Rules of Engagement

[tw]

From Vanity Fair of Nov 2006:

Rules of Engagement
Once it was issued, it became an official truth that the Marine Corps, even today, has rigidly refused to retract, despite the fact that within the Corps a more plausible official truth existed almost from the start: the day after the press statement was issued, McConnell visited the battalion headquarters ... where he gave his commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Chessani, a PowerPoint briefing on the action, explaining that some number of civilians had been killed by Wuterich's squad while they suppressed a "complex ambush" that had started with the explosion of the land mine and had continued with an attack by hidden gunmen. ... Chessani authorized the maximum compensation payments of $2,500 to the families for each of the dead who could be certified not to have been insurgents. A Marine major was assigned to do at least that much of an investigation. McConnell's version was passed up the chain of command.

Today, we know this was a massacre of Iraqis including a 76 year old blind and decrepit man in a wheelchair, his elderly wife, and children ranged in age from 15 to 3. This was all unquestioned for a month until Time Magazine's Tim McGirk reviewed pictures and saw obvious discrepancies. Four months later, Time Magazine would publish facts that eventually revealed the 2005 massacre. What happened next?

From one Marine officer close to the case:

"The Corps has this reflex when it feels threatened at home. It has a history of eating its young."

Page 312 of Vanity Fair, November 2006, published 23 pages entitled Rules of Engagement .

David Halberstam wrote "Making of a Quagmire" that predicted in 1965 what would happen to Americans in 1968 and 1972 Vietnam. Thomas Ricks wrote "Fiasco" that describes the 82nd Airborne in Fallujah. Vanity Fair provides an abridged version.

Obviously, the Marines were not allowed to kill wounded prisoners, but in a televised case one of them did, and Marine Corps justice averted its gaze. ... Within more contemplative circles of Marines, the battle of Fallujah became less of a triumph than a warning.

Officials in the Green Zone highlighted the slightest positive signs. But on the ground in Anbar the trends were all wrong.

The incident re-emerged only because of the insistent inquiries of Time magazine. During the subsequent military investigations that were forced onto the Marine Corps in the spring and summer of 2006, grainy images from an aerial drone were found that appeared to show the five bodies lying clustered together beside the sedan, with one sprawled partly atop another.

Don't for one minute deny reality. This is what happens when war is justified by lies - be it Vietnam or Iraq. And look who then suffers more - the grunt and his charges. He did not ask for this. We forced it upon him. And so we put him in an unwinnable position.

Similar story to this Vanity Fair story is told in another thread entitled "I do not let people die on me."