From Reuters:
WASHINGTON - Charges will be brought against U.S. Marines if an investigation into the alleged killing of unarmed Iraqi civilians uncovers wrongdoing, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Monday.
Marine Gen. Peter Pace also told CNN that he still did not know why it had taken nearly three months for the Pentagon to find out about the November 19 incident in the Iraqi town of Haditha, in which up to 24 civilians were killed…
Pace said the Pentagon had not found out about the incident until Feb 10.
“We do not know yet why we did not know,” he said….
“I don’t suspect anything,” Pace said. “I want to wait for the investigation. We will find out what happened and we will make it public, but to speculate right now wouldn’t do anyone any good.
———————————————————
From: Lt. Gary Pendergrast - Pentagon Office of Aggregated Task Assessments (”to-do lists”)
Re: Open questions concerning investigation of incident of November 29
[NOTE: This list in unredacted. Do not circulate until final determination is made as to appropriateness of certain questions.]
- Why didn’t we hear about this until February 10?
- Did we hear about this before February 10?
- If we did hear about this before February 10, who heard about it?
- If someone did hear about it before February 10, why didn’t the rest of us hear about it in a manner that would make it fair to say that “we” “had” “heard” about it?
- Was there some sort of coverup that kept us from hearing about it until February 10?
- Was or IS there a post- February 10 coverup that has delayed or quashed the investigation?
- Would this investigation have taken place or been made public if not for the recent media stories related to the November 19 incident?
- Exactly what, if anything, is our explanation for why the preliminary investigation is still “ongoing” given that it has been 15 weeks since February 10?
- And 28 weeks since November 19?
- If there really is an ongoing investigation, why am I tasked with writing this list?
- Nobody’s going to read this, are they?
- Who was responsible for us not hearing about the November 19 incident until February 10?
- Who brought the November 19 incident to our attention on February 10, and was it the same person who should have brought it to our attention long before that?
- Honestly, did we really not hear about this until February 10?
- Because, really, if I were trying to cover up the fact that I was trying to cover up a possibly egregious incident on November 19 and it was May 30, I’d probably split the difference so I didn’t look that incompetent in the “not hearing about it” arena and still within the somewhat plausible range of “ongoing investigation” in the “post hearing about it” phase, so that there was about 15 weeks on either side of the “hearing about it” moment. Is that it?
- This is just one of those documents that gets filed away and never read by anybody at all, isn’t it?
- Is this payback for that joke I made about General Hershaway at the Christmas party?
- What is the current “status” of the “ongoing” “investigtion” that we have been “engaged” in since February 10?
- You have to admit, “Hershaway” does sound sort of obviously and amazingly like “Hershey highway.” I mean, yeah, it was a dumb joke, but it’s not like he’d never heard that before at school and whatnot, right?
- Is there, currently, an investigation into why we didn’t hear about the Novembeer 19 incident until February 10, and is that investigation part of the investigation into what happened on November 19, or are we going to have to open a new, February 10 investigation after we conclude the business of investigating what happened on November 19, or might the delay until February 10 (if such a delay existed) offer some telling clues as to what transpired on November 19?
- What happened on November 19?
[submitted 5/29/06. First redact 5/30/06]
Fanny Roborat
29 comments
Murray
May 30, 2006 at 3:10 pm
1Nothing is new.
From No Gun Rey (sp?), to Mi Lai, and now Haditha. Where ever 20 year olds are put into huge conditions of stress with no idea of who the enemy is we are going to see this thing.
And everyone above them has only one job. To cover their own asses by covering the ones below them.
My guess is that we see only the tips of the icebergs on these things.
ginny
May 30, 2006 at 6:49 pm
2At least with No Gun Ri, a diplomat helpfully provided documentation that shooting south-bound “refugees” was authorized at high levels, and dated it the night before “hundreds” of Koreans were shot as they headed toward the US lines.
Let’s see you redact that “to do” list, sir. That incident remained unreported a lot longer.
Oh, and HEY! We’re going to see “Wait Wait” on June 8! With my shushing Jewish mother-in-law and everything! And lobster pens! We can hardly wait, wait!
George C
May 30, 2006 at 7:55 pm
3Woah ~ you made me feel like I was in the military again Adam.
One other common military reaction to a crisis is to place blame (preferably on the most recent person to have transferred out). It is amazing how everything calms down once someone gets blamed for something. It doesn’t even matter if the crisis will happen over and over, just point a finger and we can all move along.
dee
May 30, 2006 at 8:22 pm
4So when are they forming the committee to come up with a design for the memorial to the innocent victims of the attack at Haditha?
