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4 GIs Tell of How Iraqi Raid Went Wrong    [

    Iraqi Medic Describes Carnage
    By Joshua Partlow
    The Washington Post

    Monday 07 August 2006

Testimony begins in hearing for US soldiers accused of rape.

    Baghdad - An Iraqi medic who responded to a home where U.S. soldiers allegedly raped and killed a teenage Iraqi girl and murdered her sister and parents described on Sunday a display of carnage so horrific he said it made him sick for two weeks.

    In the opening day of testimony in a military hearing in Baghdad to determine whether there is enough evidence to hold a court-martial for five U.S. soldiers, the medic, whose name was withheld for security reasons, testified that he saw smoke when he arrived at the family's home in Mahmudiyah on the afternoon of March 12. Inside, on the floor of the living room by the window, a teenage girl lay dead on her back, her legs spread, her clothes torn off, her body burned from her waist to her head, a single bullet hole under her left eye, he said.

    Her mother also lay dead on the floor with bullet wounds in her chest and abdomen, he said.

    In another room, the medic found what remained of the girl's father in a pool of blood. "The brain was on the floor and parts of the head were all over the place," the medic said. Next to him was his other daughter, who was about 6years old. It appeared to him as if a bullet had "entered the front of her face and out the back of her head," he said.

    With the help of Iraqi soldiers, the medic said, he put the remains of the family in bags and stored them in an air-conditioned ambulance because there was no room at the Mahmudiyah hospital.

    The case is one of the most brutal in a series of recent incidents in which U.S. soldiers allegedly killed Iraqis. The sexual nature of the crime has outraged Iraqis, and the killings caused Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to call for a review of rules that prevent U.S. troops from being tried in Iraqi courts.

    The U.S. military has charged four soldiers from the B Company, 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment - Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, Spec. James P. Barker, Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman and Pfc. Bryan L. Howard - with rape and murder. A fifth soldier, Sgt. Anthony W. Yribe, was charged with dereliction of duty and making a false statement for allegedly failing to report the incident. And a sixth man, former Army private Steven D. Green, who was discharged for a "personality disorder," pleaded not guilty to rape and murder charges in a federal court in Kentucky.

    At Sunday's hearing at Camp Liberty, near Baghdad International Airport, defense attorneys questioned the medic's medical training and posed the possibility that the family had already been dead before they were shot. During a cross-examination, the medic admitted he could only assume the family was shot to death, but said, "I believe that's how they were killed, which is what I've told you."

    The soldiers' battalion commander, Lt. Col. Thomas Kunk, said he received a phone call on June 17 from the company commander, Capt. John Goodwin, informing him of the alleged murders and asking his guidance. At first incredulous, Kunk said, he went to the area south of Baghdad the next morning to begin his investigation.

    "Absolutely not, I did not believe that report," he said. "I wanted to get on the ground."

    Kunk recalled that Green, one of the alleged ringleaders in the incident, once said, "All Iraqis are bad people."

    "I told him that that wasn't true, and that 90 to 95 percent of the Iraqi people are good people and they want the same thing that we have in the United States," Kunk said.

    One of the defense attorneys, Capt. James D. Culp, who sucked on lollipops during his cross-examination, questioned Kunk about whether the unremitting violence in the area south of Baghdad patrolled by the soldiers caused combat stress. Kunk said most of the soldiers in the battalion were able to deal with the deaths of their fellow soldiers.

    Two other Iraqi witnesses also testified at the hearing, but reporters were kept from hearing their statements out of concern that the witnesses might be later targeted.

    The hearing took place on another violent day in Iraq. In Tikrit, a man detonated explosivesattached to himself inside a funeral service. The blast killed 15 people and wounded 30 others, according to Iraqi army officials.

    A witness, Omar Ghalib, 23, said the suicide bomber parked his car near the funeral hall and walked in wearing a light blue dishdasha , the traditional Iraqi robe.

    "He went inside as if he wanted to offer condolences, and then a few seconds later, the explosion occurred," Ghalib said.

    Police found the man's car also rigged with bombs, said 1st Lt. Norras Hamid of the Tikrit police. Tikrit General Hospital had received seven corpses and 14 injured people, said physician Jassim Dulaimi, but "we believe there are more dead bodies which have not been evacuated or were evacuated by their families directly."

