free will when confronted with the day to day reality of combat. War is apparently the violent, deranged mythic brother of Adam Smith's invisible hand that controls the economic universe, too powerful for humans to resist.

Perhaps, the massacre at Haditha (and the other ones that we will soon discover) will shatter this moral myopia. The media now has the opportunity to relate to Iraqis as fully engaged participants in their own lives, with a valid perspective that must be told, free of the filters of cultural bias.

Meanwhile, we, as individuals, likewise have an opportunity to escape the comfortable allure of the "Good German" defense, as translated into the "Support the Troops" mantra which releases our troops from responsibility for their actions. No longer will the deaths and injuries of the relative few substitute for the death and destruction inflicted upon the many. Both stories can be told with a more appropriate context that recognizes the incomprehensible consequences of the war for Iraqis. If we seize these opportunities, it creates the prospect of a psychological transformation that will more rapidly facilitate the end of the occupation.

UPDATE: Eli Stephens over at Left I on the News provides a chilling example of how the media celebrates the callousness of the US military towards Iraqis as "restraint". He concludes:

The "rules of engagement" of the U.S. military, as illustrated by this episode, last week's massacre in Kandahar, or countless other examples, couldn't be clearer. If the U.S. military even thinks that a suspected enemy fighter is inside a building, they consider that they have the right to simply destroy that building, without even asking the question of who might be inside, much less actually attempting to find out. This is because the slightest risk to the life of one American soldier is evidently considered to outweigh a much more concrete risk to almost any number of innocent civilians.

Yes, this has been an essential feature of the conflict since its inception. And, with the intensification of resistance, it may well get worse before it gets better:

The Pentagon reported yesterday that the frequency of insurgent attacks against troops and civilians is at its highest level since American commanders began tracking such figures two years ago, an ominous sign that, despite three years of combat, the US-led coalition forces haven't significantly weakened the Iraq insurgency.In its quarterly update to Congress, the Pentagon reported that from Feb. 11 to May 12, as the new Iraqi unity government was being established, insurgents staged an average of more than 600 attacks per week nationwide. From August 2005 to early February, when Iraqis elected a parliament, insurgent attacks averaged about 550 per week; at its lowest point, before the United States handed over sovereignty in the spring of 2004, the attacks averaged about 400 per week.

The vast majority of the attacks -- from crude bombing attempts and shootings to more sophisticated, military-style assaults and suicide attacks -- were targeted at US-led coalition military forces, but the majority of deaths have been of civilians, who are far more vulnerable to insurgent tactics.

``Overall, average weekly attacks during this `Government Transition' period were higher than any of the previous periods," the report states. ``Reasons for the high level of attacks may include terrorist and insurgent attempts to exploit a perceived inability of the Iraqi government to constitute itself effectively, the rise of ethno sectarian attacks . . . and enemy efforts to derail the political process leading to a new government."

Note the major concession by the US military here, artfully presented by the Boston Globe as a mundane sort of throwaway line: The vast majority of the attacks -- from crude bombing attempts and shootings to more sophisticated, military-style assaults and suicide attacks -- were targeted at US-led coalition military forces, but the majority of deaths have been of civilians, who are far more vulnerable to insurgent tactics. Read that again carefully. The vast majority of the attacks are being directed, not towards Iraqi civilians, but towards the occupying army, predominately resulting in Iraqi civilian deaths. So, that recurrent, seemingly unanswerable, question remains: why are US troops still in Iraq?

Labels: Haditha, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Sadomasochism

A harrowing eyewitness account of the killings at Haditha in the London Times:

The latest accounts given to The Times paint a gruesome picture of events on November 19. About a quarter of an hour after the attack on Iman’s house, Mohammed Basit, 23, an engineering student, said that he watched as Marines entered the home of his neighbour, Salim Rasif, He peered from a window as the family, including Salim’s wife, sister-in-law and their five children, rushed into a bedroom.

I saw them all gathering in their parents’ room, then we heard a bang which was most likely a hand grenade, then we heard shooting,” he said. Fearing for his life, he moved away from the window.

Throughout the next day the Americans cordoned off Salim and Iman’s homes, which are located about 20 metres apart. The next night Basit and his father slipped inside Salim’s house. “The blood was everywhere in Salim’s bedroom,” Basit said. “I saw organs and flesh on the ground and a liver on the bed. Blood splattered the ceiling. The bullet holes were in the walls and in different parts of the house.