David
May 30, 2006 at 8:25 pm
5But it didn’t happen and no one died until some reporter opened the journalistic door. And anyway, the triggers pulled themselves after the guns pointed themselves at women and children who weren’t there before the triggers were pulled. So there’s really nothing to investigate, especially because if no one investigates it, nothing happened and no one died. I’m glad I’m not the journalist who caused this criminal carnage.
waterfowler
May 30, 2006 at 9:59 pm
6That didn’t take long…
I tried to leave it @ that, but “Mother Felber” should slap the asshat off of that Asshat. I just read the previous post and was so proud of y’all, the photo was awesome and perfect, and it could have been left @ that.
Did anyone see the gigantic IF in the very first sentence of the story?
cooper
May 30, 2006 at 10:11 pm
7W To-Do List:
- Wake the fuck up!
The White House learns of the Haditha incident when a Time Magazine reporter calls them to ask questions about it? Don’t you just love it? Yet again - are they stupid or are they lying?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060531/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_iraqi_civilian s_2;_ylt=AilwHnYXWj_snnB6._sbUAob.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTA2ZGZwam4yBHNlYwNmYw–
Maximum Bob
May 30, 2006 at 11:33 pm
8No need to investigate; let’s wait to see who gets the next Presidential Medal of Freedom, and nab him.
Dale
May 31, 2006 at 12:15 am
9There was one case in history of atrocities committed in wartime, that was the Holocaust, we were on the non-atrocity-committing side, still we learned a big historic lesson (on behalf of the atrocity-committing and complicit, not ourselves obviously) and we declared “Never again.” This is a normative declaration, not a commitment to any future course of moral action. Presented with evidence of actual atrocities committed in wartime, we have two options to protect our “never again” status. The first: denial, cover-up, the second: emphasize that as long as total death toll
hedera
May 31, 2006 at 12:18 am
10I think the White House not hearing until Time magazine called is a side effect of Tony Snow being new at his job. Give him time, he’ll field these with the best…
Dale
May 31, 2006 at 12:23 am
11My last post got cut off–I think I accidentally used HTML tags by trying to say:
that as long as total death toll “less than sign” 6 million, then nothing has happened, “few bad apples,” “this is a different kind of war” etc. etc.
Dale
May 31, 2006 at 12:29 am
12I can’t help but seeing a direct connection between the sentiment that “it’s better to get the terrorists over there than to have them come here”–offered without anybody making a peep during the campaign–and the idea that American lives are the only ones worth protecting. “Getting” the terrorists (or creating them) will imply casualties, and what Bush said on national television with no national outcry from either side whatsoever is that it is better to have non-American casualties than American casualties. While I’m glad that Republicans and veterans are turning against Bush now, I fear it is only because they care that more Americans are being killed. As long as nobody counts or cares about the number of Iraqis being killed, it is all too easy to let an extra 24 go uncommented and uninvestigated.
BellinghamBenjamin
May 31, 2006 at 12:49 pm
13Dale-
I felt the same when I heard the “better over there” quotes. I was saddened that no national voices articulated what you’ve said here.
Redshift
May 31, 2006 at 2:03 pm
14Cooper -
Yet again - are they stupid or are they lying?
That’s not an either-or question with this bunch. I vote for “both!”
Adam Felber
May 31, 2006 at 3:05 pm
15waterfowler -
Not only did I see the “gigantic IF” in the story, I also saw the gigantic “y’all” in your post.
Personally, I don’t think my post has anything to do with the marines’ guilt or innocence. Just the unmistakable stench of either incompetence or bureaucracy or cover-up or ALL of the above.
No matter how you slice it, something’s very wrong here. When the chairman of the joint chiefs has to say “We do not know yet why we did not know” about a massacre (whether or not it was perpetrated by our guys)…. something’s amiss.
And whether or not it WAS done by our guys and if so, WHY… whether or not there’s justification, it still makes us look very, very bad that we didn’t even know it happened. That’s a giant PR failure at best, and not something we can afford at this stage in Iraq.
Not pointing all this out, and loudly, is what would be a giant mistake here.
Murray
May 31, 2006 at 3:49 pm
16Adam, what happened to your dark green background?
Dale, we didn’t come out of ww2 innocent. Between the firebombing of civilians in Dresden and the dropping nuclear weapons on cities in Japan we have plenty to answer for.
Dale
May 31, 2006 at 6:34 pm
17Murray, yes I know. My whole first post was steeped in a sarcasm marinade.
cooper
May 31, 2006 at 7:20 pm
18Off target - From Foreign Policy Magazine - A New Career Opening As Bush’s Butt Boy!
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/717
dee
May 31, 2006 at 7:25 pm
19Just the mental image makes me afraid to click on the link.
Lemuel
May 31, 2006 at 10:22 pm
20Today is another rainy day in Valdo… oops, I almost gave away my location! It’s too wet to go into the fields because we may spread anthracnose (a fungal disease I’ve been learning about recently) throughout the entire crop of be… the plants we’re harvesting for seed money to get Xerxes’ patent approved. I’m a bit paranoid about giving away too much info, since you-know-who and his band of forty (thousand) thieves are out looking for me. Better to tell you about our trip so far.
