Marines kill Iraqi civilians...investigation starts two months later.

[buttmunch]

By JONATHAN KARL
WASHINGTON, March 19, 2006 — - A bloody videotape shot by a local Iraqi journalism student has prompted the Pentagon to launch a criminal investigation into an incident that left at least 15 Iraqi civilians dead in the city of Haditha.

The details of what happened four months ago in Haditha are just now coming to light with the release of the videotape by an Iraqi organization called Hammurabi Human Rights.

The tape shows the bloodied and bullet-marked homes that had been allegedly stormed by the Marines, and includes comments by local residents.

"This is my father," a boy says on the tape. "He didn't do anything wrong. Why did they kill him?"


'These Are Children'
The video shows the bodies of some of the dead, including one of three children killed.

"These are children," one man on the tape says. "Are you telling me these are terrorists?"

It all started when a roadside bomb hit a convoy of 12 Marines in Haditha, killing 20-year-old Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas.

The official press release said simply: "A U.S. Marine and 15 Iraqi civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb."


Prompted by Magazine
Military officials now acknowledge the Iraqis were not killed by the bomb -- but, they now say, by crossfire as U.S. Marines stormed the surrounding homes.

The military did not launch an investigation until two months after the incident, when Time magazine showed officials the video and eyewitness testimony.

"We launched an investigation of our own with the help of a human rights group," said Aparisim Ghosh, a writer for Time. "We spoke to some eyewitnesses. And it turns out all the people killed were killed by the Marines in small arms fire and, in a few instances, by an explosive that was tossed into the home by the Marines themselves."

Senior Pentagon officials would not comment on the details of the case but said they take the allegations very seriously, which is why they've launched the criminal investigation.

It still is not clear the Marines used excessive force, but the locals seem to have made up their minds.

"They came and started shooting all of a sudden," one local said. "They didn't even knock on the door. They killed them wholesale."

According to a military spokesman, the Marines involved still are deployed in Iraq.

video here:
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/IraqCovera...1743981&page=2

[Grimmlok]

I would hazard a guess that dead children means they used excessive force.

[Mr. Authority]

Having faulty intelligence from the military officers will cause accidental raids like this. It's really sad.

[pacific breeze]

There's been a lot of "faulty" intelligence, including the "intelligence" that got the U.S. into this war in the first place. The number of civilians killed in Iraq is well over 100,000. Soldiers that have spoken out about targeting civilians, or their trigger-happy commanders, have been silenced.

[buttmunch]

Faulty intelligence? Hmmm....they blasted into the homes and killed in cold blood. They're supposed to be the good guys, remember? And the Iraqis aren't the enemy...the good guys are supposed to be 'liberating' them.

[Mr. Authority]

The real sad thing about all this, is that the Iraqi civillian count is being hush-hush in the MSM. Most stations and local news outlets won't even tell us that thousands upon thousands of innocent civillians are being killed by these "raids". There's no justice in this war, none at all.

[Grimmlok]

They liberated that family of their lives. So it's not a lie, really..