If you'd like to send a message to the Wuterichs or the Sharratts, click on the picture links below.
Posted on 03/18/2007 3:58:18 PM PDT by RedRover
For anyone that is brave enough to wade through the cesspool...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x443738
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/15/60minutes/main2574973.shtml
Here is the transcript... It goes on for several pages, it is formatted like a news story......
Touche!!
I only got thru a few before I barfed.
Perps had to be within eyesight of the road. They selected the dwellings that were the most likely source. What else could they do?
Wuterich had men who had been through this before. Roll a grenade, boom, enter the room, get shot.
How do you know what's behind the door? Guess right, you live. Guess wrong, you die. Guess right, innocents don't get killed. Guess wrong, innocents get killed. Grand Central Station going on in your mind. All while under maximum, blinding stress. Roll the grenade, boom, enter the room. Hope you did the right thing.
What in the hell else could they do?
It's easy to sit in your comfortable Lazy Boy in your comfortable life and sip Martinis and watch Anna Nicole stories when you're a bleeding heart.
Just watched it. Pelley's sniveling, shaking voice, and self righteous manner was hideous. Wuterich acquitted himself respectably.
Thanks pinkpanther111. BTW, excellent article, earlier today, about Haditha.
In response to Pelley's question about throwing grenades in a room, Frank responds,
"Well that’s what we do. That’s how our training goes," he says.
That's the truth of war. "That's what we do." That's breaking it down into the simplest, truest sentence. I can accept that. That's what we (meaning our US military) train them to do.
That Pelley is a real piece of work drama queen pompous ass. He and cBS couldn't have slanted the questioning against him and the Marines much worse than they did. I'll never watch another show of his.
I think Frank did okay, it took a lot of guts for him to do that interview. I'm sure he knew much of what was coming. His attorney summed it up well in saying they did what they had to do and it was legal under the circumstances. JMO
This is what kills the media. No Money! That is why there have been so many layoffs in the media this past year.
Thanks Girlene...
Your right, thats what I thought when I read that line, I have to read it again tomorrow.. after I get some sleep.
It looks better on paper than what the live version sounded; I will see that probably tomorrow...
I'll post the transcript on this thread unless someone else is already doing it.
My thoughts exactly!
Scott Pelly will never know what either of these words mean.
If you'd like to send a message to the Wuterichs or the Sharratts, click on the picture links below.
I am not brave enough for that right now! Though I do have a DU account and may show up there later.
Pelley was bad enough, but worse was the editing hatchet job performed by CBS with ulterior motives.
Perhaps CBS 60 minutes might get a clue that every,...not just a few wars they don;t like, but EVERY was in human history has resulted in far greater civilian casualties than military casualties.
One simple indicator that this occurs is when people vote with their feet in a war zone. Those voting with their feet are called refugees. They leave war zones by the 100s of thousands. They don't leave because they choose to sort of go on vacation. They leave their homes, their businesses, their livelihoods,...nearly all of their possessions, their homelands over many generations, sometimes their families and spouses, because if they remain their lives are at risk.
Likewise, if a criminal commits an act of murder such as setting off a roadside bomb, when nobody else is around, except for themselves,...and then begin to take pot shots at the armed authorities who were targetted, the prudent, legitimate response is not to hide, nor to give refuge to the criminal, but to assist the legitimate authority in bringing the criminals under arrest.
The inhabitants could have assisted the Marines. They could have pointed fingers to the culprits. They could have left the area with their hands up. They didn't. They remained in a house from which hostile fire had been received.
Pelley now wants to bash the Squad Leader for dead children after a grenade is thrown in to gain control of the situation.
Say Pelley,...why did you want to not only see a squad taken out, but all the other families in the area, all innocent bystanders and encourage other insurgents to gain an upper hand before other reinforcements could arrive?
Why does Pelley want to see unarmed innocent civilians butchered by insurgents hiding amongst innocent bystanders and worse destroy legitimate authority so that other criminals will prevail?
