BLACKFIVE: Haditha Marines exonerated

The only people guilty of any crime here are the jihadi that surrounded themselves with "civilians" and the journalist that flogged the propaganda piece produced by an insurgent until he found someone weak enough to cave in and start the process of criminal charges.

The "civilians" is in quotes for 2 reasons.
1. There is testimony from one of the "witnesses" themselves that everyone knew where the IED was and when it was set to go off. She actually stated that when she noticed what time it was, she got on the floor and covered her ears.
2. Those in the houses concerned were jihadi/insurrection supporters, proven by their own constantly shifting attempts at inventing testimony to support the charges against the Marines.

Grim wrote an outstanding piece addressing this exact issue some time ago.

Posted by: Grimmy | August 24, 2007 at 11:41 AM

Trolls? A$$clowns? Murtha? Ah...where is everyone now?

The silence is deafening.

Posted by: Lands’nGrooves | August 24, 2007 at 12:04 PM

The sad thing about this is that this report won't be widely reported because by journalistic standards it will be viewed as 'suspect' since it comes from the organization whose members are accused of wrong-doing.

In this case it's not a matter of the 'liberal' media. It's simply that that is journalistic standard practice. If the investigating organization is the same as the organization accused of wrongdoing, and the investigation clears the organization members, it is automatically discounted.

It's another example of the weaknesses of journalism I talk about in my blog "Heresy, Pornography and Treason" in this post:
http://heresypornographyandtreason.blogspot.com/2007/08/fungal-journalism-michael-yon-and-his.html

Posted by: chiropetra | August 24, 2007 at 12:54 PM

"Upon dismounting the Marines came under fire "

Actually, that's very much in dispute. I don't believe anyone seriously accepts the idea now that they came under fire. Testimony by the IA NCOs attached to the unit completely dispute that.

As I've seen it, there were two crimes committed at Haditha. The first was the cover up of what actually happened, and the fictional sigacts that were transmitted to higher authorities by USMC officers. No one believes now that an IED killed more than 20 civilians at Haditha, as first communicated.

It was a lie, and one that brought disgrace upon the USMC. Anyone who shared in making that lie, or in making false statements, or in attempting to obstruct later investigations, deserves to be punished.

The second crime was one of training and doctrine. What we call "classic MOUT" has a time and a place. The vast majority of Marines and Soldiers have been well-trained on knowing when to employ it, and when to use other methods when clearing rooms.

The overwhelming letter and spirit of this order (it is one of our general orders in Iraq, and follows the ROE) is that a shooter must have PID before engaging a target.

In this instance, the small unit leader misread the situation and ordered his men to conduct MOUT sweeps through what were civilian buildings. Because the shooters did NOT have PID, innocent people -- including women, children and the elderly -- were killed.

Regardless of whether these men did anything criminal (and I continue to hope that they are exonerated, and that their version of events is closer to reality than what the villagers and IA said), what they did tactically was inexcusable.

They did NOT have PID on their targets. They fired on non-combatants who had no role in the IED. They recklessly used a form of engagement intended for a situation like the sweep of Fallujah and not what is routine in OIF -- a roadside explosion that kills a buddy.

Since I have walked this walk, I will talk this talk. I have been in exactly the same position as these Marines, as have thousands of other men in OIF and OEF.

We did NOT shoot every person in sight after a buddy was killed. Therefore I have to strongly suggest that a crime was committed against these Marines: They were improperly trained and improperly led during that engagement.

A key factor in COIN is to do no harm. Regardless of any alleged criminal culpability, it did NOT help strategically for a squad of Marines to sweep through a village and kill women and children and the elderly.

This is difficult for laymen who have not been in combat to understand that it's often a victory to not shoot, but it's even more difficult for trained infantrymen to adjust.

But it's an adjustment we, collectively, have made. Somewhere in their training (and they obviously were well trained in "classic MOUT"), they were never sufficiently drilled to replace that muscle memory with another, more articulated, nuanced approach to the battlescape.

On Haditha on that evening, those Marines set back our war. They weren't the "strategic corporals" we need. Like the prison guards at Abu Ghraib -- who also were poorly trained and even more poorly led -- their conduct led to a great strategic defeat by the US and made the jobs others of us had to do that much more difficult.

It's why this is so absolutely wrong:

"While running through this scenario take into account they had just been ambushed and had one dead, then once the first round is fired there is smoke and noise and chaos, then start throwing grenades and you cannot expect anyone to be able to identify targets with any degree of certainty. That is why you designate a building as hostile."

No. You don't declare a building for a TIC if that building has NOT been the direction from which the attack came.

No one killed in those buildings were armed insurgents, bombmakers or triggermen.

None.

Posted by: SoldierNoLongerInIraq | August 24, 2007 at 12:57 PM

“…that doesn't mean I believe the best judgment was exercised.”

Who would know that, except the men that were there?

Carry On & Semper Fi

Posted by: Lands’nGrooves | August 24, 2007 at 12:57 PM

SoldierNLII,

You make some points that deserve addressing and I will in the extended piece I will do this weekend or maybe after work tonight. The bottom line is there is no compelling testimony or evidence that contradicts the Marine's statements. They deserve and receive the benefit of the doubt and teh presumption of innocence.

LnG,

I am judging then based on their own statements as recorded in the report.

Cordially,

Uncle J

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo | August 24, 2007 at 01:05 PM

Actually, the points that Nolonger makes are bogus and fully contrary to evidence provided by both recorded radio traffic and photos taken in real time from drones.

There are only two sides to this story.
One side produced by insurgent propagandists and their useful idiots.
One side produced by the US Marines backed by recorded evidence and shown to be valid in a military court.

Take your pick. Gotta be on one side or the other.

Posted by: Grimmy | August 24, 2007 at 01:18 PM

Here is something to help those that think it's ok to pretend to be confused as a cover for their support of the enemy.

http://warchronicle.com/TheyAreNotKillers/WattReport/Investigation3-1Marines030306.pdf

http://warchronicle.com/TheyAreNotKillers/DefendOurMarines.htm
Is a store house of good info for those who wish to educate themselves sufficiently to be able to withstand the black propagandists and their constant perversion of truth.

Posted by: Grimmy | August 24, 2007 at 01:51 PM

"Actually, the points that Nolonger makes are bogus and fully contrary to evidence provided by both recorded radio traffic and photos taken in real time from drones."

I didn't know our UAVs were able to see inside buildings reinforced concrete buildings. Quite a new feat!

For those who don't know, IO documents related to polygraph evidence exist. These form some of the basis of the government's case of what happened inside the buildings.

It is instructive to remember that the polygraph test indicated that LCpl Sharratt told the truth about his version of events.

