Military Unit Accused of "Racism" and "Kill Counts"
michaelbor...@yahoo.com
Officers Allegedly Pushed "Kill Counts"
By Borzou Daragahi and Julian E. Barnes
The Los Angeles Times
Thursday 03 August 2006
Investigators believe the leaders of a unit accused in Iraq detainee
deaths fueled a climate of hate.
Baghdad - Military prosecutors and investigators probing the
killing of three Iraqi detainees by U.S. troops in May believe the
unit's commanders created an atmosphere of excessive violence by
encouraging "kill counts" and possibly issuing an illegal order to
shoot Iraqi men.
At a military hearing Wednesday on the killing of the detainees
near Samarra, witnesses painted a picture of a brigade that operated
under loose rules allowing wanton killing and tolerating violent,
anti-Arab racism.
Some military officials believe that the shooting of the three
detainees and the killing of 24 civilians in November in Haditha reveal
failures in the military chain of command, in one case to establish
proper rules of engagement and in the other to vigorously investigate
incidents after the fact.
"The bigger thing here is the failure of the chain of command,"
said a Defense Department official familiar with the investigations.
As allegations of U.S. troop misconduct in Iraq have mounted, the
military's defenders have maintained that most were isolated incidents
and that officers and investigators working within the military justice
system had succeeded in ferreting out the truth.
The military's primary report on the Haditha incident, completed
this year, does not explicitly accuse the Marine command in Iraq of a
cover-up. But the investigation cites several instances of information
being ignored or evidence being destroyed, including log entries from
the day the killings took place. The Defense official, who has reviewed
the report, spoke on condition of anonymity because the findings have
not been released.
Initial findings of investigators looking into the Samarra incident
may be even more troubling. Military officials are investigating Army
Col. Michael Steele, the commander of the 101st Airborne Division's 3rd
Brigade, whose soldiers are accused of killing the three Iraqi
detainees.
Investigators are trying to determine whether Steele issued an
illegal order to "kill all military aged males" and encouraged
unrestrained killing by his troops.
On Wednesday, a military court heard testimony from a witness who
suggested that a culture of racism and unrestrained violence pervaded
the unit.
The account of Pfc. Bradley Mason and other witnesses bolstered the
findings of investigators who say the brigade's commanders led soldiers
to believe it was permissible to kill Iraqi men.
Military prosecutors allege that four U.S. soldiers killed three
unarmed Iraqi detainees during the May 9 raid. If convicted on charges
of premeditated murder, Pfc. Corey R. Claggett, Spc. William B.
Hunsaker, Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard and Spc. Juston R. Graber
could face the death penalty.
Wednesday's hearing was held at the 101st Airborne headquarters
near Tikrit, Iraq, and is a preliminary investigation, equivalent to a
civilian grand jury. The hearing is scheduled to continue today.
Mason said that just before "Operation Iron Triangle" began on an
island in Tharthar Lake near Samarra, Steele and other officers ordered
them to "engage and kill all military age men."
The Defense official familiar with the investigation said that even
if Steele did not issue a verbal order, many in the brigade believed
that was what the commander wanted.
A spokeswoman said the military could not respond to the specific
allegations against Steele until the investigation was completed.
A senior military officer has sent a potentially career-ending
reprimand to Steele, an officer who once commanded a Ranger company
sent into Mogadishu, Somalia, on a rescue mission that was recounted in
the book and movie "Black Hawk Down." However, the administrative
action is not final because Steele has signaled that he is going to
fight the accusations and the reprimand.
Steele has refused to testify in the case of the four soldiers,
citing his right against self-incrimination, unless he is given
immunity, prosecutors said.
The colonel has a reputation as a tough but potentially reckless
commander. Investigators have found that Steele handed out knives to
U.S. troops as rewards for killing insurgents, a defense official said.
The investigation of Steele was first reported Tuesday by ABC News.
Before the Tharthar raid, Claggett and Hunsaker had not yet notched
a kill on a brigade chart nor earned their knives from Steele, the
defense official said.