The real criminals in this situation are the heartless, cold blooded murderers and criminals within 60 minutes who reject legitimate authority and support roadside bombers, murderers who hide behind innocent children, and encourage criminal violent behavior.
Say 60 Minutes,...God has special place for children who are killed before the age of accountability. He also has a special place for those who attack legitimate authority, crying peace, peace, when they condone and promote war, but never prior to their first death come to accept Him through faith in Christ.
oops, was=war
"Yes, Wuterich acquitted himself as a man and a Marine."
Amen to that!
Hi.
Who decided that this young man and the other(s) were to be courtmartialed and charged with killing civilians in this incident?
Was it Democrats? Republicans? Congress? TV reporters? TV networks? Mean nasty people out to make a young soldier cry and say he's sorry on tv?
I'm pretty sure it is our military that decides and brings soldiers to trial. Not CBS.
I just wish more people would realize it is not mutually exclusive to have feelings of compassion for this young kid and what happened, and to recognize the authority of the US Military to decide if and when a crime has been committed.
I watched and I think this kid was very brave to give this interview. I'm sure he knew it was going to be painful. The situation he was in was a hell of a mess. I also trust our Military, the same military that is courtmartialling him, to sort out what is right and wrong.
I really think all this supercharged anger at CBS is wasted and misplaced energy. Who gives a hoot about them. You gotta admit, the kid wanted to do the interview. Others declined. Like I said, who cares. When the court martial comes that's when we can support the troops---AND support the military brass! Why try to soothe the anger by blaming some stupid reporter.
Charged Marine Tells 60 Minutes He's Sorry Iraqi Civilians Were Killed, But Insists He Made Right Decision
(CBS) On Nov. 19, 2005, United States Marines killed 24 apparently innocent civilians in an Iraqi town called Haditha. The dead included men, women and children as young as 2 years old. Iraqi witnesses said the Marines were on a rampage, slaughtering people in the street and in their homes. In December, four Marines were charged with murder.
Was it murder? Was Haditha a massacre? A military jury will decide. But, there’s no question that Haditha is symbolic of a war that leaves American troops with terrible choices. The Marine making those choices in Haditha was a 25-year-old sergeant named Frank Wuterich. He’s charged with 18 murders, the most by far, and he's accused of lying on the day it happened.
Wuterich faces life in prison. None of the Marines charged with murder has spoken publicly about this. Now, Staff Sgt. Wuterich tells 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley he wants to tell the truth about the day he decided who would live and who would die in Haditha.
"Everyone visualizes me as a monster – a baby killer, cold-blooded, that sort of thing. And, it's, you know, that’s not accurate, and neither is the story that most of them know of this incident. They need to know the truth," Wuterich tells Pelley.
Wuterich does not believe 24 dead civilians equates to a massacre.
"No, absolutely not… A massacre in my mind, by definition, is a large group of people being executed, being killed for absolutely no reason and that’s absolutely not what happened here," he says.
The day after the killings, bodies were wrapped to conceal the sight of 24 civilians: 15 men, three women and six children killed by shrapnel and gunshot. A year after they died, the Marine Corps announced the charges, which include murder, dereliction of duty, false official statement, and obstruction of justice.
Prosecutors charged Wuterich and three of his Marines with unpremeditated murder -- essentially killing without military justification. To understand how this happened, you need to know where it happened.
Haditha is a town of 70,000, in Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni resistance, where, among the residents, anti-American passions run high. In the months before Wuterich’s unit arrived, other Marines here were suffering some of the heaviest causalities in all of Iraq, including the bombing of an armored vehicle that killed 14 Marines. Days before that, six Marines in Haditha were ambushed, tortured and killed. The enemy put it on the Internet where Wuterich and his men saw the bodies and the dog tags of their dead comrades.
As his battalion moved in, it discovered the dilemma that defines Iraq. In Haditha, the population is generally hostile to Americans, but only some are armed fighters. The fighters blend in. You can’t pick them out unless they’re shooting at you.
