May 27, 2006

Los Angeles, Alta California - May 26, 2006 - (ACN) On November 19 of last year a massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians occurred in Haditha located about 140 miles northwest of Baghdad. The killing rampage by 12 US Marines included seven women and three children who were shot point blank inside their homes. The war crime surfaced only because of its recent strong condemnation by Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a retired US Marine.

The Haditha Massacre is today being compared to the infamous My Lai Massacre that occurred in the South Vietnamese district of Son My on March 16, 1968 during the Vietnam War. In a "search and destroy mission", Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, Americal Division entered the Vietnamese village of My Lai and massacred over 300 unarmed civilians that included women, children, and the elderly. Under the command of Lt. William Calley, several old men were bayoneted, praying women and children were shot in the back of the head, and at least one girl was raped and then killed. Lt. Calley rounded up a group of the villagers, ordered them into a ditch, and then mowed them down with machine gun fire. The entire village of My Lai was then set on fire.

Information about the My Lai war atrocities did not reach the American public until November 1969, about 20 months after the massacre took place. The process took this long thanks to the whitewashing and cover-up of the incident by US Army Mayor Colin Powel who later served as Secretary of State. In the end, Lt. William Calley was charged with murder, convicted and given a life sentence but was released in 1974.

In the Haditha Massacre, the 12 U.S. Marines may face criminal charges, possibly including murder. There is presently a criminal investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The US Marines involved were with the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment of the 1st Marine Division, based at Camp Pendleton, California. The Pentagon has said that the battalion commander and two company commanders had been relieved of duty for filing a false report of the incident in an attempt to cover up the massacre. Lt Col Jeffrey Chessani, the battalion commander, Capt James Kimber and Capt Lucas McConnell, both company commanders, had initially reported that one marine and 15 Iraqi civilians, travelling on a bus, were killed by a roadside bomb, and that eight insurgents were shot dead in a subsequent gun battle. Congressman John Murtha said, "I understand the investigation shows that there was no fire fight, there was no explosion that killed the civilians in a bus. There was no bus. There was no shrapnel, there were only bullet holes inside the house where the marines had gone in."

The Iraqi Hammurabi Organization for Monitoring Human Rights and Democracy documented the massacre and produced a video showing corpses lined up at the local morgue with bullet wounds in the head and chest. The video shows homes with bullet holes in the walls, pieces of human flesh, pools of blood, and clothes scattered on floors. Iraqi civilian witnesses described the horrible killing rampage by the US Marines.