Press Release: Haditha Massacre Is Iraq's Mai Lai
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 19, 2006
Contact: Hany Khalil (718) 637-7351 mobile, hanykhalil@igc.org
Haditha Massacre Is Iraq's Mai Lai
Atrocities Just Tip of the Iceberg
19 May 2006, New York, New York--Appearing on "Hardball with Chris
Matthews" on Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.) confirmed that, in
an incident occurring in Haditha, Iraq, last November, Marines killed
23 Iraqi civilians, including women and children, "in cold blood" as
revenge for the death of a Marine from an IED. Asked by Matthews,
whether by "in cold blood" he meant that the killings were like those
in the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, Murtha said they were.
Military sources consulted by other media outlets have confirmed those
claims.
At a press conference on Thursday, May 18, Congressperson John Murtha
(D-OH) said, "It's much worse than reported in Time magazine. There was
no firefight. There was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our
troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed
innocent civilians in cold blood. And that's what the report is going
to tell."
"The massacre of up to 500 Vietnamese civilians in the village of My
Lai was the tip of an iceberg of atrocities," said Rahul Mahajan, a
United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) spokesperson. "The same is true of
the Haditha massacre. Although it is the largest documented example of
the deliberate mass murder of civilians (there are smaller ones), it
joins a series of actions that, while short of this degree of
cold-blooded brutality, involve neglect and indifference so pervasive
and deep that it amounts to depraved indifference to Iraqi life."
Reports of the massacre include shooting people and leaving them to
bleed to death on house raids, checkpoint killings, and indiscriminate
return fire in crowded civilian neighborhoods.
Larger-scale offensives like the two assaults on Fallujah in 2004 and,
to a lesser extent, operations in Tall Afar and other northern cities
last summer and fall also caused massive civilian fatalities. In the
April 2004 assault on Fallujah, the lesser of the two, it is estimated
that 1000 people were killed, at least 600 of whom were civilians.
The Marines involved in the massacre originally tried to cover it up,
claiming that the unarmed men they killed were insurgents and that the
women and children killed were "collateral damage." Those claims were
only challenged because they were contradicted by video evidence (of
the corpses in the morgue). This raises serious questions about how
often incidents like this occur and are successfully covered up.
According to British officers serving in Iraq, most recently Brigadier
Nigel Aylwin-Foster in an article in Military Review, U.S. troops show
a widespread pattern of institutionalized racism toward Iraqis. This is
part of the explanation of the atrocity. On top of that, the Iraq
occupation, like the Vietnam War, repeatedly leads to
"atrocity-producing situations," where crimes like the Haditha or My
Lai massacres become almost inevitable. Marines who are guilty of
murder should be severely punished, but the policy-makers should not be
let off the hook. As long as the occupation continues, crimes like the
Haditha massacre will as well.
United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is the largest U.S. peace and
justice coalition with more than 1,400 member groups under its
umbrella. Since its founding in October 2002, UFPJ has spurred hundreds
of protests and rallies around the country, including the two largest
marches against the Iraq war on February 15, 2003, and August 29, 2004,
during the Republican National Convention. http://www.unitedforpeace.org For more information or to arrange interviews with UFPJ spokespeople, contact Hany Khalil, 718-637-7351.
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