Countless My Lai Massacres in Iraq
By Dahr Jamail
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 30 May 2006

The media feeding frenzy around what has been referred to as "Iraq's My
Lai" has become frenetic. Focus on US Marines slaughtering at least 20
civilians in Haditha last November is reminiscent of the media spasm around
the "scandal" of Abu Ghraib during April and May 2004.

Yet just like Abu Ghraib, while the media spotlight shines squarely on
the Haditha massacre, countless atrocities continue daily, conveniently out
of the awareness of the general public. Torture did not stop simply because
the media finally decided, albeit in horribly belated fashion, to cover the
story, and the daily slaughter of Iraqi civilians by US forces and US-backed
Iraqi "security" forces had not stopped either.

Earlier this month, I received a news release from Iraq, which read, "On
Saturday, May 13th, 2006, at 10:00 p.m., US Forces accompanied by the Iraqi
National Guard attacked the houses of Iraqi people in the Al-Latifya
district south of Baghdad by an intensive helicopter shelling. This led the
families to flee to the Al-Mazar and water canals to protect themselves from
the fierce shelling. Then seven helicopters landed to pursue the families
who fled … and killed them. The number of victims amounted to more than 25
martyrs. US forces detained another six persons including two women named
Israa Ahmed Hasan and Widad Ahmed Hasan, and a child named Huda Hitham
Mohammed Hasan, whose father was killed during the shelling."

The report from the Iraqi NGO called The Monitoring Net of Human Rights
in Iraq (MHRI) continued, "The forces didn't stop at this limit. They held
an attack on May 15th, 2006, supported also by the Iraqi National Guards.
They also attacked the families' houses, and arrested a number of them while
others fled. US snipers then used the homes to target more Iraqis. The
reason for this crime was due to the downing of a helicopter in an area
close to where the forces held their attack."

The US military preferred to report the incident as an offensive where
they killed 41 "insurgents," a line effectively parroted by much of the
media.

On that same day, MHRI also reported that in the Yarmouk district of
Baghdad, US forces raided the home of Essam Fitian al-Rawi. Al-Rawi was
killed along with his son Ahmed; then the soldiers reportedly removed the
two bodies along with Al-Rawi's nephew, who was detained.

Similarly, in the city of Samara on May 5, MHRI reported, "American
soldiers entered the house of Mr. Zidan Khalif Al-Heed after an attack upon
American soldiers was launched nearby the house. American soldiers entered
this home and killed the family, including the father, mother and daughter
who is in the 6th grade, along with their son, who was suffering from mental
and physical disabilities."

This same group, MHRI, also estimated that between 4,000 and 6,000 Iraqi
civilians were killed during the November 2004 US assault on Fallujah.
Numbers which make those from the Haditha massacre pale in comparison.

Instead of reporting incidents such as these, mainstream outlets are
referring to the Haditha slaughter as one of a few cases that "present the
most serious challenge to US handling of the Iraq war since the Abu Ghraib
prison scandal."

Marc Garlasco, of Human Rights Watch, told reporters recently, "What
happened at Haditha appears to be outright murder. The Haditha massacre will
go down as Iraq's My Lai."

Then there is the daily reality of sectarian and ethnic cleansing in
Iraq, which is being carried out by US-backed Iraqi "security" forces. A
recent example of this was provided by a representative of the Voice of
Freedom Association for Human Rights, another Iraqi NGO which logs ongoing
atrocities resulting from the US occupation.

"The representative … visited Fursan Village (Bani Zaid) with the Iraqi
Red Crescent Al-Madayin Branch. The village of 60 houses, inhabited by Sunni
families, was attacked on February 27, 2006, by groups of men wearing black
clothes and driving cars from the Ministry of Interior. Most of the
villagers escaped, but eight were caught and immediately executed. One of
them was the Imam of the village mosque, Abu Aisha, and another was a
10-year-old boy, Adnan Madab. They were executed inside the room where they
were hiding. Many animals (sheep, cows and dogs) were shot by the armed men
also. The village mosque and most of the houses were destroyed and burnt."

The representative had obtained the information when four men who had
fled the scene of the massacre returned to provide the details. The other
survivors had all left to seek refuge in Baghdad. "The survivors who
returned to give the details guided the representative and the Red Crescent
personnel to where the bodies had been buried. They [the bodies] were of
men, women and one of the village babies."

The director of MHRI, Muhamad T. Al-Deraji, said of this incident, "This
situation is a simple part of a larger problem that is orchestrated by the
government … the delay in protecting more villagers from this will only
increase the number of tragedies."

Arun Gupta, an investigative journalist and editor with the New York
Indypendent newspaper of the New York Independent Media Center, has written
extensively about US-backed militias and death squads in Iraq. He is also
the former editor at the Guardian weekly in New York and writes frequently
for Z Magazine and Left Turn.

"The fact is, while I think the militias have, to a degree, spiraled out
of US control, it's the US who trains, arms, funds, and supplies all the
police and military forces, and gives them critical logistical support," he
told me this week. "For instance, there were reports at the beginning of the
year that a US army unit caught a "death squad" operating inside the Iraqi
Highway Patrol. There were the usual claims that the US has nothing to do
with them. It's all a big lie. The American reporters are lazy. If they did
just a little digging, there is loads of material out there showing how the
US set up the highway patrol, established a special training academy just
for them, equipped them, armed them, built all their bases, etc. It's all in
government documents, so it's irrefutable. But then they tell the media we
have nothing to do with them and they don't even fact check it. In any case,
I think the story is significant only insofar as it shows how the US tries
to cover up its involvement."

Once again, like Abu Ghraib, a few US soldiers are being investigated
about what occurred in Haditha. The "few bad apples" scenario is being
repeated in order to obscure the fact that Iraqis are being slaughtered
every single day. The "shoot first ask questions later" policy, which has
been in effect from nearly the beginning in Iraq, creates trigger-happy
American soldiers and US-backed Iraqi death squads who have no respect for
the lives of the Iraqi people. Yet, rather than high-ranking members of the
Bush administration who give the orders, including Bush himself, being tried
for the war crimes they are most certainly guilty of, we have the ceremonial
"public hanging" of a few lowly soldiers for their crimes committed on the
ground.

In an interview with CNN on May 29th concerning the Haditha massacre,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace commented, "It's
going to be a couple more weeks before those investigations are complete,
and we should not prejudge the outcome. But we should, in fact, as leaders
take on the responsibility to get out and talk to our troops and make sure
that they understand that what 99.9 percent of them are doing, which is
fighting with honor and courage, is exactly what we expect of them."

This is the same Peter Pace who when asked how things were going in Iraq
by Tim Russert on Meet the Press this past March 5th said, "I'd say they're
going well. I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say
they're going very, very well from everything you look at …"

Things are not "going very, very well" in Iraq. There have been
countless My Lai massacres, and we cannot blame 0.1% of the soldiers on the
ground in Iraq for killing as many as a quarter of a million Iraqis, when it
is the policies of the Bush administration that generated the failed
occupation to begin with.