"When you got to Haditha with your Marines, who was in charge of the town?" Pelley asks.
"For the most part, I don’t think anyone was in charge." Wuterich says there was no mayor, city government or police force that he knew of.
Wuterich commanded a squad of 12 men in Kilo Company. They moved into a school administration building they renamed Sparta. They couldn’t see the enemy, but it was clear the enemy was watching them.
When he arrived in Haditha, Frank Wuterich had been a Marine more than seven years and was getting out. He didn’t have to go to Iraq, but he wanted to see war, so he transferred from his California base to a unit headed into battle. The men in his squad were combat hardened, many on their second or third tours, men who had watched each other’s backs through vicious fights.
"As you understood them, what were the rules for using deadly force?" Pelley asks.
Wuterich says the biggest thing was PID -- positive identification.
"It means that you need to be able to positively identify your target before you shoot to kill," he says.
The kind of targets they were permitted to shoot to kill included, "…various things," Wuterich says. "Obviously, anyone with a weapon, especially pointed at you… Hostile act, hostile intent was the biggest thing that they had to have, so if they had used a hostile act against you, you could use deadly force. If there was hostile intent towards you, you could use deadly force."
The mission on Nov. 19, 2005 -- the day of the killings -- began before 7 a.m. Wuterich led a convoy to a checkpoint, escorting fresh Iraqi troops and bringing breakfast to the Marines there. It was nothing more than an errand.
Wuterich recounts what happened next.
"Coming back to Sparta we came up going north on River Road… made a left on Chestnut… First two vehicles traveled without incident. My vehicle traveled without incident.
Then, Wuterich felt the blast wave from "a huge, huge explosion. It rocked the truck even that I was in. We see debris from our fourth vehicle hundreds of meters in the air above us coming down, you know, tires, all sorts of different parts. We knew the fourth vehicle had been hit."
The vehicle was devastated by a bomb buried under the road, detonated by remote control. Wuterich, in charge, called for backup and began planning his next move.
"Once we have security on the ground and the casualties are being attended to, you want to send somebody out to search for the triggerman," and Wuterich says he believes there was one.
Wuterich tells Pelley that until that minute, he had never been in combat before.
Up ahead, a white car was stopped by the side of the road. Five Iraqi men ranging in age from 19 to 29 were ordered out.
"So my immediate thought is okay, maybe this was a car bomb. Okay, maybe these guys had something to do with this IED," Wuterich says.
He says Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz, also charged with murder, yelled at the men to drop to the ground.
"Normally, the Iraqis know the drill when you’re over there. They know if something happens, they know exactly what they need to do. Get down, hands up, and completely cooperate. These individuals were doing none of that. They got out of the car [and] as they were going around they started to take off, so I shot at them," he tells Pelley.
As the men ran from Wuterich, he says he shot them in the back.
"How does these men running away from the scene, as you describe it, square with hostile action or hostile intent? Asks Pelley.
"Because hostile action, if they were the triggermen, would have blown up the IED. Which would also constitute hostile intent. But also at the same time, there were military-aged males that were inside that car. The only vehicle, the only thing that was out, that was Iraqi, was them. They were 100 meters away from that IED. Those are the things that went through my mind before I pulled the trigger. That was positive identification," Wuterich tells Pelley.
Other witnesses, including Marines, dispute that the men were running. Wuterich is charged with lying that day to a sergeant, saying the Iraqi men fired on the convoy.
When the vehicle was searched, what was found?
"I believe nothing. I don’t remember partaking in the search," he said. "But, as far as I know, there wasn’t anything found."
And the men were not armed.
"How much time has passed from the moment of the explosion to the time that you killed these five men?" Pelley asks.
"I would say within about two minutes," Wuterich says.
Next, Wuterich went to his fallen Marines in the bombed Humvee. Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20, from El Paso, Texas, was the driver. He describes what he saw.
"…basically a pile of flesh, in essence. That may be a sight I’ll never forget. He was missing one of his arms. His legs were completely severed from his body, but they were still attached because for some reason his Cami’s didn’t rip completely."
