Following the Rules

Civilian deaths in Hadithah fell within procedural norms, lawyers say By Gidget FuentesTimes staff writer OCEANSIDE, Calif. — Marines who swept through a Hadithah neighborhood last November, leaving two dozen dead Iraqi civilians in their wake, were acting in self-defense and within established, rehearsed combat rules issued by their commanders, say two lawyers representing the Marines. The Marines’ actions Nov. 19 are the subject of two investigations and a firestorm of criticism from lawmakers, who have promised hearings. Iraqi government leaders say they want to put the Marines on trial. To date, no leathernecks in the unit, a squad from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, have been punished. “It’s unfortunate that this got kicked off the way it did,” said Gary Myers, a retired military attorney representing a Marine in the squad. “There was an ongoing investigation that seemed to be fairly reasonable and rational and became hysterical overnight with Congressman [John] Murtha’s announcement. Because he is a member of Congress, it had some traction.” Rep. Murtha, D-Pa., a retired Marine colonel, said at a May 17 press conference: “Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.” Myers, who defended Army Lt. William Calley during his court-martial for the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, said, “There is this expectation that criminality has occurred here when there may well be none.” Myers won’t say which Marine he represents. Another lawyer, Neal Puckett, a retired lieutenant colonel in Alexandria, Va., represents Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, who led Kilo Company’s 1st Squad with 3rd Platoon, the squad the investigation is focusing on in connection with the killings. Wuterich, on his first combat deployment, joined 3/1 last summer following a tour at the School of Infantry, and had previously served with 3rd Marines in Hawaii, Puckett said. He’s remained at 3/1 and has advanced to platoon sergeant. “He’s optimistic. He feels he’s frustrated. He’s certainly not pleased that civilians were killed,” Puckett said. “But he’s confident that he and his Marines did the right thing. There was no investigation or question immediately in the days that followed.” Myers said his client tells the same story as Wuterich, who was the ranking Marine at the scene Nov. 19. Wuterich, a 26-year-old from Meriden, Conn., was in the third of four Humvees that had left the company’s base, called Sparta, about 7 a.m. to drop off a group of Iraqi army soldiers at a traffic-control point in Hadithah. In his vehicle were six Iraqi soldiers. About 7:15 a.m., a roadside bomb exploded under the fourth Humvee, driven by Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, a 20-year-old Texan, and the convoy came to a stop. Terrazas died in the blast. The Marines and Iraqi soldiers shifted into defensive positions to counter a possible coordinated ambush and to look for a triggerman. They tended to wounded men, assessed the scene and called for reinforcements. Sometime after the blast — Puckett said he wasn’t sure when — a white sedan turned off another road onto the street and stopped. The Marines had to determine whether the vehicle, which carried a driver and four other men, was part of an attack. “The initial thing they did was they tried to detain a car full of males,” Puckett said. “[Wuterich] didn’t really recall any taxi markings. It was just a plain white car.” Whether the men heard or understood the Marines’ calls is unknown. The men “started running at the time,” Puckett said. Since the Marines had been trained that they could fire at suspicious people who are positively identified as a threat, and thinking the men were linked to the bomb or were running from a vehicle-borne bomb, they engaged them, killing all five, Puckett said. A search of the vehicle and the men, however, found no weapons. Local residents told several news outlets the men were returning after getting a ride to a technical school in Baghdad. They may have been fleeing in fear. Shortly after that, Puckett said, a quick-reaction force arrived at the scene. Wuterich “reported to the platoon commander what had happened,” Puckett said. He conferred with the platoon commander, whom Puckett described as a young second lieutenant. “Sometime later, they had begun receiving rifle fire from a house,” Puckett said. One of the Marines told the staff sergeant that shots had been fired from a house across the street. Wuterich assembled a four-man team and assaulted the house. One Marine kicked in the door and the team moved through several empty rooms. Inside one room, they heard rustling or voices behind a closed door. Believing armed insurgents were inside, the four-man stack kicked open the door and one of the Marines tossed a fragmentary grenade into the dark room. Another Marine, a corporal who was on his second tour in Iraq and had fought in Fallujah in November 2004, began firing to “clear” the room of suspected enemy. “He rolled a hand grenade and he went in shooting,” Puckett said. The Marines soon realized that civilians, including women and children, were inside that room. Six people were killed. At some point, while they were inside the house, the Marines thought the insurgents had fled the house, so they gave chase toward an adjacent home. At that house, the four-man stack followed similar procedures, kicking in a door, where they shot a man and moved toward another room, where they heard movement and rustling. They tossed in a grenade and laid clearing fire into the room. It, too, was a room with civilians, and eight were killed in the clearing operation. Wuterich reported to the company that there was “collateral damage,” and he reported about a dozen or so civilians had died, Puckett said. “They found no bad guys and innocent people got