From what we know from Cpl DelaCruz, he implicated Wuterich in shooting unarmed civilians.

LCpl Mendoza also failed his polygraph when he said that he saw a man reach into a closet (as if to retrieve a weapon).

What LTC (LtCol) Ware actually wrote in his IO report on LCpl Tatum was that Lt Kallop directed a fire team to clear a building they BELIEVED to be the source of gunfire "from the south."

Other unnamed Marines reported that the trigger house had been "to the north."

This is what we call the "fog of war."

LTC Ware did not treat the failed polygraph of LCpl Mendoza as an incorrect version of events. Therefore, he left in the narrative that he heard a sound coming from a closet.

I don't necessarily believe this to be true, based on the polygraph report. But I also can't say that it's untrue. But LTC Ware treated it as true.

It also has been said that the Marines heard what appeared to them at the time to have been the racking of an AK-47 rifle.

They never recovered a rifle, and no UAV will show you that one existed.

I believe we can safely say that none of the people who were killed in that house, including women, children and the elderly, were triggermen or had fired an AK-47 or any other weapon at the fire team.

Without violating opsec, I will tell you that we have a method for getting PID while moving from room to room that does NOT involve "classic MOUT," thereby avoiding throwing frag grenades to scatter across the floor and unaimed rifle or machinegun fire into a room.

No, I'm not going to say in a public forum possibly accessed by the insurgency what we call it or how we do it. But I have used this technique myself during room clearing operations and by so doing was able to avoid killing, by my count, three women and two children (many of whom will hide in closets or underbeds during Haditha-like instances).

In three sworn statements, LCpl Tatum DENIES HAVING PID on the occupants of those rooms.

I'll take those signed statements to be a better indication of what happened in "House 1" than whatever radio traffic or a UAV give us.

LTC Ware rightly, I believe, writes that if the Marines believed someone was racking an AK-47 in a "hostile" building, they have a right to employ "classic MOUT" and forgo ROE requiring PID.

But I strongly dispute that "House 1" was hostile, that there was an AK-47 being racked, or that any of the people killed inside that building were combatants involved with the insurgency.

So this takes us back to the real crimes of that day in Haditha:

1. The Marines were poorly trained, indeed they were set up to fail by a lack of techniques common to room clearing in COIN that require PID and different techniques than "classical MOUT."

On page 18 of LTC Ware's report, he makes it clear that the Marines had been taught only one form of MOUT, and had not learned other techniques that have been articulated from best practices on the battlefield and are common to Army TRADOC today (and, it should be noted, even then).

2. The Marines were poorly led: Whoever declared Building 1 as the site of either gunfire or the location of the triggerman was incorrect. From LTC Ware's narrative, it is impossible to conceive today that those Marines had any reasonable theory for why that particular house was the trigger site, and indeed there is compelling testimony from other Marines that another building served that function.

A skilled small unit leader, even during the "fog of war," will not declare a building for TIC unless he has received direct fire from it. He doesn't guess at the building.

This is obviously important, because why would one wish to spray -- wasting ammo -- the wrong place?

Despite LTC Ware's overriding conviction that this fireteam thought they were receiving fire from that particular building, I can see absolutely no reason even today why that would be so.

The only reason seems to be because either SGT Wuterich or Cpl Salinas thought it was.

Combat, gentleman, is the great equalizer. It's a pass/fail test. There are no As or Cs. No one is graded on a curve.

In this case, it seems that they tragically chose the wrong house. This happens, but from that initial decision the fates of innocent women, children and elderly people were consigned to the whims of confused teamleaders or squadleaders who were obviously poorly trained in the sort of MOUT required in COIN.

What I have always hoped throughout this investigation has been that what Cpl Mendoza swore under oath to be true -- that he did a "turkey peak" (as they are taught) and determined that there were only women and children in a room, and LCpl Tatum responded, "Shoot them."

LCpl Tatum has long contended that this wasn't true, saying under oath that he did not have PID when he pointed his weapon into that room and fired.

You don't know what the truth is. I don't know what the truth is. LTC Ware doesn't know what the truth is. And a $&%^ UAV or radio chatter aren't going to tell you what the truth is.

I pray that LCpl Tatum is telling the truth. I hope Mendoza is lying (which he concedes to have done before being granted immunity).

The government investigators believed in Mendoza's version. LTC Ware believes Tatum's.

Without forensic evidence, it likely will be impossible to know the exact weapon that killed those innocent people.

Without divine intervention, we likely won't know why the Marines shot innocent people.

But as a Soldier who had to react to a real complex ambush that killed a member of my patrol and wounded two others, and somehow managed to move through three buildings filled with women and children and old people without shooting them or tossing a frag, I feel I have some perspective on these sorts of events.

It's why I received a battlefield decoration for detaining the right people, and not shooting the wrong ones.

In my experience, I cannot understand why the Marines would have reacted with their actions unless they really were receiving direct fire from Building 1. There is zero, nada, zilch evidence that this is so, even though they might have perceived it to be.

Posted by: SoldierNoLongerInIraq | August 24, 2007 at 03:36 PM

What I have always hoped throughout this investigation has been that what Cpl Mendoza swore under oath to be true WAS FALSE
-- that he did a "turkey peak" (as they are taught) and determined that there were only women and children in a room, and LCpl Tatum responded, "Shoot them."

Posted by: SoldierNoLongerInIraq | August 24, 2007 at 03:40 PM

One also should note that Grimmy, for some unknown reason, posted a report compiled by COL Watt at the direction of LG Chiarelli (both Army) into the incident at Haditha.

This is odd, because COL Watt's report to LG Chiarelli strongly questioned the official version transmitted by the Marines after the Haditha tragedy and recommended a formal probe into the allegations.

Based on Watt's report, LG Chiarelli ordered NCIS to prepare its own report, which became the basis for criminal charges against Marines for either alleged homicide or allegations of covering up, lying or otherwise obstructing an official investigation.

Laymen can't be expected to know this, but Chiarelli ordered another Army leader, MG Eldon Bargewell, to begin a separate non-criminal investigation after Haditha to make sure that DoD was properly instructing combatants on the proper ways of clearing rooms, et al., in a complex urban environment.

MG Bargewell, I should admit, is one of the finest officers in the military. His CIB was earned as an enlisted Soldier in Vietnam. He is as tough and as fair as could be imagined of any commander.

As a former enlisted man, like me, he has walked the walk.

In his investigation, he wrote:

"All levels of command tended to view civilian casualties, even in significant numbers, as routine and as the natural and intended result of insurgent tactics."

And,

"Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get 'the job done' no matter what it takes."

He further determined that some of the Marines "did not follow proper house and room techniques."

This site recently has purported to championing COIN tactics as part of the ongoing "Surge" and related successes previously in east Anbar and Diyalah.