    [Early Monday, heavy gunfire and explosions rattled the Sadr City district of Baghdad. Government television and aides to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said U.S. aircraft were attacking buildings in the area, the Associated Press reported. Southwest of the capital, three U.S. soldiers were killed late Sunday in a roadside bombing, the U.S. military said.]

    -------

    Special correspondent K.I. Ibrahim and other Washington Post staff contributed to this report.

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    4 GIs Tell of How Iraqi Raid Went Wrong
    By Paul von Zielbauer
    The New York Times

    Monday 07 August 2006

    Baghdad, Iraq - When the burst of machine-gun fire stopped, two of the three Iraqi men were dead, their bodies chewed by bullets sprayed at them by two American soldiers a few yards away. But a third man, brains spattered on his face, was somehow still alive and, with eyes closed, was gasping for air.

    Specialists Juston R. Graber and Thomas A. Kemp, surprised to hear gunfire after securing the rural swatch of land northeast of Baghdad, ran over to find the three Iraqis lying in the dirt. Their squad leader, Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard, also arrived and inspected the three bodies. A squad medic came on the scene, quickly examined the man who was still moving and declared him beyond help. Then, according to sworn statements of what Specialists Graber and Kemp later told Army investigators, Sergeant Girouard said, "Put him out of his misery."

    What happened in the minutes before and after the three Iraqis were shot on May 9 are at the core of the military's case against Specialist Graber and three other members of the Company C, Third Brigade, 187th Infantry of the 101st Airborne Division. All four soldiers have been charged with murder. All have denied any wrongdoing.

    Their case is now the subject of a military hearing to determine if there is enough evidence to recommend that the soldiers go before a court-martial.

    In more than a dozen sworn statements made to Army investigators and obtained by The New York Times, the four accused soldiers and several other members of Company C recollected their roles in the assault on a remote island in Tharthar Lake, 60 miles north of Baghdad.

    Taken together, their accounts provide the first detailed narrative of their combat experience, one part of a much broader mission against insurgent forces that day known as Operation Iron Triangle.

    Specialist Kemp later told the investigators that he did not believe in "mercy killings," and walked quickly away. But Specialist Graber, transfixed, lingered over the dying man, according to his statement.

    He lifted his M-4 rifle to his waist, curled his finger around the trigger and fired at the man's head. He missed, he told investigators later, striking the dirt. He raised his rifle again, this time bringing its muzzle within four feet of the man's cheek. The bullet pierced the blindfold the man was still wearing. "I felt that it was the humane thing to do," he wrote in a sworn statement in mid-June. His shot was the last of hundreds fired by two Company C squads during the morning assault.

    Several soldiers have said in sworn statements or testimony at the hearing that senior officers, including the Third Brigade commander, Col. Michael Steele, told them in a gathering the night before the raid to kill any military-age male they encountered on the island, where 20 fighters loyal to Al Qaeda were thought to be.

    In a statement to investigators, Colonel Steele has denied giving any such order. On Friday, he declined, through his military lawyer, to comment for this article.

    In June, the Army charged Specialist Graber with one count of murder. Three others in his squad were charged with the murders of the three Iraqi men after detaining and handcuffing them. They are Staff Sgt. Girouard, Specialist William B. Hunsaker and Pfc. Corey R. Clagett.

    An Army special investigator is weighing what punishment, if any, to recommend to the 101st Airborne commander, Maj. Gen. Thomas R. Turner. If their cases proceed to courts-martial, they could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

    But a review of more than a dozen statements of several other members of Company C reveals an Army unit caught between their superiors' prediction of a fierce battle and the scant resistance of the Iraqis they found during the three-hour assault.

    In the predawn darkness, about 20 soldiers from Company C's Third Platoon boarded Black Hawk helicopters before dawn with orders to raid a group of houses on the southern end of the island in Tharthar Lake. Six Iraqi Army soldiers accompanied them.

    "Hit the first house, kill all military-age males, hit any secondary houses, then stand by for follow-on missions," was the way Sergeant Girouard described his squad's mission to investigators in a May 29 statement. But all they found at the first landing zone were two empty homes and a pump house. Around 6:30 a.m., Sergeant Girouard's squad landed about 70 yards southwest of the second house, several miles north of the first. As the squad approached, Sergeant Girouard fired his M-4 rifle at a man in a window. Sgt. Leonel Lemus, Specialist Hunsaker, Specialist Graber and Pfc. Bradley Mason also fired. At the front door, Sergeant Girouard sent an Iraqi Army soldier, Sgt. Hamed Muhammad, into the house first. Pouring in behind him, guns ready, they found three Iraqi men hiding behind two women, a tactic Qaeda fighters were known for, several soldiers said.