Even the editors of the New York Times have been compelled to get the story:

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 is wife, Aida, and Aida's sister, Huda. She said five children were also killed at that home, all between ages of 10 and 3.

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 she saw American troops kick her family members and that one American shouted in the face of one relative before he was killed.

Typically, upon the discovery of corroborating evidence developed by the US military, the Iraqi victims are no longer liars and collaborators with Islamic fundamentalists:

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.

So, again, there is that unanswerable question: why are American troops still in Iraq?

Labels: Haditha, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Sadomasochism

As suggested by initial reports in March, the truth is as bad as we feared:

Photographs taken by American military intelligence have provided crucial evidence that up to 24 Iraqis were massacred by marines in Haditha, an insurgent stronghold on the banks of the Euphrates.

One portrays an Iraqi mother and young child, kneeling on the floor, as if in prayer. They have been shot dead at close range.

The pictures show other victims, shot execution-style in the head and chest in their homes. An American government official said they revealed that the marines involved had “suffered a total breakdown in morality and leadership”.

The killings are emerging as the worst known American atrocity of the Iraq war. At least seven women and three children were among those killed. Witness accounts obtained by The Sunday Times suggest the toll of children may be as high as six. “This one is ugly,” a US military official said.

Such conduct necessarily leads to some rather disquieting speculation:

The incident is now being described as potentially the worst war crime since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, comparable to the Abu Ghraib scandal and reminiscent of the massacre of several hundred Vietnamese villagers at My Lai in 1968. But peace campaigners say the findings raise the prospect that other incidents reported to have involved the killing of "insurgents" actually involved the death of civilians. Andrew Murray, chair of the Stop the War Coalition, said: "It's clear that what happened in Haditha is a war crime. It would be idle to think this is the first war crime that has been committed in the last three years. It must be assumed that more of this is going on."

Naturally, this raises the question yet again, in the most horrible terms imaginable, why are American troops still in Iraq? As I noted here in March, the explanations of liberal apologists for the occupation, whether agonizingly sincere or politically expedient, have already been embarassingly exposed as disconnected from reality, as both political parties have scurried away from any commitment to deploy troops to defend Iraqis from a civil war that threatens to engulf the country. In Haditha, our troops merely killed Iraqis directly on the ground as we have been doing in a more distanced, more depersonalized way from the air.

Haditha is just the most stark example of the primary accomplishment of the American invasion and occupation: the perpetual, indiscriminate infliction of death and destruction upon the people of Iraq. After 9/11, our appetite for the killing and dehumanization of Arabs has been insatiable, rationalized by the most transparently absurd justifications. Will the Marine gangsterism of Haditha finally exhaust this bloodlust?

Labels: Haditha, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Sadomasochism

UPDATE: This is an important story that requires us to try to understand the reality of the US occupation in Iraq and the conduct of US troops there. To effectively engage it, we must suspend some of the common principles of blogging that cherish brevity and sharpness of wit and analysis. Readers should, in my view, try to independently evaluate the coverage of this story. Accordingly, I am liberally citing newspaper articles to establish the broadest possible context.

While it may be laborious, I encourage readers to first read the initial post below in full, and then proceed to read this update. As we do so, we should ask many questions, such as, are the explanations of the US military persuasive? Should we believe what the Iraqis, including Iraqi police, tell the media? If not, why not? Is there reason to believe that the US military will effectively investigate these incidents, especially given past experience? Even if we believe the US explanations, what does this say about a conflict that seems to necessarily involve the random killings of so many non-combatants?

Along these lines, Reuters has more:

The U.S. military hit back on Wednesday at what it called a "pattern of misinformation" following Iraqi police accusations that its troops shot dead a family of 11 in their home last week.

Responding to comments by police and residents in the town of Ishaqi, north of Baghdad, that U.S. officers had failed to attend a meeting on Wednesday about the incident, Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, a senior spokesman, told Reuters:

"There was no meeting scheduled with any Coalition investigators today. There appears to be a distinct pattern of misinformation surrounding this entire incident."

"This is another clear sign of that happening, making allegations for the sake of prompting media reporting and attempting to discredit Coalition operations. This is a pattern we've seen the terrorist-backed insurgency use repeatedly."

Relations between the U.S. military and Iraqi police in the mainly Sunni area north of Baghdad -- where many including police are sympathetic to the insurgency -- are strained, with police accusing U.S. troops of killing civilians and the military questioning the credibility of the police.

