CNN Reporter on Haditha: "I Knew These Guys"
Media Blog
Stephen Spruiell Reporting
A CNN reporter discovers that she knew some of the Marines from the unit involved in the Haditha investigation. Her report recounts the many times these Marines went out of their way to avoid civilian casualties, and she writes of the daily stresses they endured:
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — It actually took me a while to put all the pieces together — that I know these guys, the U.S. Marines at the heart of the alleged massacre of Iraqi civilians in Haditha. [...]
I know the Marines that were operating in western al Anbar, from Husayba all the way to Haditha. I went on countless operations in 2005 up and down the Euphrates River Valley. I was pinned on rooftops with them in Ubeydi for hours taking incoming fire, and I've seen them not fire a shot back because they did not have positive identification on a target.
I saw their horror when they thought that they finally had identified their target, fired a tank round that went through a wall and into a house filled with civilians. They then rushed to help the wounded — remarkably no one was killed.
I was with them in Husayba as they went house to house in an area where insurgents would booby-trap doors, or lie in wait behind closed doors with an AK-47, basically on suicide missions, just waiting for the Marines to come through and open fire. There were civilians in the city as well, and the Marines were always keenly aware of that fact. How they didn't fire at shadows, not knowing what was waiting in each house, I don't know. But they didn't.
And I was with them in Haditha, a month before the alleged killings last November of some 24 Iraqi civilians.
I'm told that investigators now strongly suspect a rampage by a small number of Marines who snapped after one of their own was killed by a roadside bomb.
Haditha was full of IEDs. It seemed they were everywhere, like a minefield. In fact, the number of times that we were told that we were standing right on top of an IED minutes before it was found turned into a dark joke between my CNN team and me. >>>
It doesn't excuse what is alleged to have happened. But this report does put the incident into a context that includes the barbarity of the insurgents and the lengths to which the vast majority of Marines go to avoid civilian casualties.
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