Part of understanding how we "win" in COIN is coming to terms with the fact that overwhelming and indiscriminate use of force in such a manner that it recklessly kills innocent women and children IS BAD FOR OUR SIDE.

That is why MG Bargewell wrote the following about the RCT commander's battlefield wisdom:

"The RCT-2 Commander, however, expressed only mild concern over the potential negative ramifications of indiscriminate killing based on his stated view that the Iraqis and insurgents respect strength and power over righteousness."

Here is a commander who doesn't seem to understand the culture of his AO very well, who seems to confuse overwhelming might as being a key to victory in a COIN fight that features understrengthed insurgents hoping that we respond indiscriminately with such force.

Haditha, an insurgent would tell you, was a strategic victory for him, not us.

Covering up our mistakes also is bad, but it's bad for the honor of the institution of our military.

This is what MG Bargewell wrote about that:

"I found that the duty to inquire further was so obvious in this case that a reasonable person with knowledge of these events would have certainly made further inquiries. The most remarkable aspect of the follow-on action with regard to the civilian casualties from the 19 November 2005 Haditha incident was the absence of virtually any kind of inquiry at any level of command into the circumstances surrounding the deaths."

Posted by: SoldierNoLongerInIraq | August 24, 2007 at 04:23 PM

1st:

Defend Our Marines
http://warchronicle.com/TheyAreNotKillers/Blog/DefendOurMarines-LCplTatumStatement.htm

LCpl Stephen Tatum’s Statement
to the Investigating Officer
(As recalled by legal counsel)

Camp Pendleton / Article 32 hearing / July 24, 2007

Before closing arguments in his Article 32 hearing, LCpl Tatum made a statement to the hearing officer, LtCol Paul Ware.

The lance corporal spoke. He did not read a statement, or speak from notes. After so much obfuscation by prosecution witnesses, it was time for some plain talk and that is what LCpl Tatum did.

The following is a non-verbatim recollection (provided by attorney Jack B. Zimmermann) ) of the lance corporal's statement, given on 24 July 2007. I emphasize this is from memory, not a recording. A transcript of the hearing will not be available to legal counsel until late in August.

________________________________________________________________

LCpl Tatum’s Statement to the Investigating Officer

(As recalled by legal counsel)

There are some points I’d like to bring to light.

The reason I fired in house 1 is that I knew small arms fire was coming from the south. I didn’t see where it was coming from, but I saw an M203 round hit house 1. My squad leader told me on the way to house 1 to treat it as hostile.

I heard a Marine engage a target after entering the house, and I knew Mendoza engaged a target to the right inside the house. I heard an AK-47 being racked in the room to the left, and me and Cpl Salinas threw grenades in that room.

After the grenade went off, I went in and followed my training firing in my sector.

The visibility was horrible. There was dust and smoke. I really couldn’t make out more than targets. Someone yelled there was a runner, so I followed my fire team to house 2.

Before we entered, Mendoza engaged someone through the door. Inside, I was told to frag a room. When I saw that room was clear, I heard another Marine engage in the next room. My duty was to help that Marine, so I went in and engaged targets.

It was dark, I couldn’t make out a whole lot. Just targets. I only went in each room a few steps, and the shooting lasted only seconds in both houses.

I did not tell NCIS I knew there were women and children before I fired. I did not know there was women and children in that house until I went back later in the afternoon with SSgt Laughner. Otherwise, I would have physically stopped everybody from shooting. The conversation Mendoza said happened never happened.

I am not comfortable with the fact that I might have shot a child. I don’t know if my rounds impacted anybody. That is a burden I will have to bear.

Posted by: Grimmy | August 24, 2007 at 04:28 PM

2nd:

http://warchronicle.com/TheyAreNotKillers/LCplSharratt/Testimony/DefendOurMarines-SAMarkPlattTestimonyIllustrated.htm

First public disclosure!

An illustrated highlight from
the LCpl Sharratt hearing

Day Two / Tuesday, June 12 / NCIS Special Agent Mark Platt

Bumbling NCIS agents have been on horrifyingly hilarious display in the Haditha hearings. It was clear to anyone watching LCpl Justin Sharratt's hearing that he should never have been charged in the first place.

Agents broke every rule of an unbiased investigation...

*

Exculpatory evidence was ignored (such as a suitcase filled with Jordanian passports found in a house and the fact that among the dead was a man named Kahtan who fit the profile of an insurgent).
*

Incriminating evidence was not tested (suspicion fell on LCpl Sharratt and his squad mates because AK-47s they claimed to have recovered at the scene could not be found by an NCIS agent. But was there an explanation for the missing weapons?)
*

Witnesses had reasons to fabricate statements (condolence, or "solatia", payments are only made to relatives of noncombatants), and they were not questioned about their claims.

A highlight (or lowlight, depending on your point-of-view) was the testimony of NCIS Special Agent Mark Platt. You can read his entire testimony here. Or just enjoy one of the best moments of testimony by a real-life Inspector Clouseau below (with my comments in italics).

Did government condolence payments actually encourage witnesses to lie?
SA Platt thinks it's irrelevant...

***
The rest you have to go to the link to read.

Posted by: Grimmy | August 24, 2007 at 04:31 PM

http://warchronicle.com/TheyAreNotKillers/Blog/DefendOurMarines-SgtDelaCruz.htm

0 April 2007

Congratulations, Sergeant Dela Cruz

On Tuesday, the Marine Corps announced that all charges had been dropped against Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz. He had been charged with murder for the incident in Haditha, Iraq, on November 19, 2005.

And that was the only part of the story the media got right.

There were reports of a plea deal, that this was terrible for the defense. Lawyers said prosecutors must have had the sergeant over a barrel. He’s saving his own skin! He’s a traitor!

And no one had the facts.

There was no deal, no pretrial arrangement of any kind for testimony, sources close to Sergeant Dela Cruz’s defense told me.

Lieutenant General James Mattis ordered Sergeant Dela Cruz to cooperate and testify eleven days before the charges against Sergeant Dela Cruz were dropped.

General Mattis had come to the conclusion that, on balance, the charges against Sgt. Dela Cruz should not go forward. Still, Sergeant Dela Cruz was a witness and (like Corporals Mendoza, Salinas, and others) he will be required to testify truthfully. It would be incredible if he wasn’t.

Many have said that Sergeant Dela Cruz’s testimony regarding Sergeant Frank Wuterich firing on suspects at the taxi will convict Wuterich. More nonsense.

Here’s what some people have a hard time grasping.

Sergeant Dela Cruz only knows what he saw. He doesn’t know what Sergeant Wuterich saw.

