Return to Ishaqi: The Pentagon's
Shaky Self-Exoneration
By Chris Floyd
06/03/06 "Empire
Burlesque" -- -
It seems that the
Pentagon, that veritable fount of veracity, has probed itself
for the alleged execution-style
slaying of civilians in Ishaqi, and
found that the operation -- which left 11 civilians dead,
including five children under the age of five -- was in fact an
exemplary feat of arms, strictly by the book.
Everything happened pretty much the way they originally said it
happened: soldiers seeking a dastardly al-Qaeda operative (now
more circumspectly described as a man suspected of being an
al-Qaeda operative) took fire during the pursuit and responded
with heavy force: air power and ground assault on the suspect's
redoubt, which just happened to be someone's house. In the
course of the textbook op, which we're told killed the al-Qaednik
and a local bombmaker, there were also three "noncombatant"
deaths, and an estimated nine "collateral deaths." (The
difference between these two categories is not explained. And of
course it doesn't matter to the innocent people killed; whether
they are "non-combatants" or "collaterals," they're still just
as dead. No doubt there are strict bureaucratic guidelines
behind these distinctions.) These deaths are regrettable, of
course, but such things happen as unintended consequences of
noble causes, and no doubt there will be a bit of loose change
doled out to the innocent victims' families.
So that's that then.
Nothing to see here, time to move on... And you know, I really
wish we could. No one here takes any pleasure or satisfaction
from reports of yet another egregious failure of the human
spirit, yet another eruption of the bestiality that lies buried
in the mud of our brains. This is true in any case, anywhere,
but it is doubly true if the crimes are done in the name of your
own country. And any time that such a report turns out to be
mistaken is a cause for joy.
By the way, this is
what the powerful -- and their sycophants -- always fail to
understand: no genuine dissident is happy about dissenting. You
dissent because you see injustice, crime, corruption and
needless death being wrought by the power structures of your own
society. You dissent because so many lies have been forced down
your throat, and you just want to know the truth, as far as it
can be known, you just want to speak the truth, whatever it may
be. You dissent because of the reality that you see. And this is
a painful thing; it's like watching a family member go bad, like
learning your own father is a killer, that your mother is thief.
No one wants to believe evil of their own country, their own
society; but sometimes the very ideals that you were given by
your society -- a commitment to justice, to truth, the belief in
the inherent worth and moral agency of every individual human
being -- compels you to confront the reality of the crimes and
corruption of the leaders and institutions of that same society.
It isn't fun; there's
no pleasure in it. Especially if, with Dostoevsky, you believe
that "each is responsible for all," that you yourself are
implicated in every failure of humanity. Bob Dylan captured the
essence of this kind of dissent well when he sang of the great
iconoclast, Lenny Bruce:
He fought a war on a battlefield
Where every victory hurts.
So yes, it would be
nice to be able to accept at face value the Pentagon's
exonerating version of the incident at Ishaqi. (Relatively
speaking, of course; that is to say, in the murderous context of
the vast atrocity that is the Iraq war itself, it would be
better to accept the Pentagon's assertion that the deaths of up
these innocent people were simply the inevitable and unintended
by-product of urban warfare, rather than the more grisly
alternative. It would be good to have this slight mitigation of
the general horror.) But a commitment to the truth -- and a
refusal to succumb to historical amnesia -- prevents such an
automatic acceptance. For this is the same Pentagon
that whitewashed the Haditha killings not once, but twice
(with two different stories) after the massacre there last year.
This is the same Pentagon whose innumerable investigations into
itself during these crimeful Bush years have only managed to
peel a few "bad apples" plucked from the bottom of the barrel,
despite the extraordinarily vast and systematic nature of the
regimens of torture and atrocity established by the Bush
Administration,
as Amnesty International has pointed out in an important new
study. Such elaborate systems cannot have been constructed and
operated without orders -- direct and implied -- from the very
highest reaches of government and the military command. Yet the
Pentagon has employed oceans of whitewash to protect the brass,
while grudgingly throwing a few bits of cannon fodder and
trailer trash -- as the Bushist elite would see them -- on the
fire to serve, in the words of Breaker Morant, as "scapegoats of
the empire."