When I last wrote, I said we would be crossing the border that night, and we did. I thought at first that this gang I fell in with were Coyotes, but they turned out to be just run of the mill Mexicans, who arrived in Nogales, MX the same day I did. They had talked around and found a way across that was so ingenious, it was only exceeded by its depravity. I told you I was vegan, right? Well, I happened to say something like that to Rocio and she came up with the final plan – we came across the border in the back of a refrigerated truck full of hanging beef and we hid inside the hollowed out body cavity. I’m learning to keep my mouth shut around these guys. After the customs inspectors took off the first two sides of beef and loaded them into their cars, they weren’t interested in the rest of the load and we passed right through. I found out later that there are already three (3!) tunnels under the fence in Nogales and we could have gone into the USA walking upright and bipedal, but this was some sort of hazing they like to run on the Gringos, when they can. By some miracle, I didn’t blow chunks, so I guess I passed the test.
Did I mention that these Mexicans are very resourceful? Xerxes is a bit of a pencil neck geek – Native American scientist, now there’s a thought I bet you’ve never had before – and an inventor. He pulled an instrument that looked like a pen from his Pocket Protector (yes!) and began scanning the bar-codes on the bill of lading of each car of the first freight train we came across in Nogales, AZ. He found a car that was to be off-loaded in Val… where we are now. We will be leaving after tomorrow for an undisclosed location. I will be buying a Toyota Prius and a Honda Hybrid Accord with one of Mr. DeLay’s credit cards (seems fitting) and we’ll be off on our next adventure. I’m going to be hanging with these guys for a while and brush-up on my Spanish.
The librarian is telling me it’s time to get off the computer, so I have to end here. Buenos Noches, muchachos y muchachas! I’ve got to work on that Spanish.
nato
June 1, 2006 at 1:16 pm
21Hey, if we can just keep shooting pregnant women and Afghanis, maybe everyone will forget about the whole Haditha thing and get back to focusing on more important things. Like the Tony Awards.
Julia
June 1, 2006 at 5:43 pm
22Murray - don’t forget the firebombing of Tokyo, which was completely omitted from my high school and college education…and that education was in the ‘good old’ mid-late 20th century.
Also thanks to you and Ginny; I had never heard of No Gun Ri, and as soon as my stomach quits churning over Haditha, I’ll do some reading.
Julia
June 1, 2006 at 5:47 pm
23Sorry. I’m an ass. No Gun Ri was left out of everyone’s education, because the military appears not to have told anyone.
Oh well. If I’m to be honest, the Korean conflict hadn’t made it into the history books in use at my school at that time, anyway.
David
June 1, 2006 at 6:56 pm
24Julia,
You’re not an ass. Julia. The coverupmeisters were/are. I didn’t know until last year, which shocked me. The fact that it occurred didn’t. Neither did the slaughter of retreating Iraqi conscripts at the end of the first Gulf War. Sickened me, but it didn’t surprise me. In that case, instead of covering it up, I think we (collectively) got off on it.
I remember my mother reading the section in my 8th grade history book on WWII (would have been 1956) and saying to me that it wasn’t the WWII she had experienced. She didn’t have any use for anything but comprehensive honesty. The ommissions and misperceptions did not amuse her, and she thought that if someone was old enough to read about WWII, they were old enough to read something besides a simple-minded gloss-over.
Hot Tub Tommy
June 1, 2006 at 11:07 pm
25Damn, I missed him! Next time, stall the little sneeky-shit, will ya? I’ve got Gen. Hayden on retainer and he can trace the post back to his computer, even a laptop! We’ll get that sorry welp soon enough.
Thomas DeLay, Border Patrol Commandant/ Lobbyist/ Patriot
siobhan
June 2, 2006 at 12:35 am
26“Attack dogs probably don’t make good seeing eye dogs; punishing one for attacking does not make it better at leading the blind.” (Ze Frank, re: Haditha)
David
June 2, 2006 at 2:12 am
27Ooh, that’s good, siobhan.
cooper
June 2, 2006 at 7:37 am
28dee, you clicked on the link anyway, right? I thought so - after all it’s Foreign Policy Magazine, how bad can it really be? As the article says, “think Charlie in the ‘West Wing’.”
David
June 2, 2006 at 2:35 pm
29A refresher course in ethics? Murder is an ethical issue? I guess handcuffing them first made it unethical, whereas if they’d been given the opportunity to run and were then shot as they were fleeing, it would be merely an unfortunate stress-relieving sporting event.
Maybe we can institute a program of refresher courses in social ethics for domestic killers.