Dela Cruz doesn’t know how the situation looked through Wuterich’s eyes when he came to a split-second decision to fire at the five Iraqis beside a white taxi.

And Dela Cruz, who likes and respects Wuterich, is not going to second-guess the way his fellow Marine saw things.

November 19, 2005 was Wuterich’s first day in combat. Dela Cruz was in Operation Iraqi Freedom with the 4th Marines. His second tour was with the 1/4 in hellholes like Najaf. His third tour (with the 1st Marines) brought Dela Cruz to Haditha that morning.

The two may have seen the situation completely differently, tell different stories about the event, and both be telling the truth as they saw it when one man saw a reason to act.

Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz is an honorable Marine. When the full story of Haditha is known he will be recognized as a heroic Marine. His coolness in taking prisoners that day is just one instance, among many, that belies the media's tale of Marines on a rampage.

The sergeant will testify to the truth as he saw it. So will the accused. If the cases go to courts-martial, a jury will weigh the evidence and reach a verdict.

I believe that all the accused will be exonerated, if they all get the defense they deserve.

In the meantime, here’s advice for anyone following this case. Be glad that justice prevailed for Sergeant Dela Cruz, and believe very little of what you read about the Haditha Marines. From the beginning, the media got it wrong and it's not getting it right yet.

David Allender
Defend Our Marines

Posted by: Grimmy | August 24, 2007 at 04:39 PM

And:
http://warchronicle.com/TheyAreNotKillers/HadithaAccusers/DefendOurMarinesNCISLies.htm

"The Haditha Accusers:

Let's Get Real, Shall We?"

Go to the link to read up on the Iraqi accusers.

Posted by: Grimmy | August 24, 2007 at 04:44 PM

It's instructive, Grimmy, that you believe an unrecorded statement LCpl Tatum might have made.

There are two versions of what transpired in that building. One from Mendoza, the other from Tatum.

Like you, I hope Mendoza's version is false, and that one of LCpl Tatum's statements is closer to the mark.

But neither you nor I can say that it is so. Neither can the UAV or the radio chatter. Neither can the women and children who died in that room.

I hope nevertheless that all the enlisted Marines are eventually exonerated of criminal culpability.

Like MG Bargewell, however, I must judge the actions of the small unit leaders and their superiors from the perspective of a small unit leader and a combatant.

In this case, they failed. It is difficult, in fact, to have screwed up their actions any worse than they did that day.

Far more damning, however, is the resultant cover up by commissioned officers of the USMC. The obstructions, delays and lies perpetrated by those commanders, on top of their obvious incapacity to understand the nature of the war they were fighting, reflects poorly on them, their Corps and, unfortunately in the eyes of Iraqis, our nation.

Here is what GEN Mattis wrote to his Marines as they redeployed to conduct COIN in OIF/OEF:

"The enemy will try to manipulate you into hating all Iraqis. Do not allow the enemy that victory. With strong discipline, solid faith, unwavering alertness, and undiminished chivalry to the innocent, we will carry out this mission."

I would say that regardless of their criminal culpability, those Marines in Haditha did no honor to the spirit of their general's command.

Posted by: SoldierNoLongerInIraq | August 24, 2007 at 04:46 PM

To keep the actions of the NCIS in context:

http://warchronicle.com/TheyAreNotKillers/Blog/DefendOurMarinesNCIS.htm

NCIS Exposed:
Criminals, Thugs, and Liars Bringing Down Marines

For more on the real NCIS see
* Unequal Justice: Military courts are stacked to convict--but not the brass, US News & World Report, December 16, 2002
* Navy Justice: An examination of the seaborne service's scandal-ridden police agency, US News & World Report, November 9, 1992

Defend Our Marines main page

January 20, 2007

Criminals, Thugs, and Liars Bringing Down Marines

The Haditha Marine case, with its leaks of false information including, possibly, tidbits of confessions, has a recent parallel.

Remember the case of Petty Officer Daniel M. King? You don’t?

Evidently, neither does the Washington Post, Associated Press, National Public Radio, and the rest of the media that repeats every NCIS rumor as gospel. This is surprising because it wasn't that long ago that the NCIS lied to them all.

It was the Daniel M. King case, a few short years ago, that should make everyone suspicious of every leak, and every media report, in the Haditha Marines case.

Petty Officer King was a Navy cryptanalyst: Cryptologist Technician (Collection) First Class (CTR1). He was arrested in 1999 on suspicion of espionage, and was summarily stripped of all his rights as a citizen of this country.

NCIS agents administered a polygraph test. It is possible that the agents were not properly trained. In any event, Daniel King’s polygraph was ruled “inconclusive”. At the same time, no hard evidence was found to back up the charge. So the NCIS agents needed a confession.

Petty Officer King was detained by and subjected to a torturous interrogation that lasted over 26 days for 19 to 20 hours at a time.

At a Congressional hearing, attorney Jonathan Turley would testify, “The NCIS manufactured a theory of espionage without foundation and then took steps to compel statements to support that theory. The tapes and evidence secured by the defense in this case reveal agents seeking a trophy not the truth.”

At the same hearing, Lieutenant Robert A. Bailey (JAG, US Naval Reserve), stated:

“The conduct of NCIS agents in this case was nothing short of shocking. Independent reviewers have stated that their techniques were barbaric….
That such conduct occurred at the hands of NCIS is not surprising….Indeed, such conduct is predictable based on the training and guidance manual published by the NCIS. According to the NCIS Manual, Chapter 14 - Interrogations, any person who adamantly denies any wrongdoing and points to his clean record is "subconsciously confessing."
If a confused suspect asks what is going to happen to him, the NCIS believes this is an indication that he "is beginning a confession."
Additionally, agents are to convey the idea that they will "persist as long as required to resolve the issue under investigation" and that they "will not give up the interrogation."….
[Petty Officer] King's only recourse was to confess to a crime he did not commit in the hopes that he would eventually receive a lawyer and the truth would come out.”

Finally, the truth did come out--despite the efforts of the NCIS. Petty Officer King was not a spy.

He was released in March 2001 after a hellish 520 days in confinement. Confinement in "Special Quarters," the equivalent to maximum security lock-down condition in which he spent approximately 20 hours a day in a six-foot by nine-foot cell.

Today, the NCIS is continuing the same criminal behavior of coercing confessions and ignoring rules and ethics in pursuit of its target. You haven't been reminded of this story in the mainstream media. But the truth is there for anyone willing to look. It's all right here at Documents in the Case of US v. Daniel M. King.

Spreading the word can be an act of patriotism. If the truth stays secret, the very worst of men will bring down our nation's very best.