Thus, in a general
sense, you would be foolish to accept the result of any of the
Pentagon's self-investigations at face value, without
independent corroboration. This kind of cynicism is, again,
painful and unpleasant, but it has been forced upon us by the
many, many lies that have emanated from that five-sided fortress
over many decades. This is not to say that every Pentagon
self-exoneration is false or incomplete, or that there are not
many honorable military investigators doing sterling -- and
thankless -- work. (The current Haditha probe -- although
belated, and problematic in many respects, is an example of
this.) It's merely acknowledging the indisputable reality of
history -- and certainly of the current war -- that the Pentagon
brass habitually lie and dissemble and look the other way when
it comes to allegations of atrocities by US forces. It's only
prudent to reserve judgment on any institution that investigates
itself for wrongdoing. Or put it this way: if you're ever
charged with murder or bank fraud or dope dealing or tax
dodging, ask the cops if you can investigate yourself, and see
what they say.
But the Ishaqi
exoneration warrants skepticism not only in this general sense,
but also in its particulars. From press accounts of the report,
it largely reiterates the Pentagon's original storyline, while
enlarging the death count from the original "four civilians,
including one child," which it had held to until this week, when
the Haditha story spilled out. And the report apparently just
dismisses out of hand the large amount of credible evidence that
contradicts the Pentagon's latest story.
First is the
photographic evidence: pictures taken of the aftermath by Agence
France Presse, and a video that emerged this week on BBC. These
clearly dispute the Pentagon's account, which holds that the
house was first raked with gunfire, then attack by helicopter
gunships, then finally bombed by American jets: a massive
barrage of firepower that left the house in
ruins. But the video shows that part of the house was left
standing. The photographs, which have been widely available for
months, show five dead children, one of them only a few months
old. They have been laid out by grieving relatives. Their bodies
show no signs of having been ripped up or damaged in the course
of an all-out air and ground assault;
as the BBC's John Simpson points out, they had not been
crushed by the collapse of the house, as the Pentagon claimed.
Instead, they are unmarked, their clothes dusty but in most
cases untorn. In the photographs I saw, one child clearly has
blood oozing from the back of her head, while the baby has a
hole in his forehead, and other damage to his face. The other
children are laid on their back, with their wounds invisible,
their bodies remarkably whole. Simpson, shown viewing the film,
said it was clear that the children had been shot.
Second is the
testimony of the villagers, and of two officials of the
U.S.-backed Iraqi police, Major Ali Ahmed and Colonel Farouq
Hussein. These are men who risk their lives by their cooperation
with the Coalition. The villagers say soldiers entered the house
and killed the occupants; the house was later hit by the
helicopter then bombed, apparently to cover up the killings,
some of the villagers surmised. The Iraqi police said "all the
victims had gunshot wounds to the head." Later, a Knight-Ridder
reporter saw a preliminary report indicating that the 11 victims
had multiple wounds. This tallies with Simpson's viewing, which
showed that one of the dead children had been shot in the side.
Everyone who saw or examined the bodies agreed that the victims
had been shot, most likely by bullets from the large pile of
American-issue cartridges found inside the house, which can also
be seen on the video.
Also dismissed by the
Pentagon is the testimony of Ahmed Khalaf, brother of house's
owner, who told AP that nine of the victims were family members
and two were visitors, adding, "the killed family was not part
of the resistance, they were women and children. The Americans
have promised us a better life, but we get only death."
Not a single
villager, not a single local police official agrees with the
Pentagon version of the attack. Are they all lying, even the
"collaborators" with the occupation? Not likely. Are they
confused or uncertain about the exact sequence of events?
Naturally; the only Iraqis who know exactly what happened in
that house are dead. Are there discrepancies between the early
reports on the bodies' conditions, i.e., where they all shot in
the head, or were some shot in other parts of their bodies, and
were they all bound before they were shot, or just some of them,
or perhaps none of them? Yes, there are discrepancies. The
video, seen in its incomplete form on BBC, does not clearly bear
out the charge that the victims had been bound. The video
doesn't show all the victims, but those being pulled from the
house do not appear to be bound, although in the version I saw,
most of the bodies shown had already been wrapped in rugs or
blankets.
