Posted on 01/16/2012 12:35:07 PM PST by RedRover
Camp Pendleton, Calif. – The General Court Martial of U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Frank D. Wuterich became a certainty on November 20, 2005, one day after his squad lost one Marine and killed 24 Iraqis before passing the score of their bloody encounter up the chain of command.
At first glance the events at an obscure place called Haditha, Iraq seemed routine enough. If noticed at all, the blossoming debacle was just another soul-numbing calamity among the hundreds of random tragedies unfolding across the shattering region every week during the second year of the war.
The day after the November 19 skirmish, a routine Marine Corps press release from Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi reported one Marine and 15 Iraqi civilians were killed by the IED blast. The Marine Corps’ colorless account noted that "gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire." When the shooting ended, the announcement said, eight insurgents were dead and a wounded insurgent was captured.
The report was written by 2nd Marine Division Public Affairs Officer Captain Jeffrey Pool, a career Marine officer responsible for briefing the vociferous press in al Anbar Province. In November 2005 Al Anbar was the hot ticket in Iraq for determined reporters, the place where they could make a name for themselves dancing briefly with the terrible danger the Marines faced every day. Pool was there to accommodate them.
Regrettably, Pool’s account was erroneous. Worse, he knew it at the time. Capt. Pool later claimed he released the inaccurate report because he believed the civilian deaths were attributable to the roadside bombing because “it led the Marines to counter-attack the hidden insurgents” who set it off.
It was not Pool’s personal opinion. When the Marine Corps wants captains to have a public opinion they tell them what it is. That’s what happened to Pool. A colonel named Richard A Sokoloski told him to write it. Not only was he a colonel, Sokoloski was Chief of Staff of the 2nd Marine Division and Pool’s boss. In any event, Pool’s innocuous report wasn’t considered by anyone except the dead to be earthshaking news.
The Marine who died was 20-year old LCpl Miguel Terrazas, the son of a retired Army staff sergeant. At the time, nobody up the chain knew his name, they just knew a faceless Marine was dead. Three months after the IED killed Terrazas a second bomb was remotely detonated by Time magazine from its Baghdad bureau. Time claimed the Iraqi citizens who died at Haditha were massacred, the victims of Marine vengeance. The magazine’s explosive account unleashed a monster that threatened the soul of the Corps.
It was written by Tim McGirk, a particularly resourceful and ambitious Time reporter who claimed the Iraqis were gunned down by merciless Marines gone berserk. Regrettably, like Capt. Pool, McGirk also got it wrong, remarkably wrong, but for different reasons. He was never there.
Before the Marine Corps could make his specious account right it was too late. To steal a time-worn phrase, the Marines had landed, but the situation was entirely out of hand. What happened in that brief encounter is what this story is all about. It did not happen in a vacuum.
Wuterich’s court martial has a large number of principle players. Of course there is Frank and his three little girls, and his defense attorneys: Neal Puckett, Haytham Faraj and Maj. Meridith Marshall. All three are Marine lawyers although Puckett and Faraj are retired now. Then there is the military judge, LtCol David Jones, an even tempered man with a friendly demeanor and a reputation for being hard as steel. The prosecution is led by Maj. Nicholas Gannon, a younger man, and LtCol Sean Sullivan, a fiery Chicago Irishman who has mellowed some in the four years he has been struggling for a conviction.
Seven other defendants, including three who have already testified, have been exonerated. The youngest is Justin Sharratt, a baby-faced kid when all this started. He killed three armed Iraqis in a room smaller than a lot of bathrooms with his pistol. His buddy Stephen Tatum took the stand Tuesday. He had Wuterich’s back at Haditha. He had it again when he testified.
Both Marines learned how to fight at Fallujah the year before, when the Thundering Third was stacking up Iraqi corpses like cordwood with everything from pistols to SMAW-NE shoulder-fired rockets than turned people into charcoal briquettes. They killed so many Iraqis the deaths were counted by measuring a lengthening ditch were the dead Iraqis were buried shoulder to shoulder. Marine reconnaissance aircraft took pictures of it every day. It eventually stretched for several hundred yards.
