An Iraqi My Lai?
Topic: Iraq

According to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, an Iraqi police report accuses the U.S. military of executing 11 Iraqi civilians in a village 60-miles north of Baghdad last week, including a 75-year old woman and a six-month old baby. "The villagers were killed after U.S. troops herded them into a single room of the house...The report did not specify how the villagers were killed, but a local police commander said autopsies indicated they had all bullet wounds in the back of their heads."

The reports says, "The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 persons, including five children, four women, and two men. Then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles, and killed their aninals." According to U.S. military spoksman Maj. Tim Keefe, there had been a fire-fight after U.S. troops were tipped off that there was an al-Qaeda member in the house and had used "ground and air assets" to neutralize the target, which included a missile fired by an attack helicopter, but he hadn't heard about the report alleging executions. He said he had seen the pictures of the dead and concluded from them that they hadn't been killed by our troops. Of course, an investigation has been launched and I'm sure the military will do its usual thourough job of making sure the truth comes out, just like at Abu-Ghraib and Gitmo.

While they're at it they might want to look into the killing by U.S. troops of a teacher, his wife and 13-year old son and four other people in the Sunni town of Duluiyah yesterday.

The WaPo reports:

"A top police official, as well as a resident who claimed he saw the fighting, said U.S. troops also shot and killed a family of three during house-to-house searches after the firefight.

'I saw corpses on the ground that I believe were of armed men who had clashed with the American forces' and with the Iraqi army, said Ahmad Hashem, the resident. 'Then the American soldiers appeared and started searching homes. They raided a house which was close to my home and killed a man named Ahmad Khalaf Hussein, his wife and his 10-year-old son.'"

And then there's also the new investigation that took three months to get started into the killing of 15 civilians last November in Haditha.

Knight Ridder reports:

"The investigation will center on whether a squad of 12 to 15 Marines with the 2nd Marine Division's Regimental Combat Team 2 from Camp Lejeune, N.C., responded appropriately to the insurgent attack 'and whether proper procedures were followed,'(an) official said.

The U.S. military official described the November incident as a coordinated attack that included improvised explosives and small-arms fire from several locations. The official said that it was common for insurgents to fight from civilian homes and structures and place noncombatants in the line of fire. But Iraqis frequently have accused U.S. forces of opening fire indiscriminately after they are attacked."

That would pretty much explain all of these incidents. My God, what the hell are we doing over there?

[See Non Sum Dignus for "Rummy's march of folly."]