But is there any
disputing the photographic evidence that the victims,
particularly the children, were shot, not crushed by the
collapsing walls? No, this reality cannot be denied, despite the
Pentagon's report. Is there any disputing the evidence that the
children were killed by single shots, and not, say, riddled with
bullets in the course of a cross-fire between US forces and
insurgents? No, this reality cannot be denied either. Someone
fired a single shot into the bodies of every child on display in
the photographs, which were taken by a Western news agency, and
corroborated by a representative of another Western news agency,
Associated Press, who was also on the scene after the attack.
What can we conclude
from all this? That there was indeed a Haditha-style execution
of the innocent at Ishaqi? No; the limited amount of evidence
that we can gather on the incident -- at a distance, from press
reports -- does not on its face categorically prove a deliberate
massacre. To categorically prove such an allegation -- or
categorically disprove it -- would require a thorough,
completely independent investigation.
We can say that the
available evidence gives many deeply troubling indications that
some kind of atrocity indeed occurred at Ishaqi. And we can say
that key portions of the Pentagon's self-exoneration are flatly
contradicted by photographic evidence, and also by the credible
testimony from villagers, US-backed Iraqi officials and
Western news agencies (including Reuters, Knight-Ridder, AFP and
AP) as to the nature of the victims' fatal wounds.
The Pentagon's
hastily-announced report on Ishaqi does not answer all the
questions and charges raised by the incident; indeed, it seems
not to have even addressed some of them. The whole truth of what
happened in the village will remain uncertain until it can be
investigated by an independent, impartial and authoritative
agency. And we know this will never happen.
Finally, let's put
the incident in its proper context by quoting the conclusion
from our original post on Ishaqi:
We know that the
American troops who caused the deaths of these children –
either by tying them up and shooting them, an unspeakable
atrocity, or else "merely" by storming or bombing a house
full of civilians in a night raid "with both air and ground
assets" – were sent to Iraq on a demonstrably false mission
to "disarm" weapons that did not exist and take revenge for
9/11 on a nation that had nothing to do with the attack. And
we now know that the White House – and George W. Bush
specifically – knew all along that the intelligence did not
and could not support the public case he had made for the
war.
We know that the
only reason that this dead baby has his arm frozen to his
lifeless face is that three years ago this week, George W.
Bush gave the order to begin the unprovoked, unjust and
unnecessary invasion of Iraq. He hasn't fired a single shot
or launched a single missile; he hasn't tortured or killed
any prisoners; he hasn't kidnapped or beheaded civilians or
planted bombs along roadsides, in mosques or marketplaces.
Yet every single atrocity of the war – on both sides – and
every single death caused by the war, and every act of
religious repression perpetrated by the extremist sects
empowered by the war, is the direct result of the decision
made by George W. Bush three years ago. Nothing he says can
change this fact; nothing he does, or causes to be done, for
good or ill, can wash the blood of these children – and the
tens of thousands of other innocent civilians killed in the
war – from his hands.
*Note: "Ishaqi" now
seems to be the preferred transliteration of the town''s name.
In our earlier reports, we used "Isahaqi," one of several
versions that came out in the early news reports.*
UPDATE:
The BBC reports this afternoon that the Iraqi government has
officially rejected the Pentagon's investigation into the Ishaqi
killings. Excerpt:
The Iraqi
government has rejected the findings of a US military
investigation into the deaths of 11 civilians in the village
of Ishaqi, north of Baghdad.A spokesman for Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri Maliki said the report, which cleared the US
soldiers of wrongdoing, was unfair.
The government will
demand an apology and compensation, the spokesman said.
Visit
Chris Floyds Website
www.chris-floyd.com
Click on "comments" below to read or post comments -
Click Here For Comment Policy
In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation
whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information
ClearingHouse endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
Are Comments Offensive? Unsuitable? Email us