***
Links to additional information at the link above.

Posted by: Grimmy | August 24, 2007 at 04:47 PM

http://warchronicle.com/TheyAreNotKillers/Blog/DefendOurMarines-HadithaTestimonySuppressed-NatHelms.htm
DEFEND OUR MARINES

Haditha witness testimony suppressed by NCIS:

AK-47s seen at the white taxi

Defend Our Marines / July 17, 2007

This is the second of a two-part article Defend Our Marines Contributing Editor Nathaniel R. Helms.

Read this article's companion piece: Firefight in Haditha: An eyewitness account.

____________________

Haditha witness testimony suppressed by NCIS:

AK-47s seen at the white taxi

by Nathaniel R. Helms

Former Cpl Josh Karlen

A former Marine from Kilo Company wounded at Haditha, Iraq on the day of the alleged massacre told Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigators he saw Kalashnikov assault rifles propped against a white taxicab next to the bodies of five Iraqi men killed when the fighting started. His report contradicts prosecution contentions that the Iraqis were innocent civilians.

Joshua Cash Karlen, 23, from Westminster, Colorado, said Monday that he is positive he saw the weapons while he was being evacuated from the battlefield. The following spring Karlen says he reported his observations to NCIS investigators while being interrogated by two special agents.

“They grilled me over why I was there, why I was driving through the cordon and what I saw,” Karlen said. “I was in there for about four hours.”

Karlen says he repeatedly told the two agents what he witnessed at the ambush site.

“The area was cordoned off when we drove by,” Karlen said in a telephone interview from his home. “I was hit by a grenade and had a severe concussion so I had to be evacuated out. I was on the south side of Chestnut (code name for the road running on the south side of the ambush site) being driven through the cordon. We were going real slow so I could see a white car, a pile of bodies, and weapons piled against the car. There were three or four AKs stacked leaning against a white car and some Marines were standing around. ”

Despite a lengthy interview Karlen’s statement was never included in the evidence obtained by the defense, according to defense attorney Brian Rooney. The former Marine Corps Staff Judge Advocate represents Lt. Col Jeffrey Chessani. Chessani is the former commander of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines. Chessani is currently waiting to discover if he will stand general courts-martial over his role in Kilo’s alleged murder rampage.

“This is the first I have ever heard of this!” Rooney exclaimed.

Rooney said the NCIS failure to provide Karlen’s eyewitness account to Marine Corps prosecutors was a “very serious omission” that undoubtedly harmed his client’s case.

Karlen’s testimony is absolutely essential to the defense, Rooney added. The outspoken defense attorney is at a loss to understand why Karlen’s statement was never introduced into evidence, he said.

“We could never put any weapons with the Iraqis who were killed by the cab,” Rooney explained Monday night. “This evidence is crucial to prove the men in the cab were armed insurgents. Early on there were reports they had weapons, but the weapons were never found.”

Last week Col. Christopher Conlin, the officer presiding over Chessani’s Article 32 hearing, recommended the career infantryman face general courts-martial because he "failed to thoroughly and accurately report and investigate a combat engagement that clearly needed scrutiny."

“The irony is almost overwhelming,” a very senior Marine noted Tuesday morning.

Karlen’s observations contradict prosecution assertions that the five men were unarmed Iraqi civilians who meandered into the ambush site only to be gunned down in cold blood by Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich and Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz. Wuterich stands accused of gunning down the Iraqis in retaliation for the gruesome killing of Lance Corporal Miguel “T.J.” Terrazas on November 19, 2005 by an IED ambush. Dela Cruz was granted immunity to testify against him. The prosecution alleges Wuterich and two other Kilo Marines then rampaged through a nearby group of houses executing 19 more innocent civilians. Seven other Marines who were with them as well were later granted immunity from prosecution.

Karlen said he was interrogated by two NCIS Special Agents at Camp Pendleton after returning from home leave following the battalion’s return in late March, 2006. He was summoned to regimental headquarters sometime in April or early May along with almost every enlisted man in Kilo who was at Haditha, Karlen said. At the time he was assigned the guard detail providing security to regimental headquarters at Camp Horno, the 1st Marines lodgment area on Camp Pendleton.

By the time Karlen was interrogated he felt sure the NCIS agents already knew ‘everything” about the incident and just want to see what he was going to say about it. They told Karlen they wanted to talk to him because he had actually been at the alleged crime scene. They repeatedly asked him what he had seen and why he was there, Karlen said.

“There were two NCIS guys. The young one was friendly and the old guy was gruff. The young one would ask me questions for awhile, talk about surfing; how did I like Pendleton - that stuff. And then the old one would come in and say he had to ask something and he would sound sort of mean and angry. He would try and be intimidating. It was the good cop – bad cop routine.

“I kept telling them I was wounded and had a concussion and was just riding by. I kept telling them what I saw and why I was there and then they would ask me again. They acted like they didn’t believe me. I told them all I wanted was to get out of the Corps and was this going to keep me in somehow. Once they realized I don’t have anything they wanted they let me go.”

During the Haditha incident Karlen was an assaultman assigned to Kilo Company’s Weapons Platoon. He was standing watch at the same Combat Observation Post - C.O.P. - as former Corporal Joe Haman, another Kilo Marine who witnessed the attack on Wuterich’s squad. Their position was about 600 meters from the ambush site. Wuterich’s patrol had just delivered the morning rations and supplies before they got hit. By lunch time Karlen would be wounded in desperate combat with insurgents near the same site, he said.

The Marines’ legal problems began when Time Magazine published an account in March, 2005 claiming 24 Iraqi civilians, including the five men killed by the white taxicab, were innocent Iraqis. Reporter Tim McGirk wrote that the five men in the taxi were mercilessly gunned down by Marines while on their way to school. They were the first to die in retaliation for an IED attack the patrol had just endured, McGirk claimed.

Karlen has an entirely different take on the incident, he says. He was on guard duty on top of a building when he heard a loud boom. He didn’t know what had happened except it came from the direction Wuterich’s four-HUMVEE patrol had just taken. The IED explosion was followed by a strong exchange of gunshots, he said.

“It was blatantly obvious somebody was getting hit,” Karlen said. “Corporal Haman was the senior Marine NCO on the C.O.P. so he could hear the radios, know what all was happening. I didn’t know anything except there was a firefight going on and we were going out.”

Then it grew relatively quiet for a few minutes. The talk later on was the ambushed Marines had to regroup, Karlen said.

“They had to figure out where the fire was coming from and collect their wounded. Wuterich came out of the School of Infantry. He was a good Marine. He was an instructor. They teach other guys so he had to be a good Marine. The guys who were with him said he did exactly right. All the time there were gunshots going off all over the place. I couldn’t distinguish what kind of weapons were firing. I was gearing up so I wasn’t paying that much attention. Gunfire is always going off in Iraq.”

