The plea bargain in the last
Haditha massacre case handed down in January is a fitting end to the
Iraq war. In the most notorious case of U.S. culpability in Iraqi
civilian deaths, no one will pay a price. And that is emblematic of the
entire war and its hundreds of thousands of dead and millions
displaced.
Sergeant Frank
Wuterich, the squad leader who encouraged and led his marines to kill 24
civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha in November 2005, was the last
of eight originally charged in the massacre. The others were let off on
technicalities, or to help the prosecution. One officer, not involved
in the killing but the coverup, was acquitted in a military trial.
The
responsibility for these killings came down to Wuterich’s role, but he
never actually went through a full trial. The military prosecutor opted
for the slap-on-the-wrist of demotion to private for the 24 civilian
deaths. Wuterich, who admitted to much more in a “60 Minutes” interview
in 2007—including rolling grenades into a house filled with civilians
without attempting to make an identification—copped only to “dereliction
of duty.”
The episode was often
compared with the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, in which some 400
civilians were executed by Lieutenant William Calley and some of his
army unit in 1967. While the scale and circumstances are quite
different, they do bear one striking similarity, and that is the
reaction of officials and the American public alike.
The
My Lai massacre was uncovered by an enterprising journalist, Seymour
Hersh, who had to overcome official disavowals to get the story. When
Hersh managed to publish via a small wire service, the story exploded,
with many Americans expressing horror and outrage that something like
that could be done by American troops. READ MORE
No comments:
Post a Comment