The oldest and highest ranked Marine charged was LtCol Jeffrey Chessani, who refused to throw his men under the bus and got to ride in it with them for his courage. He helped write the plan that helped fill up the ditch. That is what senior Marine officers do.
The other defendants who were charged and subsequently freed have blown with the four winds. There is Capt. Lucas McConnell, the Kilo Company commander and Annapolis grad who walked early on. Indicted with him was Randy Stone, a lawyer so inexperienced he managed to get himself arrested. Stone was once held up by President George W. Bush as a poster boy for patriotism.
"And today … Capt. Randy Stone carries on a proud family tradition," Bush told Congress in 2005. "Capt. Stone is a Marine officer now serving in Iraq. He knows that he and his generation are doing the same vital work in this war on terror that his grandparents did in World War II. He also knows how this struggle will end."
Also in the mix was a reputedly rebellious intelligence officer named Andrew Grayson, who has been badmouthed by name along with Sgt Sanick Dela Cruz. Grayson was blasted Monday by retired US Army Col. Gregory Watt for being an obstructionist who hid evidence from his investigation. Dela Cruz was crucified by his squad mates as being an unpredictable, habitual liar.
Dela Cruz is a snakeshit mean turncoat riflemen despised by the other enlisted men for turning against them to be a key government witness. He traded five murder charges for a free ride. The little man from Chicago admittedly liked to kick Iraqi “detainees” in places where it wouldn’t show and urinate on a dead person after he shot him. He called his predilections “emotional” reactions. The government says Dela Cruz is one of the good guys.
The government’s case sounds simple enough. Wuterich is accused of Voluntary Manslaughter for killing nine people, three counts of Dereliction of Duty for ordering, in three places, 15 civilians to be killed, and two counts of Assault with a Dangerous Weapon or Other Means Like to Produce Death or Grievous Injury for shooting various people in two private residences and exiting a little white car.
Five of the dead were Iraqi men shot down next to the innocuous white car seconds after the ambush was sprung. Wuterich admits he took a knee and shot them when they tried to run away. Dela Cruz says Wuterich shot them while they were standing around with their hands in the air. Dela Cruz says he shot them again just to make sure they were dead and then urinated in one of the victim’s empty skull.
“I didn’t want to get blasted,” he explained on Wednesday.
If the numbers don’t seem to add up don’t feel like the Lone Ranger. They don’t. The formula is twenty four murders minus eight legally killed insurgents plus five questionably innocent dead guys in a white car, and a random victim still unaccounted for. The illegal deaths have dropped from 24 to 15 to 12 and now to nine. The rest of them apparently died of fright.
No doubt the panel members – what military jurors are collectively called – will be scratching their heads during deliberations trying to add it all up. If that sounds crass it isn’t intended to. The way the victims are counted merely underscores the complexities of trying to assign moral imperatives to the immorality of war.
It is that ambiguity that led to this trial. The government, to prove Wuterich committed crimes, has to prove he violated the Rules of Engagement – the Bible if you will – for killing the enemy in modern American-style warfare. The suspected enemy has to show “hostile intent,” or just be downright “hostile” to be eligible for killing. The interpretation is a bit difficult to grasp.
Friday afternoon a Marine major named Maj. Kathryn Navin said she taught the Rules of Engagement to the Marines before they left for Iraq. The ROE was written by brilliant lawyers exercising cool reflection in the sane environment of an office. Unfortunately the situation at Haditha on November 19, 2005 was insane.