About 30 minutes later they were told to proceed to some houses down the road that were reportedly occupied by insurgents, Karlen said. After a two minute run their 12-man squad stopped in front of some houses where headquarters thought the insurgents were hiding. Without hearing the radio traffic Karlen didn’t know they were from the same group that ambushed Wuterich’s patrol. He wouldn’t learn anything about that for several months, he said.

At the time he thought his patrol was part of a larger operation because there were groups of insurgents running all over the place, he said. There was gunfire erupting everywhere, he said. All he knew for sure about Wuterich’s patrol was that somebody’s “kill number” had been put out over the radio so he knew a Marine was dead, he explained.

After the squad cleared the first house they came to with grenades, Karlen split up from Haman’s team and went on the other side of the building with Lt. Zall, Sgt. Raphael, the Navy corpsmen and several other Marines. He was standing about 15 feet from Lt Zall and the corpsmen a few minutes later when Iraqi insurgents hiding on the roof of the adjacent building attacked them with a grenade barrage. The attack erupted when a grenade dropped from the roof and exploded about five feet from Lt. Zall and the corpsman. Karlen sustained a serious concussion in the blast, he said.

“I saw the lieutenant and corpsman get hit so we ran out and pulled them into the house under cover. Lt. Zall was hit in both his legs and the corpsman was hurt pretty bad as well. They both had broken legs, Karlen said.

Meanwhile Karlen’s team lost contact with Haman and his fire team. All he knew was that some of the Marines he was with went on the roof of the first house to get a better position to counterattack the Iraqi grenadiers. He was worried about his friend Haman and the other Marines in the squad.

“It isn’t good to get in a cross-fire between friendlies,” he said.

Immediately the fight grew in intensity. It rapidly escalated turned into a “grenade free-for-all,” Karlen said.

“Grenades were going off all over the place. I don’t know how many grenades were thrown. Almost everybody got wounded. Then we used flares to get back in contact. It was just a vicious firefight,” Karlen said

Then the ORF (Quick Reaction Force) showed up, Karlen added. His team eventually ran across the road and joined up with Haman’s group and the reinforcements. By then almost all the Marines were wounded to some degree, Karlen said. After they regrouped he joined other Kilo Marines who went on the roof on still another house to engage the Iraqi insurgents. Karlen stayed there firing on the insurgents until he was ordered to the rear to receive medical attention.

“We overpowered them with our medium machine guns. The QRF was lighting up the buildings with the two-forties (M-240G 7.62 mm medium machine gun),” Karlen said. “They didn’t have nothing to stand up to our firepower.

“And that is about where the war ended for me. I had a pretty bad concussion and they said I had to be evacuated. That is why I was driven past the cordon. Everything else I learned about talking to Kilo Marines when I got back to Camp Pendleton.”

Today Karlen lives in a suburb of Denver. He was married last November and has a newborn son. He is currently employed by a private security company guarding the Federal offices in the Denver area. Karlen eventually hopes to return to school to obtain a business degree and open his own company. Karlen father served six years in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War, including combat operations in Southeast Asia.

Nathaniel Helms
Defend Our Marines
17 July 2007

Note: Nat Helms is a Contributing Editor to Defend Our Marines. He is a Vietnam veteran, former police officer, war correspondent, and, most recently, author of My Men Are My Heroes: The Brad Kasal Story (Meredith Books, 2007).

Posted by: Grimmy | August 24, 2007 at 04:54 PM

Then there is:

DEFEND OUR MARINES

http://warchronicle.com/TheyAreNotKillers/Blog/DefendOurMarines-FireFightInHaditha-NatHelms.htm

Firefight in Haditha:

An eyewitness account

Read part two of this investigative report:
Haditha witness testimony suppressed by NCIS: AK-47s seen at the white taxi

Defend Our Marines / July 17, 2007

The media got it wrong from the start. The action in Haditha on November 19, 2005 began as a ambush and escalated into a complex engagement with insurgents. Defend Our Marines Contributing Editor Nathaniel R. Helms gets the story from one man who was there.

____________________

Firefight in Haditha: An eyewitness account

by Nathaniel R. Helms

Pictured above:
Left: LCpl Ghent, currently deployed in 3/1 in Iraq; right: former Cpl Joe Haman; center: Former Cpl Josh Karlen, an assaultman.
All three men were wounded during the grenade fight following the ambush of Wuterich's squad on November 19, 2005.

Click below for a larger image:

A Marine who witnessed the battle at Haditha, Iraq (that led to accusations of murder and malfeasance by seven Marine officers and enlisted men) claims that the Marines were ambushed. Former Corporal Joe Haman says the Marines were attacked by a large group of Iraqi insurgents immediately after an Improvised Explosive Device killed Lance Corporal Miguel “T.J.” Terrazas and wounded two others.

Haman, 22, from Saint Louis, Missouri, was in another squad of Kilo Company Marines who saw, heard, and later participated in the fight at Haditha that morning. He says the Iraqis ambushed SSgt Frank Wuterich and his squad from 3rd Platoon, Kilo Company, Third Battalion, 1st Marines from a cluster of houses where most of the Iraqis would later die.

Wuterich is charged with 12 counts of unpremeditated murder associated with the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians killed in Haditha on November 19, 2005 following the IED attack on the 12-man squad he commanded. Two members of his squad, Lance Corporal’s Stephen B. Tatum and Justin L. Sharratt also face courts-martial for multiple counts of unpremeditated murder. Four officers, including battalion commander Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, face criminal charges for failing to adequately investigate the incident.

Haman was in the battalion when it fought at Fallujah in 2004 and served with Sharratt, Tatum, Terrazas and several other Kilo Company Marine enlisted men who fought in both engagements. He says that until now nobody had asked him what his squad encountered during and after the ambush.

Haman described the fight during an interview in Saint Charles, Missouri last Thursday. He said it was about 0700 (7am) when Terrazas and the rest of his squad delivered breakfast and supplies to the C.O.P. in four HUMVEEs. They stayed about 30 minutes, just long enough for Terrazas to smoke a cigarette and share a few jokes with Haman. T.J.’s brief visit was the last conversation he would have before he died, Haman said.

Haman said he “knew it was bad as soon as he heard the explosion.” His suspicions were confirmed seconds after the blast when a full fledged firefight erupted around a group of four houses about 150 feet from the IED blast. The firing didn’t build up gradually the way meeting engagements do, Haman explained. It was a full fledged ambush from the start. Immediately radio chatter picked up as the besieged Marines down the road called for help.

”As soon as it [IED] went off Sgt. (later SSgt.) Raphael - our squad leader - told us to gear up and standby. Our squad was on React because we already had another squad on patrol from the C.O.P.,” Hamas said.