The primary prosecution witness Wednesday was Mason, who testified
under a grant of immunity. Mason has admitted making several false
statements to investigators, and defense lawyers are likely to
challenge his credibility.
Mason depicted a unit that had embraced a violent ethos and was
routinely hostile to ordinary Iraqis. Commanders encouraged soldiers to
compete to rack up "enemy kills," he said. A board at their
headquarters that showed the numbers of Iraqis killed served to
reinforce the message. "Let the bodies hit the floor," read a phrase at
the bottom of the board.
"That's another terrorist down," Mason quoted Girouard as telling
soldiers after they killed someone. "Good job."
Soldiers referred to ordinary Iraqis derogatorily as "hajis," a
reference to Muslims who have made the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, and
considered the 10 or so Iraqi army soldiers and interpreters working
for their unit as mostly "terrorists," Mason said. Under questioning,
Mason acknowledged saying that even before he arrived in Iraq, he
asserted that "every man, woman and child in Iraq deserves to die."
On May 8, the day before the raid, Steele reportedly addressed a
group of about 100 soldiers.
"We're going in tomorrow," he told them, according to 1st Lt.
Justin Werheim, another prosecution witness. "We're going to hit the
ground shooting, and kill all the Al Qaeda in Iraq insurgents."
The rules of engagement were unambiguous, Werheim said, and came
down "several times" via Capt. Daniel Hart, who also has requested
immunity.
"We were to positively identify and kill any military-age male on
the island," Werheim said.
Another witness, Pfc. Jason R. Joseph, said the soldiers believed
their orders were to kill any military-age males who were not
surrendering. "They were to kill any males who didn't have their hands
in the air," he said.
The soldiers arrived by helicopter as dawn broke, and Mason
testified that they expected to take heavy fire after they landed.
Mason said that as they approached one house, he unleashed a burst of
six to nine rounds from his weapon, killing an "old man" standing in
the window.
Mason testified that there was no Iraqi gunfire that morning. When
defense lawyers asked him why he killed the man, Mason said those were
his orders.
"We were told to kill all the males on the island," he testified.
"We don't fire warning shots."
Inside the house where Mason shot the man, soldiers found three men
cowering behind a pair of women, Mason testified. The soldiers pulled
the men outside and bound their hands with plastic handcuffs before
searching the house. They found nothing but an AK-47 and a few rounds
of ammunition, allowed by law.
Claggett and Hunsaker smiled when Girouard said they were going to
kill the detainees, already handcuffed and disarmed, according to
Mason's account. "I told [Girouard] I'm not down with it," he said.
"It's murder."
Mason testified that he stayed in the house while the other four
soldiers took the detainees outside. He heard Hunsaker yell out a
profanity, and then heard automatic weapon fire, followed by two shots
from a semiautomatic assault rifle, Mason testified. Prosecutors
believe that Claggett and Hunsaker shot and killed the detainees.
Mason testified that Claggett told him two of the detainees had
broken free of their plastic cuffs, and that one of them had lunged at
Hunsaker with a knife, giving him a scratch. The other had punched
Claggett in the face. The soldiers then shot and killed the three
detainees.
But Claggett later told him that Girouard had punched Claggett and
cut Hunsaker to justify the killings, Mason said, adding that men in
the squad also began threatening and pressuring Mason to keep quiet.
Mason said Girouard threatened to kill him if he informed.
Defense Department officials said that officers in Mason's company
and brigade failed to investigate the shooting, even after Mason and
others raised concerns.
The failure echoes the findings of the Haditha investigation. The
Times reported in June that portions of the Haditha report, compiled by
Army Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell, show senior Marine officers missed a
number of "red flags" that should have led them to uncover an attempt
to obscure the details of the incident.
The investigation was completed last month, but Pentagon officials
have declined to release the findings. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that it would not
be made public until after Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top
American commander in Iraq, had finished reviewing it.
--------
Daragahi reported from Baghdad and Barnes from Washington. Times
staff writers Peter Spiegel in Washington and Tony Perry in San Diego
contributed to this report.