The Death of the Marine Corps, Chapter 2

Birth of the Accusations

It began on 26 April, in Hamdaniya, Iraq. Seven Marines and their Navy Corpsman, from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment shot and killed an insurgent. Just another day, just another insurgent in this dirty, dusty land where almost everyone–even children–can smile at you one moment and kill you the next.

But this would not be just another insurgent, and the events of 26 April will be dissected over and over in the coming weeks. The report the Marines filed after the action said that Awad was “digging on the side of the road from our ambush site. I made the call and engaged. He was pronounced dead at the scene with only a shovel and AK-47.” Just another day.

Yet a few months later, the eight men are fighting for their lives in a whole new arena: the courtroom. With an Article 32 scheduled next month and most assuredly a trial after that, the Marines and Navy corpsman are accused of decidedly more than just engaging the enemy. The charge sheets for the eight men claim a host of infractions: Murder, larceny, assault, housebreaking, kidnapping, false official statements, and obstruction of justice. The Marine Corps says these men were looking for a certain insurgent but couldn’t find him, and so they broke into Hashim Ibrahim Awad’s house, dragged him outside, tied him up and put him on his knees, and then shot him 4 times.

There are some basic problems with the case. Dan Riehl has done some excellent research as to the conflicting statements by “witnesses.” He found that in almost every facet of the story, there are discrepancies, none of which are being mentioned by the media. In fact, in an apparent failure to communicate with each other (and fact check), “both Knight Ridder and the WaPo state the accounts cannot be independently confirmed.”

[Speaking of that Knight-Ridder account, the entire article was reported on by a “special correspondent who could not be named for security reasons…” To give you an idea of what the Washington Post’s article was like, just read these quick paragraphs on why they don’t like to call Zarqawi a terrorist.]

Riehl goes on:

It is fair to conclude that the media is putting out information which has, by its own admission, not been confirmed. And the Bush administration is now extremely sensitive to these types of charges. It’s also fair to wonder if some of our enemies haven’t figured that out and are becoming increasingly proficient at circulating precisely the types of stories the MSM loves to seek out.

The Marine Corps, in choosing to prosecute these men, has decided to accept the word of Iraqis who were connected with the insurgency as opposed to their own Marines. This is and of itself is a tragedy. But why were these men charged?

Many people, including this columnist, somehow labor under the erroneous assumption that we as citizens are “owed” an investigation on this incident. It becomes a very dangerous situation when terrorists are made privy to this fact. How many inquiries were done into “atrocities” committed in World War 2? It was simply understood that war was a dirty job, someone had to do it, and thank God for the men who were willing to step up and go.

What happens when we are pounded with the idea that the military is a group of paid assassins, fighting an “illegal and immoral” war for capitalist fiends? Where do we end up when we start down the road of demanding investigations into killing of the enemy and calling normal wartime occurrences “atrocities?”

You may not even want to know the answer. But it is there, diabolically threatening everything that our country is founded on–and everything the Marine Corps claims to believe in.

The question of why they are even being investigated is a valid one, to be sure. But at this point, the more dangerous question is, why is the Marine Corps denying them due process and the right to a competent defense? And what does this mean for the rest of those who are defending our safety?

In Chapter 3, we’ll look at how these troops are being setup to not just fall, but actually die.

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