“React” is shorthand for Reaction Force. Haman’s job that day was to be ready to deploy immediately for backup if called. They didn’t have long to wait, Haman said.

Down the road Terrazas was already dead, killed by an IED hidden under the road with fresh asphalt that had been artfully applied to hide the insurgent’s bomb. Wuterich and the surviving members immediately began receiving intense small arms fire from the group of four or five houses on their flank, Haman said. In addition to killing Terrazas the IED critically wounded 20-year old LCpl James Crossan and painfully injured LCpl Salvador A. Guzman. Seconds into the fight Wuterich had lost a quarter of his strength, Haman said.

There were so many weapons firing Haman couldn’t distinguish between the sharp cracking of the enemy’s AK-47 assault rifles, their Russian-designed RPD light machine guns, and the faster popping of the M-16s and ripping roar of the Marines’ Squad Automatic Weapons - called SAWs, he said. All Haman could hear was the loud, sustained roar of gunfire and grenade explosions, the signature of an ambush, he said.

A few minutes after the Iraqi bomb exploded the first dreaded radio message went out from Wuterich’s position reporting a casualty, Haman said. Every Marine in Iraq is assigned a number used to identify them to higher headquarters in case they are killed, wounded, or captured. Haman didn’t know who the Marine was, but he knew Marines were down, he recalled.

“Somebody said his [Terrazas] number, but we didn’t know who it was. We just knew somebody had been killed or wounded,” Haman said.

About 30 minutes before Haman’s squad was called into action, he said. Meanwhile the sounds of battle ebbed and flowed when Wuterich’s squad fighting 600 meters away counter-attacked. Orbiting helicopters and ground commanders filled the airwaves with urgent messages. The Marines in the C.O.P. were anxious to get into the fight. They couldn’t understand what the delay was all about, Haman said.

Then a nearby helicopter reported to headquarters that a large group of insurgents were fleeing out the back of the small cluster of houses now under counter-attack by Wuterich’s squad. The pilot spotted the insurgents when they abandoned the houses where the civilians died, Haman said.

The pilot reported that some of the insurgents had peeled off from main body and fled into another house situated by a palm grove about 100 or 200 meters south of where Wuterich was engaged, Haman says.

“Air - helos - saw insurgents that split into groups. One of the groups ran into another house in a palm grove. Air picked them up going in,” Haman said.

That put the fleeing insurgent only 600 feet from the C.O.P. Haman’s squad was ordered to hunt them down, he added.

Led by Lt. Zall, the platoon leader, and Sgt. Raphael, the Marines ran toward the enemy position. It was only a two minute run to reach the houses where the insurgents had disappeared, he said.

Haman’s squad consisted of 12 Marines. Among them they had two 5.56mm SAW light machine guns, two M-203 40mm grenade launchers mounted under M-16s, and eight riflemen. Haman was armed with an M-203- equipped rifle, he said. It is a lot of firepower. In most places it would be an overwhelming amount of firepower. In Haditha on November 19, 2005 it wasn’t nearly enough, Haman said.

“Then one of the helos shot two missiles into the house. It blew out the roof, put a big hole in the roof, smoke was coming out,” Haman said. “We were told to go into a house by a blue car. The car was parked between two houses. We didn’t know which house was the right one.”

Haman’s squad chose the first one they came to, he said. When they got to the front door it was eerily still. Except for the orbiting helicopters and the sustained firefight going on to the north where Wuterich was fighting it was relatively quiet, Haman said.

“The point man kicked in the door. LCpl Blankenship was on point. Cpl. Bautista, my fire team leader, told us to stack up [a tightly grouped combat formation] and go in. I was the second man to the door. I wanted to throw a frag. I had never thrown a frag into a house before,” Haman said.

The grenade blast filled the house with smoke. Plaster and other debris rained down inside. It was almost impossible to see inside the building, Haman said.

“Our squad leader Sgt Raphael told us to wait for the smoke to clear but our adrenaline was pumped up so we just rushed in. We couldn’t see anything so we turned our flashlights on. Nobody was in the house, the house was clear,” Haman continued. “We were at the wrong house.

“Somebody said it was the house to the south west - catty corner. Lt. Zall said to clear the other house but don’t frag it this time. Blankenship tried to kick the door down. It knocked him down, he couldn’t do it. So LCpl Ghent bashed into it a couple of times. He couldn’t do it either.”

Despite the danger the Marines couldn’t help laughing, Haman said.

“Everybody was laughing. The third time he [Ghent] knocked it in and fell down. I jumped over him. I saw a room to the right and one way in the back corner. The door was almost closed. Then a grenade came out the door. It bounced off my foot and went off,” Haman said.

“I don’t remember anything after that for awhile. I was hit but I didn’t know it,” Haman added. “Somehow I was inside the room to my right. I don’t know how I got there.”

“Bautista called my name. I guess I woke up. I got up and started shooting at the door. We backed out of the house. It was one of the lessons we learned at Fallujah. When there is somebody inside just back out and call in air strikes.”

Still groggy, Haman backed out the door, firing his weapon down the hallway where the grenade came from, he said. For the moment there was no return fire and everybody made it safely back outside. But it was only a momentary respite, Haman said.

“LCpl Garcia and LCpl Vetor went to the side of the house. I saw them so I went with them. I was still real groggy. It was an American grenade and it really rang my bell,” Haman added with a laugh. “I thought I was okay.”

“Then Vetor looked back and yelled ‘grenade.’ One blew up behind me. I got hit in my right back triceps and in the back shoulder I knew it had hit and it burned a little. It didn’t hurt until hours later. Then the hole in my underarm swelled up as big as a golf ball and I was bleeding out of it. Lt. Zall got hit real bad. Zall got hit in the legs. He was evacuated and “Doc,” our [U.S. Navy Medical] Corpsmen was wounded. LCpl Garcia got hit as well.”

Zall and the corpsman were out of the fight. Haman and Garcia stayed in. Iraqi grenades were dropping off of the roof of the house they had just retreated from. Meanwhile the rest of Haman’s squad backfilled into the house Haman’s fire team had just cleared. They charged up onto the roof and started throwing grenades at the insurgents attacking Haman’s group. Insurgent and Marine grenades were flying back and forth. Some of the grenades seemed to be coming from the windows and some from the roof of the house occupied by the insurgents. Nobody could see the attackers, Haman said.

“Vetor checked Garcia and me and said we were both good. Then an AK burst came in and sprayed in front of us in an arc. We thought it came out of the window so we started lighting up this window. Then we heard an explosion go off, maybe on top of the roof.”

The explosion was a Marine’s grenade bursting among the Iraqi insurgents. LCpl Garcia, wounded and groggy, wanted to throw a fragmentation grenade at the window of the house they were taking fire from. The dazed Marine didn’t realize it was covered with steel bars. Haman told him to put the grenade away, he said.

