LibriumArcana.Games

CBC wrote:Published reports say the U.S. Pentagon has evidence that its Marines deliberately murdered at least two dozen unarmed civilians in the Iraqi city of Haditha last November.

The New York Times and other news agencies also reported on Friday there were attempts to cover up the incident by describing the deaths first as the result of a makeshift bomb and then as the result of a deadly crossfire.

"There was no firefight, there was no IED [improvised explosive device] that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood," said Democratic Rep. Jack Murtha.

Another congressman says he was told the number killed was nearly double that first reported. Both Houses of Congress are planning hearings.

Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution says the Haditha killings will resurrect images of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968. "However unrepresentative the actions may be, the sheer cold-bloodedness and ruthlessness of the tragedy is going to be a major blow," he said.

Information on charges is expected to be released next week.

BBC wrote:New 'Iraq massacre' tape emerges
The BBC has uncovered new video evidence that US forces may have been responsible for the deliberate killing of 11 innocent Iraqi civilians.
The video appears to challenge the US military's account of events that took place in the town of Ishaqi in March.

The US said at the time four people died during a military operation, but Iraqi police claimed that US troops had deliberately shot the 11 people.

A spokesman for US forces in Iraq told the BBC an inquiry was under way.

The new evidence comes in the wake of the alleged massacre in Haditha, where US marines are suspected of massacring up to 24 Iraqi civilians in November 2005.

'Massacre'

The video pictures obtained by the BBC appear to contradict the US account of the events in Ishaqi, about 100km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, on 15 March 2006.

The US authorities said they were involved in a firefight after a tip-off that an al-Qaeda supporter was visiting the house.

According to the Americans, the building collapsed under heavy fire killing four people - a suspect, two women and a child.

But a report filed by Iraqi police accused US troops of rounding up and deliberately shooting 11 people in the house, including five children and four women, before blowing up the building.

The video tape obtained by the BBC shows a number of dead adults and children at the site with what our world affairs editor John Simpson says were clearly gunshot wounds.

The pictures came from a hardline Sunni group opposed to coalition forces.

It has been cross-checked with other images taken at the time of events and is believed to be genuine, the BBC's Ian Pannell in Baghdad says.

So you equate the actions of a few, and place the blame on the whole?

Narsil wrote:I feel sorry for you yanks. You seem like an alright lot - but you've got one or two million people in your large country which sort of let you down somewhat.

I want to know where the fuck you get a few million bad eggs from

Batman wrote:Well from contecxt it looked decidedly like you were talking explicitely about the armed forces, Narsil.

Narsil wrote:

I want to know where the fuck you get a few million bad eggs from

Bush supporters, Fundie twats, Murderers in the military, Abortion-clinic bombers, etc. There are definitely a few million throughout all that. I apologise if my wording wasn't clear enough.

Narsil wrote:

Batman wrote:Well from contecxt it looked decidedly like you were talking explicitely about the armed forces, Narsil.

I hadn't realised that at the time, or I'd have worded it differently. Though it was 11pm, and I have been suffering from sleep deprivation, caused by a distinct lack of ability to sleep. And the fact that my family plays (crap) music extremely loud in the mornings doesn't help.

Narsil wrote:I hadn't realised that at the time, or I'd have worded it differently. Though it was 11pm, and I have been suffering from sleep deprivation, caused by a distinct lack of ability to sleep. And the fact that my family plays (crap) music extremely loud in the mornings doesn't help.

ABC News wrote:GIs at Ishaqi Cleared; Haditha Probe Open
By HAMZA HENDAWI and KIM GAMEL

BAGHDAD, Iraq Jun 2, 2006 (AP)— A military investigation into allegations that American troops intentionally killed civilians in Ishaqi, a village north of Baghdad, has cleared them of misconduct, the U.S. said Friday even though it acknowledged the deaths of up to 13 Iraqis in the March raid.

Meanwhile, a lawyer representing families of some of the two dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians allegedly killed by U.S. Marines in the western town of Haditha on Nov. 19 said three or four Marines carried out the shootings while 20 more waited outside the homes. He also said victims' relatives turned down a request by U.S. investigators to exhume the victims' bodies for forensic tests.

The investigation of the March 15 attack in Ishaqi concluded that the U.S. troops followed normal procedures in raising the level of force as they came under attack upon approaching a building where they believed an al-Qaida terrorist was hiding, said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a U.S military spokesman.

