Marine's wife paints portrait of US troops out of control in Haditha

Julian Borger in Washington
Monday June 5, 2006
The Guardian

The marine unit involved in the killing of Iraqi civilians in Haditha last November had suffered a "total breakdown" in discipline and had drug and alcohol problems, according to the wife of one of the battalion's staff sergeants.

<snip>

The wife of the unnamed staff sergeant claimed there had been a "total breakdown" in the unit's discipline after it was pulled out of Falluja in early 2005.

"There were problems in Kilo company with drugs, alcohol, hazing , you name it," she said. "I think it's more than possible that these guys were totally tweaked out on speed or something when they shot those civilians in Haditha."

<snip>

The third battalion lost 17 men in 10 days in Falluja and by the time the troops arrived in Haditha, in autumn last year, it was clear morale had plummeted. A Daily Telegraph reporter who visited its headquarters early this year at Haditha Dam, on the outskirts of the town, described it as a "feral place" where discipline was "approaching breakdown". He reported that some marines had left the official living quarters and had set up separate encampments with signs ordering outsiders to keep out.

<snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1790499,00.html

++++++++++++++
Chilling indeed. We cannot let this continue, if even a fraction of the "feral place" account is fact.

and I condemn this war and our so called leaders for the path they have led us down.

I am also concerned about a breakdown in discipline of our troops. As deployments are extended and the troops are exposed to more attacks by the so called 'insurgents' I expect to see me of these stories.

I agree with the Iraqi diplomat calling for the death penalty for those individuals responsible for these atrocities. I think we should start at the top with the CinC and work our way down to command staff at the Pentagon. When all is said and done, the people responsible are the ones who lied us into this goddamn war then ignore all we know about conducting military operations. Untold numbers of people are suffering and will continue to suffer because of their arrogance.

That is never going to happen. Those that directly killed the Iraqis may get a few years in prison and then Busholini will pardon them. This incident may cause the Iraqi Govt. to demand the end of the US Occupation but even that is doubtful.

I suspect that this will go in a similar way as the May Lai Aftermath.

My Lai Massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre#Cover-up

if this can't be completely covered up.

multiply this by hundreds of units.....Rumsfeld is directly responsible for this....when these soldiers come back....they are going to have a hard time adjusting or won't adjust at all..

For some reason, officers are not leading in Iraq. They are staying behind in their fortresses while the enlisted work their butts off.

Particularly in the Marine Corps, "hands on" command in field operations is mandatory. Even the senior NCOs would be raising the issue of this were going on. It'd be such a break with operations protocol, it could only take place with senior command intent.

know that going out is futile and loss of American lives cannot be prevented.

This is beyond disgusting....it's criminal....Deriliction of duty...

Welcome to DU!!

:hi:

Welcome to DU Robert.
I have a feeling you may have some
experience in regards to the discussion
about what is happening there.
No?
BHN

I was there in late 2003. I prefer not to go into too much detail. thanks.

You were not stationed at Fort Drum by any chance, were you?
PM me if you want.
BHN

has to do with what appears to be a breakdown in the field? Or is the lack of cooperation from the Iraqi police and military a big problem?

And thank you :hug:

:patriot:

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

... find it more "convenient" to have a whole company of Marines 'gone feral' than to correct it. There cannot possibly be any other explanation for such breakdown persisting. The military is supposed to extract such units and quarantine them, usually stateside. It's not an unknown problem and the senior command knows better.

Engineered neglect.

it's too easy and pat to say this unit was a bunch of dopers and crazies. And like you say a group like that would be quarantined. Most senior officers would shit themselves if they thought they had a bunch of armed crazies running around. They would act fast to protect their careers.

I kind of think the real problem is that our troops have been in combat too long. They are on the verge of snapping and over reacting on every patrol. I feel that before much longer large groups of our troops will no longer be effective.

(Kurtz v. Willard in Apocalypse Now)

I opened this thread thinking "what kind of sick person would paint a portrait of something like that?"

I mean, why can't they just say 'says' or something...

this war is messing up our men and women in service and it needs to end NOW.

Shrunkbrain and co. need to be held accountable for this mess that they caused.

Blue

I'm thinking it's time

the use of WP in Fallujah

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=archivecategory&id=3&Itemid=103

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.

:sarcasm: