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January 25th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
A fortnight ago, the sergeant had faced a possible jail sentence of 152 years
on charges of manslaughter, assault and dereliction of duty. But as the
prosecution case against him collapsed, the judge ordered lawyers to make a
plea deal, that saw the 31-year-old admitting guilt on only the last, least
consequential count.
The plea means that not one of the eight US soldiers originally charged with
involvement in the killings has been convicted in open court, a fact which
yesterday prompted disbelief and anger in Haditha.
“This sentence gives us the proof, the solid proof that the Americans
don’t respect human rights,” Ali Badr, a relative of one of the
victims, told Reuters. “This is an insult to the victims and an insult
to all Iraqis.”
What exactly happened in Haditha is now never likely to be known.
For critics of the Iraq war it represented one of the deepest stains on the
honour of the American armed forces, already tarnished by the scandal at Abu
Ghraib prison that had come to light the previous year. There were
comparisons with the My Lai massacre of 1968, when US soldiers killed 500
Vietnamese nationals.
But many defenders of the US military, particularly on the right, say the
allegations against Wuterich and his men were deliberately exaggerated and
politically exploited in order to smear the credibility of the American war
effort.
Some facts are not in question. At 0700 that morning, a roadside bomb
detonated as a four-Humvee patrol carrying Sgt Wuterich and fellow members
of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment drove through the
streets of Haditha. The driver of one Humvee, Miguel Terrazas was killed;
two other men were wounded.
Shortly afterwards, Wuterich opened fire on five men in a white sedan,
apparently suspecting that they could have planted the bomb. He claimed that
the men, who were later shown to have been unarmed, refused orders to halt.
His version has been disputed by witnesses.
Wuterich’s men later stormed four nearby houses, saying they believed they had
come under fire from one and then entered the others as they chased
suspected gunmen. Neighbours say the marines were never shot at, and that
over the space of several hours the Americans went round effectively
executing unarmed civilians, among them a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair,
as they begged for their lives.
Leading to allegations of a cover-up, the US military initially claimed that
the most of the Iraqis were killed by the roadside bomb, only admitting they
had been shot when presented with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.
The military still insists that six of the dead were insurgents, a claim
given weight by Haditha’s reputation as a militant stronghold.
In the end, there was insufficient evidence of murder, and the question boiled
down not to one of war crimes but one of rules of engagement. By his own
admission, Wuterich was in breach of these; he told his men to “shoot
first and ask questions later”.
It was a phrase which The Daily Telegraph had also heard while embedded with
Kilo Company near the city of Falluja the year before. Camped out during an
overnight patrol, one non-commissioned officer approached the company’s
captain to express his concern about the behaviour of some of his
colleagues.
He pointed out that during the company’s first tour of Iraq as part of the
2003 invasion, some of the men had adopted a “shoot first, ask
questions later” attitude. “Now, they are at it again and
something has to be done because otherwise something really bad is going to
happen.”
Whether anything was done to rein in what the NCO referred to as Kilo
Company’s “bad apples” is unclear, and even if it had the Haditha
killings might still have taken place.
Meanwhile the anger in the town marked by death is likely to endure.
Khalid Salman, a lawyer for the victims’ relatives, said the sentence “undervalues
Muslim blood” and said that an appeal would be made to a US court to
overturn the verdict.
“This is not a traffic felony,” he said.
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