Haditha Revisited

Haditha Revisited

Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com
Monday, Jan. 29, 2007

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At approximately 7:00 a.m. on Nov. 19, 2005, a Humvee carrying Marines from Kilo Company, 3rd battalion, 1st Marine Regiment on a routine patrol in Haditha, Iraq, was destroyed by an improvised explosive device killing the driver, Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, and wounding two other Marines.

This area was a known hotbed of insurgency.

It was the beginning of what intelligence sources told NewsMax was a well-planned ambush by al-Qaida insurgents. The ambush was carefully monitored by Marine intelligence operatives who learned immediately that the incident now developing was being videotaped by the al-Qaida insurgents, a common practice among this media-savvy group of killers.

Bogus Video

That video, shopped around for months by insurgents who had filmed it, and by an anti-American Iraqi who claimed he had filmed it, would find its way into the hands of a gullible Time magazine reporter who would accept it at face value and use it and the words of other anti-American Iraqis to accuse the Marines of deliberate murder.

Soon after the killings, the mayor of Haditha, Emad Jawad Hamza, enjoyed widespread favorable publicity in the media when he charged that the Marines were guilty of murder.

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What was not widely reported in the same media, was that he was subsequently arrested for being an insurgent and imprisoned in abu Ghraib.

The facts of the case, as developed by NewsMax.com, tell a different story. Here according to a Marine intelligence source present that day, is the real story of the Haditha incident.

In the weeks preceding the incident, as NewsMax.com revealed, the Marines of Kilo Company were repeatedly briefed about insurgent ambush tactics that had cost the lives of Marines, including one shocking ambush in the Haditha hospital. Seven Marines from a reconnaissance unit where shot and killed by insurgents posing as patients with concealed AK-47s under their bed covers.

It was this knowledge, drilled into their minds by intelligence officers, that motivated the Marines of Kilo Company to react as they did when ambushed on Nov. 19. It was what they had been trained to do.

Within five minutes of the explosion, the Kilo Company Marines came under small-arms fire from the vicinity of two houses in the immediate area of the explosion, and from behind a taxi cab carrying five passengers. A squad under the command of Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich ordered the passengers from the car, and, according to Wuterich, when they failed to obey his orders shouted in both English and Arabic, all were shot and killed.

Throughout this incident, Wuterich and his men were under fire, some of it coming from behind the taxi. Within 15 minutes of the explosion, a quick reaction force arrived and came under enemy fire coming from two nearby houses. Wuterich and his men were ordered by the officer in charge of the force to the enter and clear the houses.

They entered the two houses, using normal house-clearing procedures. In the course of this operation, a door was opened in the first house, and as dictated by the rules of engagement, a grenade was thrown into the room and automatic fire sprayed on the unknown occupants, killing the 15 civilians in the room.

In the second house, another civilian was gunned down. The Marines noticed that a rear door was ajar, indicating that someone had fled before they entered.

The Battle From the Air

Within minutes a UAV (drone) was in the sky above the area. It remained aloft all day, catching views of armed conflict, which grew in such intensity that air cover was called in and 500 lb. bombs dropped on at least one house occupied by insurgent gunmen. Some screen-shot photos of this were downloaded either at battalion or regimental headquarters.

Within 30 minutes of the explosion, an intelligence unit was on the scene and the Marines involved were closely questioned.

Those in that unit testify that the Kilo Marines' composure and demeanor were such that it was incomprehensible to them that they could have just participated in the cold-blooded massacre of the civilians.

By nightfall, an after-action PowerPoint presentation including the screen-shot photos downloaded from the UAV was sent up the chain of command. It carefully and fully detailed the day's action and was based on the constant radio communications, testimony of those present as participants and after-action investigators, and the data revealed minute-by-minute by the UAV. It left no T's uncrossed and no I's undotted.

Within days of the incident, officers from up the entire chain of command were fully briefed and concluded that the evidence provided them proved that the actions were fully justified by the circumstances on the ground at the time.

Unconscionable Allegations

As NewsMax reported, "This is what happened in Haditha that day. It was a daylong engagement with armed insurgents that involved civilian casualties who died as a result of being caught in the middle of a firefight. It had been reported as a blast followed by a TIC � Marine Corps terminology for 'troops in contact.' In other words, gunfire directed at the Marines. As the battalion went about compiling information on the insurgents' identities and determining who had been involved in the attack, its actions in the ensuing weeks resulted in the detention of several insurgents who masterminded the attack, and who remain incarcerated in Abu Ghraib prison today."

In March, Time magazine reported that sources in Haditha had charged that the Marines had gone on a rampage, indiscriminately killing 24 innocent civilians. The story set off a media firestorm, with widespread allegations that Haditha was another Mai Lai where hundreds of civilians, and not a couple of dozen as in Haditha, were killed.

Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. John Murtha, added fuel to the fire by charging that the Marines had committed cold blood murder. An investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was launched and completed by the end of 2006. It resulted in murder charges against six of the Marines.

In a lengthy series of stories, NewsMax has reported the facts of what happened that day in Haditha as given to us by the one Marine intelligence officer who monitored every minute of the day's engagement. He was in the best position to know exactly what happened that day.

According to our sources, this whole incident was filmed, produced, and directed by al-Qaida insurgents. They provoked the Marine counterattack, used the civilians as human shields, and peddled the video they shot for weeks until they found a gullible Time reporter who swallowed their story hook, line and sinker, thereby giving life to the insurgents' massacre hoax.

Master Manipulators

In a speech, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld spoke about how the enemy uses propaganda: "They know that communications transcend borders and that a single news story handled skillfully can be as damaging to our cause and helpful to theirs as any other method of military attack. And they're doing it. They're able to act quickly. They have relatively few people. They have modest resources compared to the vast and expensive bureaucracies of Western governments. "They are actively manipulating the media in this country" by, for example, falsely blaming U.S. troops for civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said. "They can lie with impunity."

As Haditha has proven.