In two minutes, one Marine and five Iraqis were dead, but the killing had just begun Next, Frank Wuterich would lead his men to kill 19 more Iraqi civilians.
Two other Marines were wounded and the medic was treating them. Wuterich was down to eight men and they came under rifle fire. He says he heard "Shots, sporadic shots, I think I heard two or three, two or three shots from the south and that was it."
He says he couldn’t see where the fire was coming from, but a house to the south caught his eye.
"This building was right in the line of sight of this explosion here," Wuterich says.
"You did not see fire coming from the house, correct?" asks Pelley.
"I did not see muzzle flashes coming from the house, correct," Wuterich replies.
If he didn’t hear rounds coming from the house, how did he identify the house as a threat?
"Because that was the only logical place that the fire could come through seeing the environment there."
When Wuterich’s superior, Lt. William Kallop arrived, Kallop gave his okay to assault the house.
At this point it’s important to know that even though Wuterich had never cleared houses in combat, two of his men had, and it had been a bitter experience. It was about a year before in Falluja. The residents had been ordered out of the city and the Marines were told anyone left behind was hostile. Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, one of Wuterich’s men, was in that fatal Falluja house clearing.
In the incident, Marines tossed a grenade past the door and rush in. But the enemy returns fire. One Marine is killed and eight are wounded. Another veteran of Falluja was Lance Corporal Steve Tatum.
Now a year later, Sharratt and Tatum would be charged with murder for what they were about to do in Haditha. Tatum, Wuterich and two others ran from the road at the top, down the ravine to assault the first house -- Wuterich telling the Marines shoot first, ask questions later.
After hearing noises behind a closed door, they kicked in the door and threw in the grenade.
"Frank, help me understand. You’re in a residence, how do you crack a door open and roll a grenade into a room?" Pelley asks.
"At that point, you can’t hesitate to make a decision. Hesitation equals being killed, either yourself or your men," he says.
"But when you roll a grenade in a room through the crack in the door, that’s not positive identification, that’s taking a chance on anything that could be behind that door," Pelley says.
"Well that’s what we do. That’s how our training goes," he says.
Next, Wuterich says he glanced into the room and he saw bodies.
"…I remember there may have been women in there, may have been children in there," he says. "My responsibility as a squad leader is to make sure that none of the rest of my guys died ... and at that point we were still on the assault, so no, I don't believe [I should have stopped the attack], he tells Pelley.
Wuterich says the back door of the house was open. He hadn’t seen the gunman, but he assumed the gunman fled next door. So the Marines hit the next house.
He says, "We went through that house much the same, prepping the room with grenades, going in there, and eliminating the threat and engaging the targets…There probably wasn’t [a threat], now that I look back on it. But there, in that time, yes, I believed there was a threat."
In the second house was the Younis family. A 41-year-old man, a 35-year-old woman, a 28-year-old woman, and the children -- Noor, 14; Sabah, 9; Zaineb, 3; and Aisha, 2. They were all killed by Wuterich's men.
How does he explain that?
"We reacted to how we were supposed to react to our training and I did that to the best of my ability. You know the rest of the Marines that were there, they did their job properly as well. Did we know that civilians were in there? No. Did we go in those rooms, you know, it would have been one thing, if we went in those rooms and looked at everyone and shot them. You know, we cleared these houses the way they were supposed to be cleared," he says.
Prosecutors have charged Wuterich with murdering 18 people. Among them the people at the car and those in the first house when he ordered his men to “shoot first, ask questions later.” Prosecutors say he shot six people in the second house. Wuterich told 60 Minutes that he never fired his weapon. The rules said Wuterich and his Marines were supposed to identify a threat before firing, but the rules also said they could use all necessary force to defend themselves.
"In an insurgency situation, Marines don't get a second chance If they aren't able to fire first, they die," says Neil Puckett, who, along with Mark Zaid, are Wuterich’s civilian attorneys.
