26, January 2012 Haditha Massacre
Times magazine editor, Tim McGirk, first broke the story of the Haditha massacre in 2006. McGirk reported that a group of marines went on a rampage seeking revenge after the killing of Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas and slaughtered 24 innocent Iraqi civilians, including a 76 year old man women and children.
A large trove of documents, many marked “secret” were found among scores of other classified material at a junk yard Baghdad. The documents reveal extremely disturbing testimony that the Haditha killings were not an isolated incident. McGirk stated that "In some ways, this is one of the most grotesque episodes of the entire war in Iraq. And I’m afraid to say, this is part of our legacy”.
The tacit impunity that was granted US soldiers was in sharp contrast to the much stricter rules of engagement in Vietnam where scores of US soldiers received heavy sentences for war crimes. The long shadows cast by the Haditha massacre, the appalling sadistic abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the frequent killings by Blackwater contractor operatives has cast an unflattering image of the US occupation and precipitated in the early expulsion of US forces from Iraq.
But what is a much greater travesty is the crimes committed by policy makers in Washington who were responsible for sending soldiers in war zones with bogus claims of WMD’s ,‘keeping America safe’, or condoning terror tactics to justify the nebulous ‘war on terror.’
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