Caldwell also acknowledged there were "possibly up to nine collateral deaths" in addition to the four Iraqi deaths that the military announced at the time of the raid. The results of the investigation were released after questions were raised about the original U.S. report as television stations aired AP Television News footage of a row of dead children in the aftermath of the raid.

The probe was part of U.S. investigations into possible misconduct by American troops in at least three separate areas of Iraq. Besides Haditha and Ishaqi, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman could face murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges in the April shooting death of an Iraqi man west of Baghdad.

The military said Friday it will cooperate with the Iraqi government in its own investigation of Haditha and other incidents of alleged wrongdoing by U.S. troops. "We're going to give them whatever assistance they need as a part of this investigation," said Army Brig. Gen. Donald Campbell, the chief of staff for U.S. forces in Iraq.

Campbell's pledge came a day after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki upbraided the U.S. military over Haditha, which he called "a horrible crime," and accused U.S. troops of habitually attacking unarmed civilians.

On Friday, White House press secretary Tony Snow said al-Maliki had told U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad that he had been misquoted. But Snow was unable to explain what al-Maliki told Khalilzad or how he had been misquoted.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld defended the training and conduct of U.S. troops and said incidents such as the alleged massacre of Iraqi civilians at Haditha shouldn't happen.

"We know that 99.9 percent of our forces conduct themselves in an exemplary manner. We also know that in conflicts things that shouldn't happen, do happen," he said. "We don't expect U.S. soldiers to act that way, and they're trained not to."

In Haditha, the Marines, enraged by the loss of a comrade, stormed into nearby homes in the area and allegedly shot occupants dead as well as several men in a taxi that arrived at the scene of the blast, according to U.S. lawmakers briefed by military officials.

In one of the homes, Marines ordered four brothers inside a closet and shot them dead, said the Haditha lawyer, Khaled Salem Rsayef.

Rsayef said he himself lost several relatives in the alleged massacre, including a sister and her husband, an aunt, an uncle and several cousins. He and his brother, Salam Salem Rsayef, spoke to The Associated Press by telephone from the Euphrates River town of 90,000 late Thursday and Friday.

Despite the Iraqi government's insistence of cooperation between the U.S. and Iraqi investigations, the Rsayefs said they and other victims' families refused the request several months ago to exhume the bodies.

"No way we can ever agree to that," Salam Salem Rsayef said. Under Islamic teachings, exhuming bodies is prohibited, but is allowed on case-by-case basis, sometime after a fatwa, or an edict, from a senior cleric allowing it to proceed.

The Rsayef brothers met at least four times with U.S. military investigators looking into the killings. They said the meetings began in February and were held at Samarra General Hospital. The next meeting is scheduled for Sunday, the two brothers said, suggesting that the U.S. investigations are not finished.

Khaled Salam Rsayef identified the four brothers killed in the closet as a car dealer, a traffic policeman, an engineer and a local government employee. He said the U.S. military did not give compensation payments to their families because the brothers were believed to be insurgents.

The lawyer said his account of what happened was based on his personal observations from the rooftop of his home and windows. He said his house is several dozen yards away from the three homes raided by Marines. The killings, which he did not witness in person, were recounted to him and other members of his family the following day by survivors, he said.

He said his own home shook violently when the roadside bomb went off at 7:15 a.m. and that intermittent gunfire lasted for about two hours. He could not go out of his house to see for himself, but managed to steal quick glances from his roof and from behind windows.

"About 5 p.m. I emerged with my family carrying white flags," he said. "We wanted to move away from the area fearing that shooting could resume."

The New York Times, in a story for Saturday editions posted on its Web site, quoted a senior Marine officer as saying that commanders learned within two days that civilians in Haditha were killed by gunfire and not a roadside bomb. But the officer, who wasn't further identified, said officials had no information suggesting the civilians had been killed deliberately and saw no reason to investigate further.

The Haditha attack came four months before the nighttime raid in the village of Ishaqi, about 50 miles north of Baghdad.

A U.S. ground force conducted the Ishaqi attack, said two defense officials in Washington. After being fired upon from the targeted building, the soldiers pulled back and called in airstrikes by an Air Force AC-130 gunship, which attacked and collapsed the building, they said.