A former Marine sergeant named Hector Salinas Wednesday testified for the government. He is crafty like a fox. Lawyer Kevin McDermott, a military lawyer who spent several years involved with 3/1 Marines, says it takes a very smart man to pull off being stupid. Salinas couldn’t remember anything except he was the squad leader that day, that he was the first man to see an insurgent by the victims' houses, and the first Marine into the first house where six of the victims died. He is also the only guy to say that if he had it to do all over again he would “have called in an air strike.” That comment made headlines around the world. Salinas says Wuterich never gave an order the entire day.
Friday morning Wuterich’s former platoon commander William Kallop testified he ordered Wuterich to “clear South,” a euphemism for clean out those houses with rifles and grenades. Kallop said it was alright under the rules. He says Wuterich was a fine leader and a great Marine. He is not at all happy about the way things have gone.
Maj. Navin testified Marines should only use deadly force to clear a structure (like houses) if they are receiving fire and can positively identify the hostile individual inside. She says a structure housing hostile forces cannot be hostile — only the individuals inside. On November 19, a few hundred meters down Route Chestnut a house suspected of harboring insurgents was flattened by 500-pound retarded gravity bombs dropped from Marine Corps attack jets – “turned into dust,” LtCol Chessani once said.
Nobody was charged.
The court-martial resumes Tuesday morning.
Feel free to expound on your third post since signing on at FR. Have you followed the cases or read any of the current articles? Have you ever been signed on under another screen name?
Welcome gibsosa, you’re on!
1. Staff Sergeant Wuterich was told the buildings were hostile, whether the Major thinks buildings can be hostile or not. In other words, there were hostiles using those buildings. This information is from previous posts, so it is not explicitly stated in this article by Helms.
2. The order was given to clear those buildings. That means only one thing: enter the buildings and eliminate the threat. Since they were receiving fire from the buildings, it makes sense to clear them. Since being shot at is a sign of hostiles, then the building contained hostiles; i.e., “it” was hostile.
3. Urban warfare from room to room (”clear”) does not mean knocking on any door and asking if there are hostiles present. Positive identification cannot possibly mean that. That would be forcing our troops to operate in a manner sure to get them killed.
4. That means in any engagement that our troops are under the provision of the ROEs in effect that they must defend themselves AND attack the enemy.
5. The most important fact is that Wuterich was ordered to “clear south”.
6. The most important puzzle is that we are told Wuterich did not issue one single order the entire day. Does that mean he was simply talking when he allegedly said, “shoot first; ask questions later” or words to that effect??? For all I know he was giving himself a pep talk, just sharing out loud, or going over out loud how to interpret the ROEs.
7. As I understand it, there were different ROEs issued shortly after this period of the war. It would be interesting to contrast those with the Haditha ROE to see how PID is expanded upon in those newer ROEs. That would indicate that PID meant something different at war period 1 and war period 2.
>>> The most important fact is that Wuterich was ordered to “clear south”.<<<
That’s the way I see it, Chap. The ROE as they existed AT THAT TIME were followed by SSgt Wuterich. “Clear south” was an unambigious order for Marines in Haditha and it satisfied the rule to “contact your next higher commander for decision”.
Rule 1.a. on the CFLCC card(see Nat’s article above) is the key. That and Lt.Kallops testimony:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2832941/posts
PID is a reasonable certainty that the proposed target is a legitimate military target.
PID as defined at the time of the Haditha incident didn't mean you had to be eyeball-to-eyeball with an attacker to fire your weapon.
As you say, ROE became more constrictive after the Haditha incident and now it's said there are troops in Afghanistan who are basically refusing to even go out on patrol.
Good post, xzins. The ROE were followed and Major Navin’s testimony trying to say they weren’t is bogus.
Yeah, “The Battle of Haditha” was made by a British leftist dork named Nicholas Broomfield. He dramatized the Time magazine/Murtha version of Haditha and called it the truth.
Unfortunately, a bunch of unhappy inactive Marines were involved in the film. Can’t really blame them for shooting for movie stardom, but they ended up stabbing their brothers in the back do so. So I guess I do blame them.
