I’m not going to editorialize about this story. I’ll simply present excerpts from the article in which a squad leader at the Haditha killings presents his version of events. In short, he claims the Marines at Haditha followed their standard rules of engagement, and that no cover-up was ever made:
A sergeant who led a squad of Marines during the incident in Haditha, Iraq, that left as many as 24 civilians dead said his unit did not intentionally target any civilians, followed military rules of engagement and never tried to cover up the shootings, his attorney said.
Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, 26, told his attorney that several civilians were killed Nov. 19 when his squad went after insurgents who were firing at them from inside a house. The Marine said there was no vengeful massacre, but he described a house-to-house hunt that went tragically awry in the middle of a chaotic battlefield.
“It will forever be his position that everything they did that day was following their rules of engagement and to protect the lives of Marines,” said Neal A. Puckett, [Wuterich’s attorney].
As the leader of 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, Wuterich was in the convoy of Humvees that was hit by a roadside bomb. He entered the house from which the Marines believed enemy fire was originating and made the initial radio reports to his company headquarters about what was going on, Puckett said. […]
Wuterich told his attorney in initial interviews over nearly 12 hours last week that the shootings were the unfortunate result of a methodical sweep for enemies in a firefight. Two attorneys for other Marines involved in the incident said Wuterich’s account is consistent with those they had heard from their clients.
More on the flip.
On Nov. 19, Wuterich’s squad left its headquarters at Firm Base Sparta in Haditha at 7 a.m. on a daily mission to drop off Iraqi army troops at a nearby checkpoint. […]
Shortly after the turn, a bomb buried in the road ripped through the last Humvee. The blast instantly killed the driver, Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20. […]
Wuterich, driving the third Humvee in the line, immediately stopped the convoy and got out, Puckett said.
Puckett said that while Wuterich was evaluating the scene, Marines noticed a white, unmarked car full of “military-aged men” lingering near the bomb site. When Marines ordered the men to stop, they ran; Puckett said it was standard procedure at the time for the Marines to shoot suspicious people fleeing a bombing, and the Marines opened fire, killing four or five men.
“The first thing he thought was it could be a vehicle-borne bomb or these guys could be ready to do a drive-by shooting,” Puckett said, explaining that the Marines were on alert for such coordinated, multi-stage attacks.[…]
Wuterich officially reported to his headquarters that there had been a makeshift bomb and called for a Quick Reaction Force, Puckett said. The first group encountered an unexploded bomb on another route — fueling concerns that insurgents were mounting an attack on the daily morning convoy — and a second force headed out. That group, including Marines with the 3rd Squad and the platoon’s leader, a young second lieutenant, arrived minutes later.
Wuterich told Puckett that no one was emotionally rattled by Terrazas’s death because everyone had a job to do, and everyone was concerned about further casualties. As Wuterich began briefing the platoon leader, Puckett said, AK-47 shots rang out from residences on the south side of the road, and the Marines ducked.
A corporal with the unit leaned over to Wuterich and said he saw the shots coming from a specific house, and after a discussion with the platoon leader, they decided to clear the house, according to Wuterich’s account.
“There’s a threat, and they went to eliminate the threat,” Puckett said.
A four-man team of Marines, including Wuterich, kicked in the door and found a series of empty rooms, noticing quickly that there was one room with a closed door and people rustling behind it, Puckett said. They then kicked in that door, tossed a fragmentation grenade into the room, and one Marine fired a series of “clearing rounds” through the dust and smoke, killing several people, Puckett said.
The Marine who fired the rounds — Puckett said it was not Wuterich — had experience clearing numerous houses on a deployment in Fallujah, where Marines had aggressive rules of engagement.
Although it was almost immediately apparent to the Marines that the people dead in the room were men, women and children — most likely civilians — they also noticed a back door ajar and believed that insurgents had slipped through to a house nearby, Puckett said. The Marines stealthily moved to the second house, kicking in the door, killing one man inside and then using a frag grenade and more gunfire to clear another room full of people, he said.
Wuterich, not having found the insurgents, told the team to stop and headed back to the platoon leader to reassess the situation, Puckett said, adding that his client knew a number of civilians had just been killed.[…]
The unit stayed at the scene for hours, helping to collect bodies as photos were taken. Wuterich, who remains on duty in California, where he lives with his wife and two young daughters, told Puckett that for months no one questioned his actions.
In essence, Sgt. Wuterish claims that every action taken by the Marines in Haditha that day was pursuant to the applicable rules of engagement for Marine units deployed in Anbar province. For the record, here is where Sgt. Wuterich’s version of events differs from other reports about the deaths at Haditha:
* Previous reports make no mention of the use of fragmentation grenades by the Marines. Iraqi Witnesses claimed only bullets were used to kill civilians.
* Reuters reported that the US Military confirmed the claim by Haditha doctors that all the civilians were shot.
* Wuterich claimed that he stopped his team after killing the residents of the second house. Iraqi witnesses claim that Marines moved on to a third house and killed people in there, as well.
* Wuterich claims that four “military aged men” in an unmarked white car attempted to run away, and were shot while fleeing on foot, pursuant to standard rules of engagement. Iraqi witnesses claimed that the car was a taxi which had arrived on the scene carrying students, and that when the driver put the car in reverse to back away, the Marines fired, killing the four students while they were still in the car.
* The two accounts also differ on the timing. Wuterich claims that the four men in the car were shot before any Marine entered the houses. The Iraqi witnesses from Haditha claim that the car arrived on the scene after the houses had already been fired upon.
* Wuterich’s account makes no mention of either the Marines burning the houses or of airstrikes dropping bombs on houses, both of which have been previously reported. Alleged images of the victims appear to show blackened corpses with burn marks.
Both accounts agree on two points. The Marines were methodical in their actions, and they killed civilians in their homes.