Obama, Israel and more US taxpayer money for oppression
The Haditha Travesty, Take Two
posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 06/22/2008 @ 12:08pm
Small tragedies can get lost in a big war, but it is sad and troubling that, so far at least, it looks like no one is going to have to pay for the November, 2005, massacre of 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq. That's the mostly Sunni city in which, at the height of the insurgency, U.S. Marines mowed down a carful of unarmed Iraqi men, apparently shooting them point blank as they lay on the ground, and then stormed into surrounding homes where they butchered men, women, and children.
So the tragedy of the massacre is now compounded by the tragedy of a judicial whitewash and coverup. As Bob Dylan wrote in "The Lonesome Ballad of Hattie Carroll," about a maid slaughtered by her employer who was then given a six-month sentence for murder: "Now is the time for your tears."
Here's the latest, from AP, in the case, just one in a string of such dismissals:
A military judge dismissed charges Tuesday against a Marine officer accused of failing to investigate the killings of 24 Iraqis. ... Of eight Marines originally charged in the case, only one is still facing prosecution in the biggest U.S. criminal prosecution involving Iraqi deaths to come out of the war.
--MORE--
posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 06/22/2008 @ 12:08pm
Small tragedies can get lost in a big war, but it is sad and troubling that, so far at least, it looks like no one is going to have to pay for the November, 2005, massacre of 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq. That's the mostly Sunni city in which, at the height of the insurgency, U.S. Marines mowed down a carful of unarmed Iraqi men, apparently shooting them point blank as they lay on the ground, and then stormed into surrounding homes where they butchered men, women, and children.
So the tragedy of the massacre is now compounded by the tragedy of a judicial whitewash and coverup. As Bob Dylan wrote in "The Lonesome Ballad of Hattie Carroll," about a maid slaughtered by her employer who was then given a six-month sentence for murder: "Now is the time for your tears."
Here's the latest, from AP, in the case, just one in a string of such dismissals:
A military judge dismissed charges Tuesday against a Marine officer accused of failing to investigate the killings of 24 Iraqis. ... Of eight Marines originally charged in the case, only one is still facing prosecution in the biggest U.S. criminal prosecution involving Iraqi deaths to come out of the war.
--MORE--