    The squad moved the women into a separate room and took the three men outside. The man shot by the window was lying on his back, bellowing in pain from gunshot wounds to his midsection and right arm. Soldiers dragged him outside, where the squad medic, Specialist Micah Bivens, performed first aid. Two minutes later, Specialist Bivens pronounced the man dead, Sgt. Kevin Ryan wrote in his May 29 statement.

    Sergeant Muhammad testified at the hearing for the accused soldiers last week that the man seemed to be 70 to 75 years old. Soldiers zipped him into a black body bag.

    In front of the house, Private Mason searched the three men, two of whom wore what soldiers called a "man dress," a dishdasha. Specialist Thomas Kemp recorded the men's names: Ahmed Farhim Hamid al-Jami, Ziad Jasem Hamid and Nahad Yasim Hamid Gumar.

    The tactical search, a core discipline in an infantry soldier's training, would later become a point of contention at the hearing for the four soldiers accused of murder. Private Mason, in testimony last week, said he had thoroughly searched all three. "If there was a dollar bill on them, I would have found it," he said.

    Specialist Graber and Private Mason guarded the three detainees, who were now lying outside face down with their hands bound behind their backs. Private Mason was sent into the house to watch the women. As the three men were being bound, Private Clagett, on an earthen berm 50 yards north of the house, saw a mud hut with people inside.

    As the squad approached the hut, a man, later identified by soldiers as Shajeed Wayied Shelish, came out holding a 2-year-old girl in front of him. Sergeant Girouard tried to shoot the man but could not. "I could not properly engage him because as I moved my weapon, he moved the baby and put the baby in front," he told investigators on May 29.

    Several soldiers detained Mr. Shelish and found "several children and women" in the hut, Sergeant Ryan said. Most of the children were about 7 or 8 years old, Sergeant Muhammad testified. Sergeant Girouard grabbed the girl.

    Back at the first house, Specialist Bivens and Corporal Helton photographed the four Iraqi men. Sergeant Girouard radioed First Sgt. Eric Geressy and told him they had killed one man.

    Sgt. Armando Acevedo, another member of Company C on that day's mission, later told prosecutors that he heard Sergeant Geressy reply, "We're bringing back these detainees when they should be dead." Sergeant Geressy denied saying that.

    About that time, Sergeant Lemus and Private Mason told investigators, Sergeant Girouard appeared to have second thoughts about the four detainees in custody. "He mentioned that First Sergeant Geressy transmitted over the radio that the detainees should have been killed," Sergeant Lemus wrote in a sworn statement in June.

    Sergeant Girouard gathered Sergeant Lemus, Specialist Hunsaker and Privates Clagett and Mason around him in a room in the house and, according to Sergeant Lemus, laid out a plan: Specialist Hunsaker and Private Clagett were would kill the detainees after cutting off their wrist ties and ordering them to run away. Sergeant Lemus and Private Mason told investigators they wanted no part of the plan and left.

    Several minutes later, Sergeant Girouard dispatched 6 of his squad's 10 soldiers to secure a pickup zone for an incoming Black Hawk, 70 yards southwest of the house. That left Sergeant Girouard, Specialist Hunsaker and Privates Clagett and Mason at the house. Specialist Hunsaker and Private Clagett were guarding the three men, who were blindfolded, seated and had their hands restrained with zip ties behind their backs.

    Sergeant Girouard walked Mr. Shelish, the man they had taken from the mud hut, toward the pickup zone, handing him to Corporal Helton. Minutes later, Private Mason, inside the house with the two women, heard Specialist Hunsaker shout an expletive. He and soldiers at the landing zone then heard fire from Private Clagett's machine gun and Specialist Hunsaker's M-4.

    Sergeant Ryan and Corporal Helton saw the three men sprinting barefoot toward the mud hut. "That was followed by gunshots as the men fell," Sergeant Ryan wrote in a sworn statement.

    Private Clagett and Specialist Hunsaker told investigators they had cut the flimsy wrist ties off all three detainees at once - a procedure considered tactically unsound - to replace them with thicker plastic cuffs that would not break. They said one man had suddenly attacked Specialist Hunsaker with a knife as a second man punched Private Clagett.

    Sergeant Girouard radioed his report to headquarters, saying he no longer had three detainees but three "K.I.A.'s" - killed in action.