killed,” Puckett said. “They still were looking for the insurgents.” The Marines believed that insurgents, possibly someone linked to the bomb blast, had hidden among the residents as they had done in previous engagements. “There were coordinated attacks around Hadithah throughout the day,” Puckett noted. “The bad guys were there.” With Iraqi soldiers assisting with security, the Marines scoured the neighborhood and set up in several sites to oversee the area. According to Puckett, Wuterich and several Marines were on a rooftop when they spotted a suspicious man dressed in black, which Marines believe many insurgents wear, running from one of the houses that had been searched. He was shot and killed, although it’s unclear whether any weapons were found on him. They saw a second suspicious man, similarly dressed, on a nearby street. Several Marines went to find him and came across a courtyard, where a number of women and children pointed to a nearby house. The Marines approached the house and, seeing one man with an AK47 rifle, fired at him. Inside, the Marines killed him and three other men. As violent as their actions were, the Marines say they reacted and responded in accordance with established rules of engagement, which are the do’s and don’ts that dictate how and when they can take offensive actions and take defensive measures in order to accomplish the mission and protect themselves. ROEs vary by locale, threat, mission and environment, and military spokesmen say ROEs are a classified secret. Marines receive regular briefings on the rules. Capt. James Kimber was 3/1’s India Company commander until he was fired in April, for reasons he says were unrelated to Hadithah. He said his men even incorporated ROEs into mission rehearsals. ROEs “always changed. They were continuously updated,” Kimber said. “It was continuous, and we always had classes in escalation of force, rules of engagement, laws of war … It was just mind-numbing.” ‘To shoot or not to shoot’ Some ROEs are intended to minimize civilian casualties or collateral damage, and all include the universally accepted right of self-defense. “It’s tough. Every Marine has to make that split [second] decision whether to shoot or not to shoot,” said a colonel, a former infantry battalion commander and two-tour Iraq war veteran who asked not to be named. “It boils down to the training that you have and the practical applications and the scenarios you run with your platoon and your squad.” It’s likely that the ongoing Hadithah investigations will look at whether the Marines operated within the ROEs that existed at the time, or whether any of their actions violated the rules and unnecessarily or deliberately endangered civilians. Defense attorneys contend that the Marines were within the rules. “From what I know to be true, there is nothing that could suggest that the Marines did anything other than follow the rules of engagement,” Myers said. “There are many things unanswered, but the main thing we’ve said is that the rules of engagement are the linchpin of the case.” If troops perceive and identify a threat, under the ROE they may be able to take offensive action. “For example, if you see an [improvised explosive device] go off and you see people running from it, you may or may not shoot them,” he said. “If your ROE says, if you think fire came from a house and you believe that in good faith, you may without further inquiry take out every resident in the house,” he added. Much like what infantrymen encountered in Vietnamese hamlets, identifying the enemy among civilians is difficult but critical. In Iraq, “the common thing was they would hide among the civilians,” said a Marine sergeant, a reservist who’s pulled two combat tours in Iraq. It’s not unusual, he said, for insurgents to use the cover of crowds, such as kids on the street or adults playing soccer, to hide and fire at U.S. forces or set off a roadside bomb. “Sometimes, they go into a house and grab a family and hunker down,” the sergeant said. The Hadithah area is notorious as an insurgent stronghold and dozens of Marines have been killed there in the past two years. Other Marines have been hit with roadside bombs on the same street where the IED killed Terrazas, said an officer who spent part of last year in the Hadithah and Anbar provinces. Reactions vary by incident and threat. In some cases where Marines come under fire, “They should immediately cordon the area and go through the entire block, one by one,” the officer said. “That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t throw a grenade if it was the suspected house.” If the Marines’ version of events is true, and they acted within the ROEs, the larger issue may be whether the proper rules were implemented. “We may be looking at the wrong place,” Myers said. “The place to look may well be at what were the rules of engagement and were they reasonable? That is a very important point.” And the rules often are changing and adjusting to the threats and dangers in different locales in Iraq. “It depends so much on the specifics of the ROE in place at that point in time and whether or not it was implemented correctly,” Myers added. “But let’s assume that all the things that were said happened — short of simply lining people up and murdering them, which does not appear did happen — what do we have? We have Marines following robust rules of engagement, the principle purpose of which is to protect them, which has not great regard for the civilian population, and is basically saying you can engage in justifiable homicide. “So when you enter a house and go through the procedures of fragmentation grenades and room clearing, if that was part of the rules of engagement, the question becomes are those rules inappropriately drawn?” he said. — Gidget Fuentes, Times staff writer dyzgoneby ~Just in case you didn't see this~