Marines face scrutiny in Iraqi deaths

LA Times ^ | 5 Jul 07 | Tony Perry

[freema]

This latest makes me think of al Qaeda’s recent video for some reason.

[Velveeta]

Can it be they’re grasping at straws because the Haditha case is falling apart?

[xzins]

Can it be they’re grasping at straws because the Haditha case is falling apart?

That's exactly what it appears like to me. The bad thing is that the Naval CIS is supposed to be on the Marine Corp's side. They're doing everything they can to hurt the Corps.

[Velveeta]

They're doing everything they can to hurt the Corps.

I agree with you on that.
I don't understand how they sleep at night.

[17th Miss Regt]

Get these F*****G jags the hell away from the combat.

Better approach from Shakespeare. Get them into heavy combat and then we play 'Frag the JAG'.

[Drew68]

After subduing the insurgents and reporting back to their superiors, Marines were told to quickly move to another location to help colleagues engaged in a firefight.

Helms said Wednesday that when the Marines radioed to their superiors that they were still holding prisoners, the response was, "They're still alive?"

This crap really pisses me off! Even if this account is true, what were the Marines supposed to do with them? Let them go to rejoin their fellow insurgents? Stay with them while their fellow Marines are fighting elsewhere?

Maybe they should have just left them tied up inside the home and then called in an airstrike.

Guess what? War is hell.

Even if this account is true, this isn't unprecendented. The same thing happened in every other war we've fought in. Sometimes you can't take captured fighters with you and you can't just leave them where you found them. It's not like these were innocent women and children. They were combatants!

[xzins]

You have prisoners, you are in combat, and your buddies are desperate for your help. Your prisoners impede your mission and take away critical assets.

What do you do?

This sounds like a scenario right out of a battlefield ethics manual.

The answers I’ve read are exactly as you’ve said: tie them up, render them unable to resist, and go help your buddies.

If an airstrike intervenes, then that doesn’t mean you didn’t do your best. Airstrikes aren’t always “pinpoint” and with smart bombs. Smart bombs are extremely costly and dumb bombs do just as good a job.

[Girlene]

Maybe they should have just left them tied up inside the home and then called in an airstrike.

From the LA Times article, Minutes later an airstrike demolished the house, burying the bodies in rubble. The insurgents were going to die that day, one way or another.

An excerpt from the front flap of "We Were One: Shoulder to Shoulder with the Marines Who Took Fallujah" gives a brief reminder of the battle of Fallujah.

...Lima Company's 1st Platoon found itself in Fallujah, embroiled in some of the most intense house-to-house, hand-to-hand combat since World War II. Civilians were used as human shield or as bait to lure soldiers into buildings rigged with explosives; suicide bombers approached from every corner hoping to die and take Americans with them; radical insurgents, high on adrenaline, fought to the death. The Marines of the 1st Platoon (part of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment) were among the first to fight in Fallujah, and they bore the brunt of this epic battle. When it was over, the platoon had sufferred thirty-five casualties, including four dead.....