US confronts brutal culture among its finest sons

US confronts brutal culture among its finest sons

In the wake of the Haditha massacre come further allegations of outlaw killings in Iraq. They add to growing unease about US military culture that fails to distinguish civilian from insurgent

Paul Harris in New York, Peter Beaumont in London, and Mohammed al-Ubeidy in Baghdad
Sunday June 4, 2006
The Observer

American veterans of the war in Iraq have described a culture of casual violence, revenge and prejudice against Iraqi civilians that has made the killing of innocent bystanders a common occurrence.
The US military is now involved in at least three separate investigations into its own soldiers' conduct in Iraq that may illegally have led to the deaths of Iraqi civilians. It is widely expected that more incidents will be uncovered. The most serious is the alleged massacre of 24 civilians in the Sunni town of Haditha by a unit of marines. The victims included women and children who were shot after a roadside bomb hit a convoy and killed a US soldier.

Last week it was revealed that two more incidents have also been under investigation. The first is the death of 11 Iraqis during an American raid near Balad in March. The dead included five children. The second inquiry involves seven US marines and a sailor in the death of an Iraqi civilian near Baghdad in April. It is believed the man was dragged from his home and shot before an AK-47 and a shovel were placed next to his body to make it look like he was an insurgent.

Some American veterans have expressed little surprise at the latest revelations. 'I don't doubt for one moment that these things happened. They are widespread. This is the norm. These are not the exceptions,' said Camilo Mejia, a US infantry veteran who served briefly in the Haditha area in 2003.

American veterans have told The Observer of a military culture that places little practical emphasis on avoiding civilian casualties in the heat of battle, although they also point out the huge problems of urban fighting against a tough enemy that often hides within the civilian Iraqi community.

'In these circumstances you would be surprised at how any normal human being can see their morals degenerate so they can do these things,' said Garrett Reppenhagen, a former US sniper.

Mejia, who has served time in jail for refusing to return to Iraq for a second tour of duty, said there was widespread prejudice against Iraqis in his unit, and that Iraqis were routinely referred to as 'Hajis' in the same way that local people during the Vietnam war were called 'gooks' or 'Charlie'.

'We dehumanise the enemy under these circumstances,' said Mejia. 'They called them gooks in Vietnam and we called them Hajis in Iraq.'

Mejia described an incident in Ramadi when his unit was manning a roadblock near a mosque. When one car refused to stop, US soldiers opened fire on it. Then the American unit came under fire from elsewhere. In the resulting firefight, however, no insurgents were killed while seven Iraqi civilians stuck at the roadblock died. No weapons were found in the car that had refused to stop. 'There was no sense in it. There was no basic humanity. They were all civilians and we didn't kill any insurgents,' Mejia said.

Some have tried to defend the killings by pointing to the stress that US soldiers - many of whom are on their second or third tour of duty - are under. But it is clear that there are other, deeper problems within the US military that point to a widespread failure of command.

At the heart of the issue is a culture of violence against Iraqi civilians that has been present in large measure since the moment US forces crossed the border into Iraq - an inability and unwillingness to distinguish between civilians and combatants that as three years have passed has been transformed, for some, into something more deliberate.

From the shootings of civilians in Nasiriya by marines during the US advance to similar shootings by the Third Infantry Division on the outskirts of Baghdad during the so-called 'Thunder Run' into the city, the same pattern has reasserted itself. Indeed, within weeks of the fall of Saddam's regime it expressed itself in the moment that many now see as the starting point of the insurgency: the firing by US paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division into a noisy demonstration in Falluja.

And as the occupation and insurgency have dragged on, the sense of unaccountability has only increased. Last November, during the referendum on the new Iraqi constitution in the dangerous northern city of Mosul, a young sniper in a Stryker fighting vehicle described being hit by two improvised explosive devices in one day and his crew's reaction: 'I just wanted to get out and kill some Iraqis.'

It is a lack of discipline that has been commented on with horror by British officers - representing an army that itself has seen its own soldiers seriously mistreat Iraqi civilians.

In the days since evidence of the Haditha killings emerged, media organisations, including The Observer, have been contacted with details of other incidents that Iraqis have long claimed involved the execution of civilians by US troops.

Among them is an alleged massacre at Makr al-Deeb, near the town of Al-Qaim on the Syrian border, where marines were alleged to have bombed a wedding party and then shot a number of survivors. At the time, Major General James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, was scathing of those who suggested a wedding party had been hit, claiming his soldiers had attacked a foreign fighters' safe house.

After Haditha, it seems such denials can longer be taken at face value. Iraq's new Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, yesterday rejected the US military's exoneration of its forces over another alleged massacre - this time in the town of Ishaqi on 15 March - when US troops are alleged to have executed five children, four women and two men after tying them up. So far the US military has reacted to the crisis by vowing to investigate any incidents that occur and insisting that they are isolated and carried out by a tiny minority of soldiers.

However, the impact of the scandals is likely to have a damaging impact on American attitudes towards the war. They have emerged in the wake of the prisoner abuse incidents at Abu Ghraib, which greatly damaged US public opinion about events in Iraq and deeply affected troop morale.

But many believe that the new scandals, in particular Haditha, will have a much larger political and military effect than Abu Ghraib. 'It will be bigger than Abu Ghraib. That was torture. At Haditha we are talking about people being killed. It will be a huge blow to US efforts,' said Aidan Delgado, a veteran whose unit served at Abu Ghraib.

The emerging picture of US military behaviour in Iraq is likely to shatter America's image of its soldiers, even in the midst of the 'war on terror', when extreme patriotism has become a growing facet of American public life. 'Americans have a heroic image of their soldiers and they don't want to lose that. They have an impression that US soldiers don't do things like this,' Delgado said.

Delgado now tours American anti-war meetings with a slideshow and lecture about the Abu Ghraib scandal. He believes that all the abuse and killings scandals are part of a widespread pattern. 'Until we recognise this as a pattern, not just a few individuals, then we are not going to the root of the problem,' he said.

He describes his experiences within Abu Ghraib , painting a picture of prisoners being severely beaten for minor disciplinary problems and saying that guards opened fire on rioting inmates, killing them for throwing stones. He also says he saw US prison guards boasting about abusing or killing prisoners.

One of the issues raised by the scandals is whether cover-ups have taken place and how high up the chain of command knowledge of the killings went. At Haditha it appears there was a clear attempt at a cover-up, both by marines on the ground and officers back at base who issued a press release claiming the Iraqis had either died in the initial explosion or had been insurgents.

At the same time, the marines and sailor being investigated in the killing of a civilian in Baghdad also appear to have attempted to cover up the death by planting evidence on the body.

It is a practice that Reppenhagen, who is now a senior member of peace group Iraq Veterans Against the War, said had happened before. 'We have members who can tell you about carrying shovels in their vehicles to throw down next to killed civilians as "proof" that they were planting IEDs [improvised explosive devices],' he said.

Few veterans believe that serious charges will travel very far up the chain of command. After Abu Ghraib, it was only low-level soldiers who stood trial. Many now expect a similar result from the new investigations.

'They make it look like Abu Ghraib, that it was just some bad soldiers who went crazy - they were the bad apples,' said Mejia. Yesterday, however, Pentagon sources suggested that even before the Haditha court martials take place some senior officers may be relieved of their commands.

Mejia believes the problem is a systemic one. He points out that both the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Haditha massacre have only come to light because either locals or US soldiers took photographs of the crimes or their aftermath. If left to the army alone, they would never have been uncovered.

'These things are just the ones we know about. Just think about how much else has gone that we don't know about. Civilians are dying there almost every day,' he said.