“Then Garcia started complaining about his arm. He couldn’t lift it. Then we heard explosions going off inside,” Haman added.

Haman was getting alarmed, he said. He still didn’t know where several members of the squad were and grenades and automatic weapons fire from the insurgents who had fled Wuterich’s position was flooding the area. It was getting very dangerous to be outside. But it wasn’t any better indoors.

“We kept yelling for LCpl Ghent, Cpl. Bautista and Sgt. Raphael. We couldn’t get a response from them. We could see the helos flying around. We didn’t want to get a rocket. We didn’t know where anyone was. Vetor said to pop the white flare to let them know where we were,” Haman said.

About then they heard an M-240 Golf machine gun, the successor to the Vietnam-era M-60 machine gun that shoots 7.62mm rounds at about 650 rounds a minute. The welcome sound told him reinforcements were arriving, Haman said.

“Somebody started lighting up the house with the two-forty. We popped a red star cluster (pop-up flare). Then Bautista popped a green flare,” Haman recalled.

Now everybody knew where all the members of the squad were located. It was time to get out of Dodge, Haman said. The Marines decided to make a run for a dirt berm on the other side of the road.

Vetor popped his head around the corner to see if he would get shot at. There was no more firing so he started running down the street, Haman said

“He took off running first. I went second and then Garcia came. We wanted to run across the road to where there was some cover,” Haman said. “Then a seven-tonner (cargo truck) or two pulled up and Marines started popping out. As soon as they saw us Sgt Raphael [on the roof of the house next door to the insurgents] started yelling for cover fire.”

The Marine reinforcements jumped out of the trucks at a curve on the road where a dirt mound gave them cover, Haman said.

“They were in enfilade. They had cover about 50 meters (150 feet) away on the berm from where we were at.”

Haman and the rest of his fire team ran to the reinforcement’s location. So did the rest of his squad, he said.

“We regrouped and found out where everybody was. We saw the Docs putting Lt Zall and our Doc into either a 7-tonner or HUMVEE to medivac out. Then we ran back to a house across the street from the one the insurgents were throwing grenades from,” Haman said.

“Marines went to top of the roof on the house and started shooting M-203 grenades at the insurgents. I stayed inside the house with LCpl. Stefinitis watching over the civilians who lived there. There were eight people. We got them all in one room while everybody else went on the roof to engage. I smoked a cigarette. I still didn’t know [how bad] I was hit. Stefinitis was bleeding from grenade hits to his nose and face.”

Six Marines on the roof, Haman said. They included LCpl Josh Karlen, from Colorado, LCpl Bury, a Texan who was usually a radio operator in the headquarters section, Cpl. Bautista., Sgt Raphael, the squad leader, and two other Kilo Co. Marines.

“They got into another grenade fight. Grenades were flying all over the place. I think everyone on the roof got wounded. I know we had nine guys wounded in my squad,” Haman said. He had been wound twice.

“From then everything went to [expletive deleted]. We called for air. I stayed downstairs. I think I smoked a whole pack of cigarettes. They were up there 15 to 20 minutes,” Haman said.

“Then we all took off, jumped about a four-foot wall, ran down to the palm grove, climbed the hill and went back to the house we used for the C.O.P. and waited for the air to hit. We waited fifteen to 20 minutes for air to get there. I think they dropped two 500-pounders, but it could have been thousand-pounders. They blew the house all to hell,” Haman added.

Pictured above:
The house after it was bombed.
This picture was taken by Haman several weeks
after the incident.

Click below for a larger image:

After the bombing other Marines returned to the demolished house. Overhead a Boeing Scan Eye unmanned aerial vehicle was watching and recording the scene as well. Inside the demolished house the Marines found five dead insurgents and a large arms cache. Two more Iraqis who survived the bombing were captured. One of the insurgents was tracked to a house down the street from the bombed building. He quickly reappeared carrying a baby, Marines reported. Searchers directed to his position discovered the man still bleeding from his ears and nose from the concussion of the bomb. Both Iraqis later admitted being insurgents, the Marine Corps says.

After the fight was over Haman discovered he was hit multiple times by grenade shrapnel. He got a few days off to tend to his wounds and then he went back in the fight.

“That is the way they do it in the Corps,” he said.

From then until about the middle of March 2006 – about three months - no one in Kilo Company knew there was a scandal brewing. All they had heard were accolades for a job well done, Haman says. Chessani came around to congratulate the men. So did other brass. Nobody even suggested there was any impropriety, Haman said. Eventually Lt. Zall returned and was reassigned to another rifle company. The wounded Navy corpsmen never returned, Haman said.

“Everyone knew about the dead civilians. They regretted them,” Haman explained, “but it was a fight.”

“Only later we found out about the trouble over the cleared houses. About a couple of months later all these majors and captains were coming to the company. Usually we didn’t see anyone,” Haman said. “I talked to (LCpl Justin) Sharratt a lot of times after the fight and he never said too much. He sure didn’t say anything about murder. None of us thought anything had happened. We would see reporters every once in a while so we didn’t think too much about it.”

After the fight was over 1st Sgt. Albert Espinosa - Kilo’s First Sergeant - came around to congratulate Haman and the other wounded Marines. He came to the Forward Operating Base – called a FOB - to congratulate the men on a job well done, Haman said. Later Espinosa would testify that he had immediately called for an investigation of the deaths caused by the Wuterich firefight.

“Not then,” Haman said. “The First Sergeant never said anything to us. The only time he talked about it was the next day at the FOB. He said to me, ‘Hey, good job out there, Haman.’ Then he asked me if I had ever got to fire my M-203 (grenade launcher) during the firefight.”

Later, in mid-March Kilo Company was scheduled to rotate, the hammer fell, Haman said.

“About two weeks before we left we found out about it. We found out that the guys in the squad (Wuterich’s squad) had to stay there. We heard they were in trouble but we didn’t know why. They came home a couple of days later.”

“I will tell you Wuterich was a standout guy and a great Marine. He came out of the School of Infantry. He is a good man.”

Currently Haman attends a private university in Saint Charles and works part-time as a security guard while he pursues a degree in criminal justice. He intends to be a police officer, he says. Haman’s brother is a former Marine combat veteran of Iraq and his father is a retired Saint Louis police officer.

Nathaniel Helms
Defend Our Marines
17 July 2007

Note: Nat Helms is a Contributing Editor to Defend Our Marines. He is a Vietnam veteran, former police officer, war correspondent, and, most recently, author of My Men Are My Heroes: The Brad Kasal Story (Meredith Books, 2007).

Posted by: Grimmy | August 24, 2007 at 04:57 PM