Reuters, consistent with other reports, emphasizes obvious contradictions between the accounts of the US military and residents:

The Ishaqi inquiry was announced days after the launch of a criminal investigation into events in the western town of Haditha in November, when U.S. Marines shot dead 15 civilians.

In Ishaqi, police said 11 people including five children under school age were found bound and shot in their home after the U.S. raid. The military said at the time that four people, including a guerrilla fighter, were killed.

Local journalists filmed the bodies of five young children, four women and two men who police said were killed in the raid.

Johnson said: "We have said repeatedly we know of four people killed after Coalition forces came under direct fire from the house, resulting in a heavy engagement to suppress it. The loss of life included two women and a child."

Residents remain outraged:

A week later, residents were still expressing anger. "We heard a barrage of shooting for 20 minutes and then we heard bombs," said Thiya Hussein, who said his cousin was killed. "After the Americans left we went to the house and found 11 people lying in blood together in one room. Five of them were children. They were bound in plastic handcuffs and shot. The baby, Husam, who was six-months-old, was shot dead. A 75-year-old woman was shot in the head," he told Reuters.

Another neighbor, Abbas Abid, said: "The house was damaged and the family was shot and lying in one room. Three cars were burned and four cows were shot also."

Accusations American soldiers have killed innocent people has fueled anger at the occupation among Iraqis, who complain that little disciplinary action has resulted from inquiries.

INITIAL POST: From the Minneapolis Star Tribune today:

Residents gave new details Monday about the shootings of civilians in a western Iraqi town, where the U.S. military is investigating allegations of potential misconduct by American troops last November. The residents said troops entered homes and shot and killed 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl, after a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Marine.

And, not surprisingly, the description of the incident by residents is most disturbing:

A U.S. military statement in November described it as an ambush on a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol that left 15 civilians, eight insurgents and a U.S. Marine dead in the bombing and a subsequent firefight. The statement said the 15 civilians were killed by the blast, a claim residents denied.

The residents said the only shooting done after the bombing was by U.S. forces.

"American troops immediately cordoned off the area and raided two nearby houses, shooting at everyone inside,'' said Rsayef, who did not witness the events but whose 15-year-old niece says she did. "It was a massacre in every sense of the word.''

Rsayef and another resident, former city councilman Imad Jawad Hamza, who spoke with hospital officials and residents, said the first house to be stormed was that of Abdul-Hamid Hassan Ali, which was near the scene of the bombing.

Ali, 76, whose left leg was amputated years ago because of diabetes, died after being shot in the stomach and chest. His wife, Khamisa, 66, was shot in the back. Ali's son, Jahid, 43, was hit in the head and chest. Son Walid, 37, was burned to death after a grenade was thrown into his room, and a third son, 28-year-old Rashid, died after he was shot in the head and chest, Rsayef and Hamza said.

Also among the dead were son Walid's wife, Asma, 32, who was shot in the head, and their son Abdullah, 4, who was shot in the chest, Rsayef and Hamza said.

Walid's 8-year-old daughter, Iman, and his 6-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman, were wounded and U.S. troops took them to Baghdad for treatment. The only person who escaped unharmed was Walid's 5-month-old daughter, Asia. The three children now live with their maternal grandparents, Rsayef and Hamza said.

Rsayef said those killed in the second house were his brother Younis, 43, who was shot in the stomach and chest, the brother's wife Aida, 40, who was shot in the neck and chest while still in bed where she was recuperating from bladder surgery. Their 8-year-old son Mohammed bled to death after being shot in the right arm, Rsayef said.

Also killed were Younis's daughters, Nour, 14, who was shot in the head; Seba, 10, who was hit in the chest; Zeinab, 5, shot in the chest and stomach; and Aisha, 3, who was shot in the chest. Hoda Yassin, a visiting relative, was also killed, Rsayef and Hamza said.

The only survivor from Younis's family was his 15-year-old daughter Safa, who pretended she was dead. She is living with her grandparents, Rsayef said.

The troops then shot and killed four brothers who were walking in the street, Rsayef and Hamza said, identifying them as the sons of Ayed Ahmed - Marwan, Qahtan, Jamal and Chaseb.

