The Fog of War Crimes: Who’s to blame when ‘just following orders’ means murder?

[marmar]

from In These Times:



Features > January 7, 2008
The Fog of War Crimes
Who’s to blame when ‘just following orders’ means murder?
By Frida Berrigan


A Marine squad was on a dusty road in Iraq, far from home. Suddenly, a deadly roadside bomb explodes the early morning calm and kills a lance corporal and wounds two other Marines. The mission: tend to the wounded and find those who were responsible … Or make someone pay? Three sleeping families awaken to the sound of grenades and guns.

By the end of the “operation,” 24 people were dead, including three women and six children. Bullets, fired at close range, tore through bodies and lodged deep in walls. A one-legged elderly man was shot nine times in the chest and abdomen. A man who watched the violence from his roof across the road told The Washington Post that he heard his neighbor speak to the Marines in English, begging for the lives of his wife and children, saying, “I am friend. I am good.” All the family was killed except one: 13–year-old Safa. Covered in her mother’s blood, she reportedly fainted and appeared dead.

In a road nearby lay the bodies of five men—four college students and their driver.

On Nov. 20, 2005, a Marine spokesman reported: “A U.S. Marine and 15 civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb in Haditha. Immediately following the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire. Iraqi army soldiers and Marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another.”

The only truth in that statement was that there was a roadside bomb and that a Marine—Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, known as T.J. to the other men in his squad—was killed instantly. The rest was a lie. It took months for the truth to come out, and the search for justice is taking even longer. The 24 Iraqi bodies have since been buried in a cemetery in Haditha, a farming town beside the Euphrates River. But no one—from the commander on down—has been sentenced to prison, and the effort to hold Marines responsible for this crime has focused on a few men who are low on the chain of command. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3461/the_fog_of_war_crimes/

[fenriswolf]

1. a soldier is to follow the orders of a commanding officer

unless those orders are illegal, unethical or immoral. I was just following order BS is crap because if you are asked to murder someone you can say no.