One of the officials said the investigation into the circumstances of the Ishaqi attack found that four people in the building were killed by U.S. forces, including two women and a child. The main target of the attack, said by U.S. intelligence to be an al-Qaida figure, ran from the building but was later captured, the official said.

Caldwell said that a search found "the body of Abu Ahmed plus three noncombatants," while the "investigating officer concluded that possibly up to nine collateral deaths resulted from this engagement but could not determine the precise number due to collapsed walls and heavy debris."

Local Iraqis said there were 11 dead, contending they were killed by U.S. troops before the house was leveled.

The bloody aftermath of the attack was captured at the time in the footage shot by an AP Television News cameraman. The video became the focus of attention Friday when the BBC aired it in the wake of recent allegations of U.S. troops killing unarmed civilians.

The footage shows at least one adult male and four of the children with deep wounds to the head that could have been caused by bullets or shrapnel. One child has an obvious entry wound to the side and the inside of the walls left standing were pocked with bullet holes. A voice on the tape said there were clear bullet wounds in two people.

The video includes an unidentified man saying "children were stuck in the room, alone and surrounded."

"After they handcuffed them, they shot them dead. Later, they struck the house with their planes. They wanted to hide the evidence. Even a 6-month-old infant was killed. Even the cows were killed, too," he said.

Although it has been known that U.S. air power was involved in the assault on the building in Ishaqi, it was not previously reported that there was an AC-130 gunship, a devastating weapon capable of operating at night and pummeling its target with side-firing guns, including a 105mm cannon. The gunship is flown by Air Force Special Operations crews.

A US military investigation has found there was no misconduct by US troops over Iraqi civilian deaths in the town of Ishaqi, a spokesman says.

Maj Gen William Caldwell said reports that troops "executed" a family during a raid on a house in March and tried to cover it up were "absolutely false".

Questions over the 11 deaths in Ishaqi come amid a Pentagon inquiry into a bigger alleged massacre in Haditha.

The US has announced extra training in moral and ethical values for troops.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has criticised coalition forces for what he describes as habitual attacks against civilians.

News in the US this week has been dominated by discussion of the investigations in Iraq, the BBC's Adam Brookes reports from Washington.

The Bush administration has had an exceptionally difficult time focusing public attention on what it says is the progress being made by the new Iraqi government, our correspondent says.

'Correct procedures'

A report filed by Iraqi police accused US troops of rounding up and deliberately shooting 11 people in the house in Ishaqi, including five children and four women, before blowing up the building.

Maj Gen Caldwell said the US investigation into events in Ishaqi, where the military says it was attempting to capture insurgents, had found no wrongdoing on the part of the troops.

Four bodies including that of an insurgent were found after the raid while up to nine "collateral deaths" resulted from the US raid, according to the investigation.

It added that a precise death toll could not be determined because of collapsed walls and debris.

All the correct procedures were followed when troops came under fire as they approached the house, Maj Gen Caldwell said.

"The investigation revealed the ground force commander, while capturing and killing terrorists, operated in accordance with the rules of engagement governing our combat forces in Iraq," he added.

"Allegations that the troops executed a family living in this safe house, and then hid the alleged crimes by directing an air strike, are absolutely false."

The outcome of the Pentagon investigation emerged a day after the BBC released video footage that appears to show the aftermath of US action in Ishaqi, about 100km (60 miles) north of Baghdad.

'Violence commonplace'

The video tape obtained by the BBC shows a number of dead adults and children at the site with what our world affairs editor John Simpson says were clearly gunshot wounds.

The pictures came from a hardline Sunni group opposed to coalition forces.

It has been cross-checked with other images taken at the time of events and is believed to be genuine.

Other probes are being carried out into the alleged massacre at Haditha, and also into claims that an Iraqi man was deliberately killed on 26 April in Hamandiya - and that the circumstances were covered up. Seven marines and a navy sailor are being held over the claims.

The Iraqi government has also launched an investigation into the alleged massacre at Haditha, where eyewitnesses claim US marines shot dead 24 civilians after a roadside bomb attack in November.

Mr Maliki said he would ask the US for the investigative files into the incident.

Violence against civilians was "common among many of the multinational forces", he added.

Many troops had "no respect for citizens, smashing civilian cars and killing on a suspicion or a hunch", he added.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday that 99.9% of US forces conducted "themselves in an exemplary manner".