U.S. troops also shot dead five men who were in a car near the scene, Hamza and Rsayef said. They identified the five as Khaled Ayad al-Zawi and his brother Wajdi as well as Mohammed Battal Mahmoud, Akram Hamid Flayeh and Ahmad Fanni Mosleh.

It was not clear if the nine men were involved in the attack as the military statement said.

According to the Defense Department, the Marine who was killed near Haditha that day was Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20, of El Paso, Texas. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force.

Dr. Walid al-Hadithi, chief physician at Haditha General Hospital, said that about midnight the day of the attack, two U.S. Humvees arrived at the hospital - one carrying the bodies of men and the other those of women and children.

"They (the Marines) told me the women and children were shot in their homes, and they added that the men were saboteurs,'' al-Hadithi said. He said he was given a total of 24 bodies. "All had bullet wounds.''

Time magazine said its investigation showed that walls and ceilings in both houses were pockmarked with shrapnel and bullet holes as well as sprays of blood. The video did not show any bullet holes on the outside of the houses - holes that might support the military report of a gunbattle.

The military, after being shown the videotape in January, concluded civilians were killed by Marines, Time said, victims of "collateral damage.''

Patrick Cockburn has provided some additional background in a Counterpunch article:

The Marines claim they heard shots coming from the direction of Waleed's house. They burst in to the house and Eman heard shots from her father's room. They then entered the living room, where the rest of the family was gathered. She said: "I couldn't see their faces very well - only their guns sticking in to the doorway. I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny."

The US soldiers started shooting in to the corner of the room where Eman and her eight-year-old brother, Abdul Rahman, were cowering. The other adults in the room tried to protect the two children with their bodies and were all shot dead. Eman and her brother were both wounded.

"We were lying there, bleeding and it hurt so much. Afterwards 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 it'."

The Marines' explanation is that they heard the sound of a Kalashnikov being readied to shoot and had then fired their weapons. The Marines say they were fired at from a second house, where they broke down a door, threw in a grenade and opened fire. The eight who died in the second house included the owner, his wife, the owner's sister, a two-year-old son and three young daughters.

In a third house the Marines searched four young men were shot dead. A military investigation decided these were insurgent fighters, along with four others killed in the street.

The Marines later delivered 24 bodies to a hospital in Haditha, claiming they had been killed by shrapnel from a bomb. Dr Wahid, the director of the hospital, said: "It was obvious to us there were no organs slashed by shrapnel. The bullet wounds were very apparent. Most of the victims were shot in the head and chest - from close range."

An US military investigation decided the deaths were "collateral damage". Relatives were paid $2,500 (£1,400) for each of the dead.

Even more alarming, this may not be the only such incident. As MSNBC reported last Wednesday:

U.S. forces flattened a house during a raid north of Baghdad early Wednesday, killing 11 people — mostly women and children, while insurgent attacks elsewhere left four dead, police and relatives said. The U.S. military acknowledged the raid and said it captured one insurgent. It took place near Balad, about 50 miles north of the capital. But the military said only four people were killed — a man, two women and a child.

The Daily Star of Lebanon interviewed the residents themselves:

Associated Press photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered figures arriving at Tikrit General Hospital accompanied by grief-stricken relatives.

The U.S. military said in a statement its troops had attacked a house in Ishaqi, the town 100 kilometers north of Baghdad, to capture a "foreign fighter facilitator for the Al-Qaeda in Iraq network."

"There was one enemy killed. Two women and one child were also killed in the firefight. The building ... [was] destroyed," the military said, adding the Al-Qaeda suspect had been captured and was being questioned.

Major Ali Ahmad of the Iraqi police said U.S. forces had landed on the roof of the house in the early hours and shot the 11 occupants, including the five children. "After they left the house they blew it up," he said.

Another policeman, Colonel Farouk Hussein, said autopsies had been carried out at Tikrit hospital and found that "all the victims had gunshot wounds to the head."

The bodies, their hands bound, had been dumped in one room before the house was destroyed, Hussein said. Police had found spent American-issue cartridges in the rubble.

"It's a clear and perfect crime without any doubt," he said.

Ishaqi's town administrator, Rasheed Shather, said the town was shocked: "Everyone went to the funeral. We want the Americans to give us an explanation for this horrible crime."

One man who described himself as a relative said one was just seven months old.

Both incidents are apparently under investigation at this time. Anyone with additional information and links is encouraged to post in the comment section.

Labels: Haditha, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Sadomasochism