Posted on 07/11/2007 12:44:18 PM PDT by smoothsailing
July 11, 2007
One Haditha hero cleared
David Allender
The Investigative Officer in in the LCpl. Sharratt Article 32 hearing has recommended that murder charges be dropped. This clears one of the defendants in the so-called "Haditha massacre." One innocent man and brave soldier has been spared further agony in this disgraceful prosecution.
I posted a copy of the IO's report here.
LCpl. Sharratt was charged with three murders in house number four (Sgt. Wuterich was charged with a fourth murder in that house).
The four dead Iraqis, the Ayed brothers, were described by Iraqi "witnesses" as having been herded into a closet and executed.
Here is how the Iraqi "witnesses" (enabled by the MSM) told the story of what happened in house number four. Their version is what prosecutors failed to prove:
Tim McGirk in Time (March 19, 2006):
The Marines raided a third house [later known as house number four], which belongs to a man named Ahmed Ayed. One of Ahmed's five sons, Yousif, who lived in a house next door, told Time that after hearing a prolonged burst of gunfire from his father's house, he rushed over. Iraqi soldiers keeping watch in the garden prevented him from going in. "They told me, 'There's nothing you can do. Don't come closer, or the Americans will kill you too.' The Americans didn't let anybody into the house until 6:30 the next morning." Ayed says that by then the bodies were gone; all the dead had been zipped into U.S. body bags and taken by Marines to a local hospital morgue. "But we could tell from the blood tracks across the floor what happened," Ayed claims.
"The Americans gathered my four brothers and took them inside my father's bedroom, to a closet. They killed them inside the closet."
The military has a different account of what transpired. According to officials familiar with the investigation, the Marines broke into the third house and found a group of 10 to 15 women and children. The troops say they left one Marine to guard that house and pushed on to the house next door, where they found four men, one of whom was wielding an AK-47. A second seemed to be reaching into a wardrobe for another weapon, the officials say. The Marines shot both men dead; the military's initial report does not specify how the other two men died. The Marines deny that any of the men were killed in the closet, which they say is too small to fit one adult male, much less four....In all, two AK-47s were discovered.
William Langewiesche in Vanity Fair (November 2006):
Wuterich's men pursued the search to the north side of Route Chestnut, where they put the women and children under guard and killed four men of another family. There on the north side they found the only AK-47 that was discovered that day -- apparently a household defensive weapon, of the type that is legal and common in Iraq. No one has claimed that the rifle had been fired....
A man cries, "This is an act denied by God. What did he do? To be executed in the closet? Those bastards!...." Josh White in the Washington Post (January 6, 2007):
A few hours later [after the first houses were cleared], Sharratt, Wuterich and Salinas approached a third and fourth house after noticing men they said were peering at them suspiciously. The investigative reports show that what happened there is unclear. Iraqi witnesses said the Marines angrily separated men and women into two lines before marching the men into the fourth house and shooting them. The three Marines told investigators they were searching for the men they had seen and separated the women into a safe area before Wuterich and Sharratt entered the house.
Sharratt told investigators that he saw a man raise an AK-47 rifle as if to shoot him. Sharratt said his gun jammed, but he grabbed his 9mm handgun and shot the attacker. He told investigators he saw another man with a rifle and shot him and two others because he "felt threatened." Wuterich also shot at the men, he said. It's a good day so far! But there are more men suffering for defending our nation with their lives.
Page Printed from:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/07/one_haditha_hero_cleared.html at July 11, 2007 - 03:29:47 PM EDT
It’s a good day for everyone but the POS murtha and the enemedia, Smooth!
Excellent news! Praise God!
Thank you for posting!
Thanks for this great news....~P~
This guy Allender at the American Thinker wrote a good article! :-)
Please spread the news to all you know. We've still got more work to on behalf of these Marines who give so much to us.
I’ll second that, a very good article. :-)
Actually that’s two, as de la Cruz was already given immunity in response for his “testimony,” which, as it turns out, must not have been too damning.
Correct...When the charges were dropped against Dela Cruz and he was ordered to testify there were many that said he flipped and was going to incriminate the rest of them, they were wrong. It looks like the charges against him were just weak charges.
This guy, Allender, is everywhere! Good article on American Thinker, and thanks for posting this, smooth. It’s great to see this news making the rounds.
Great news! Thanks for posting this.
BUMP
boy Rush drug Murtha all over the air waves today
maybe at rush.com but he went after Murtha off and on for the full three hours
This excerpt from the piece:
In other words, Rep. Murtha has just painted himself into a proverbial corner. He didn’t leave himself any wiggle room, either. That isn’t all, though:
By clearing Sharratt in the specific shootings of Jasib Aiad Ahmed, Kahtan Aiad Ahmed and Jamal Aiad Ahmed, Ware also appeared to clear Wuterich in the same attack, concluding that the Marines’ version of events was more credible than the claims of local residents who said the deaths were executions. Ware found that physical evidence showed that the shots, all facing forward and from a distance, were “inconsistent with an execution or persons reacting to an execution.”
That’s exactly what Col. Ware just did. This is significant because Sgt. Wuterich filed a defamation lawsuit against Rep. Murtha...
Murtha just may be doing a lot of sweating over SSgt Wutherich's defamation case and the possibility the House Ethics Committee could go after him but the ethics thing is probably wishful thinking on my part.
He began the show by saying something had him more agitated than anything in a long time, but that we probably wouldn’t even notice it because he’s such a pro... you know how he talks.
yes he did,and he was serious pizzed today but equally at republicans who were yappin against the WOT
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