Agence France-Presse, Reuters, The Associated Press, The New York Times
03.06.2006
WASHINGTON A U.S. military investigation has exonerated U.S. soldiers in the deaths of Iraqi civilians in the town of Ishaqi in March, finding American forces followed standard procedures and committed no misconduct, defense officials said Friday.
The police in the town 100 kilometers, or 60 miles, north of Baghdad, said six adults and five children were shot and killed in a U.S. military raid on a house on March 15.
But the U.S. military maintained that there were four dead in the incident, including an insurgent, two women and a child, and they died after troops were fired upon from the house as they arrived to arrest a Qaeda suspect. The defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said an investigation found no wrongdoing by U.S. forces.
Allegations that American troops deliberately killed Iraqi civilians in the Ishaqi incident and two others has fueled a furor in Iraq and put mounting pressure on the Bush administration.
The outcry over the allegations of atrocities by Americans grew more intense Friday when the BBC broadcast video footage of dead civilians, including children, that appeared to contradict the U.S. military account of the operation in Ishaqi.
Contrary to Friday’s finding by the U.S. military that only four people died when U.S. soldiers were involved in a firefight after a tip that a Qaeda supporter was visiting a house in the town, an Iraqi police account at the time said that 11 people – six adults and five children – were killed and that the house was then blown up.
The video, which was provided to BBC by a Sunni Arab group that opposes American forces, showed several bodies, including those of three children, one of them covered in blood. The broadcast came with Washington already reeling from accusations that U.S. marines killed 24 civilians in the western town of Haditha in November.
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The Ishaqi video, shot by an Associated Press Television News cameraman at the time and broadcast on March 15, shows at least five dead children. It also shows at least one adult male and four young children with obvious bullet wounds to the head. One child has an obvious bullet wound to the side. Iraqis said 11 people were killed and charged that they were all shot by U.S. troops before the house was leveled.
The video includes an unidentified man saying “children were stuck in the room, alone and surrounded.”
“After they handcuffed them, they shot them dead. Later, they struck the house with their planes. They wanted to hide the evidence. Even a 6-month-old infant was killed. Even the cows were killed, too,” he said. The video included shots of the bodies of five children and two men wrapped in blankets.
Other video showed the bodies of three children in the back of a pickup truck that took them to the hospital in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown. A police captain said the March 15 attack that hit Ishaqi involved U.S. warplanes and armor.
The U.S. military, which said in March that the allegations were being investigated, said it had been targeting and had captured an individual suspected of supporting foreign fighters of the terrorist network Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
The U.S. attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, called the allegations “very, very serious” and said the world would see a thorough military investigation.
“If people are found to have committed crimes, those people will be held responsible and they will be held accountable,” Gonzales said Friday in an interview with WOAI-AM radio in San Antonio, Texas. “The president expects that, and I know the leadership in the military wants to see that happen as well.”
What exactly is the world seeing? Video evidence contradicting the U.S. version of events and the U.S. sticking by its original story and exonerating all involved. The implication for further “investigations” is clear.
It also appears that the U.S. does not look favourably upon Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. If there was a question whether he was an impotent puppet the U.S. has answered it. Michael Georgy ends this report for Reuters by asking an employee of a U.S.-built power plant what he thinks of the job Maliki is doing, as the plant is being toured by Maliki and American ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. What did Georgy expect would be his answer? Do Georgy’s minders allow him to ask questions in more private settings?