How can they make the argument that these killings are within the law?
"They're within the law because they were not done without legal justification or excuse," Puckett says. "They were done in a combat environment, in a tactical situation, in order to protect the lives of the remaining Marines who survived the IED that day. And that makes them lawful."
Zaid adds: "And these three one Marines knew -- their buddies and colleagues who had tried to do similar take downs of houses where they tried, in fact, to knock first and shoot later. And the Marines who tried that were dead."
60 Minutes wanted to know more about how Marines face this choice – between killing civilians or risking their men. We spoke to a Marine who led a platoon through some of the most hostile territory in Iraq. Donovan Campbell, now a Reserve Captain, estimates he cleared at least 50 houses.
"We have a saying: 'Always know your target and what’s beyond it. And no matter what, whether you think you’re probably going kill everyone inside, you still need to know exactly what your target is. Who is it that I’m shooting when I go through the door,'" Campbell says.
Campbell was not in Haditha and he makes no judgment about what the Marines did there. But he told 60 Minutes, in general, identifying the enemy is critical and has everything to do with the amount of force used to clear a house.
Are there circumstances under which you’d declare an entire house hostile and go in with the intention of just killing everyone inside?
Campbell says yes. "You have to have the context of heavy enemy involvement in the area and then I think you have to have a more specific operating context that deals specifically with that house. You know there are several insurgents inside and you need to go in and get them out because they are attacking you."
How do you know? Campbell tells Pelley almost always, you have to see them.
"In your opinion," asks Pelley," you have to lay eyes on someone with a weapon in that house in order to assault the house and kill everyone inside?”
Campbell says, "Yes, but you never go in with the intention of I’m going to kill every living soul inside."
There was a third house that morning. Wuterich and Sharratt found a man with a rifle inside. They killed him and others. Later, more armed Iraqis were spotted. They were killed by an air strike.
There were also survivors from the first two houses. Two of them were girls who told reporters that the Marines shouted at their families before they started firing.
Pelley tells Wuterich, "the accusation is made that your men went berserk that you got hit by an IED, one of the favorite guys in the squad was cut in half and lying in the road and your guys went nuts. You dropped the five guys next to the car because they happened to be there and then you went to the closest house and then you went down the hallway throwing grenades and shooting and you just killed everybody you could find."
"That’s absolutely untrue," Wuterich responds. "My emotion was pushed back. My training came to play… but going completely crazy and acting wild, I don’t know who came up with that, but it’s false."
There’s no evidence the Marines at Haditha tried to hide the high number of casualties. But for reasons we don’t know, a higher Marine headquarters issued a press release that said 15 civilians had been killed by the roadside bomb. Two months later, photos showing gunshot wounds were obtained by Time magazine’s Tim McGirk. Opponents of the war, notably congressman John Murtha, seized on them.
"Our troops overacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood," he said.
On June 1, 2006, President George W. Bush said "…the allegations are very troubling for me and equally troubling for our military, especially the Marine Corps."
Wuterich finished his Iraq tour and, before he was charged, he was promoted by the Marine Corps. He’s back home on a base in the U.S., and when 60 Minutes visited, he and his wife Marisol were planning a birthday party for one of their two daughters. Not long after, Marisol gave birth to a third little girl. Wuterich’s enlistment is up, but he’s being kept in the military, at a desk job, until his court martial.
"What I did that day, the decisions that I made, I would make those decisions today," he says.
"What I’m talking about is the tactical decisions. It doesn’t sit well with me that women and children died that day," Wuterich says.
"There is nothing that I can possibly say to make up or make well the deaths of those women and children and I am absolutely sorry that that happened that day."
What was Wuterich thinking when he went to bed that night?
"That I’m not sure I want to go to sleep tonight, because I don’t know what I’m going to dream.”
Prosecutors declined to talk to 60 Minutes. None of the other Marines charged with murder would be interviewed. Four Marine officers have been charged with failing to investigate the killings thoroughly.
The court martial of Frank Wuterich is expected later this year.
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