BTW, Broomfield continues to promote his film while railing against the “failed prosecutions” and calling for SSgt Wuterich to be drawn and quartered. So much for the leftists’ bleeding heart concern for “the rights of the accused”. Justice for cop killers but not for members of the armed services. Leftists got their massacre and they’re sticking with it—no matter what the facts actually are.
Thanks! Appreciate the effort all of you ping folks go through.
Sorry to say the answer is "yes and no".
There was a lot of fighting going on around the ambush site that day. So the first problem for an investigation is trying to sort out who SSgt Wuterich and his squad is supposed to have killed and who was killed by other action.
Former sergeant Salinas testified this week that he killed somebody running outside one of the houses. Former lieutenant Kallop testified that members of the Iraqi army (embedded with the Marines) were shooting at people and that an insurgent was shot after the incident by the Marines not far from the ambush site. Eight hundred meters up the road, four dismembered bodies were recovered after the airstrike. More were recovered later.
So an investigator has to deal with a fair number of bodies, many without heads (to be blunt) and no way to tie their deaths back to an actor. As far as I know, all the dead ended up in an Iraqi morgue so identifying the dead is based on the claims of Iraqi families (I don't mean that I doubt the claims, but I'm trying to suggest that a battlezone makes for a lousy crime scene).
Based on family claims, we do know the names of Iraqis killed in two houses cleared by SSgt Wuterich and his squad. But we don't know that SSgt Wuterich directly shot or grenaded any of them. There is no real forensic evidence which is why NCIS will have to rely on reconstructions.
The only people we know for sure that SSgt Wuterich shot that day were the five individuals at the white car. In the original charge sheet, the specification read that he did "willfully and unlawfully kill one or more unknown persons, located near a white car, at or near the intersection of Routes Chestnut and Viper, by shooting them with a loaded M16A4 service rifle."
So we have dead, identified Iraqis, killed by SSgt Wuterich's squad but we don't know if SSgt Wuterich himself actually killed any of them or not.
And we have another group of unidentified Iraqis that SSgt Wuterich says he shot but there is no evidence that his shots killed them (former sergeant Dela Cruz was also shooting).
And that he’s charged with 9, not 24?
The original charge sheet didn't list 24 dead Iraqis despite the fact that the Corps said "24 men, women, and children" had been killed.
The charge sheet for the court martial only listed charges with no specifications. There are nine counts of voluntary manslaughter against SSgt Wuterich and the assumption has been that each count must be for an individual.
It's hard to get to the bottom of this without the new specifications and the USMC isn't answering any questions.
I posted the charge sheet for the court martial HERE. I added the specifications in the original charge sheet--but that's not to say they are still operative specifications.
Hope all that (or most of that anyway) makes sense. We'll basically need to wait and hear more during the trial to know just who SSgt Wuterich is charged with killing and on what evidence. But this is the best we can do for now.
Thank you!!
akk...Be nice people...WHAT would a kangaroo court featuring a dog and pony show be...without CLOWNS???
vetposter
Since Jan 14, 2012
I smell ozone.
IBTZ
you signed up to free republic yesterday just to say today that a Haditha marine is “clearly guilty” when the trial just began?
All the others have been cleared or exhonerated.
And you declare Staff Sergeant Wuterich guilty.
Is your last name Murtha Jr.?
Our pleasure. To live is to ping (and vice versa).
Thank you for this info, and taking the time to explain it so well.
Thanks, Girl. That is a fact about Sokoloski and Pool.
Should have a piece in an hour or so from Nat on today. Sgt Maj Sax put another nail in the prosecution’s coffin even though he was their witness.
The govt says it will conclude either Friday or Monday
although it still has 43 witness on its list. Not sure how long the defense plans to present its case.
Those 43 witnesses left for the prosecution must not have much to say because I don’t see how the prosecution can predict the defenses cross if they did.
Maybe the prosecution has decided against calling witnesses that only help the defense. :-)
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