Abu Ghraib?! Worse. More like Mai Lai.

September 1, 2011 6:05 PM

US troops handcuff, execute women, children... and a 5 month old baby.
In an unclassified 2006 memo from Philip Alston, the UN Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary executions sent directly to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Alston states: " I have received various reports indicating that at least 10 persons, namely Mr. Faiz Hratt Khalaf, (aged 28), his wife Sumay'ya Abdul Razzaq Khuther (aged 24), their three children Hawra'a (aged 5) Aisha ( aged 3) and Husam (5 months old)(YouTube video, NSFW, GRAPHIC), Faiz's mother Ms. Turkiya Majeed Ali (aged 74), Faiz's sister (name unknown), Faiz's nieces Asma'a Yousif Ma'arouf (aged 5 years old), and Usama Yousif Ma'arouf (aged 3 years), and a visiting relative Ms. Iqtisad Hameed Mehdi (aged 23)" ... were handcuffed in their home and summarily shot in the head at close range by US forces in Iraq. An Italian news report (YouTube, GRAPHIC, NSFW) previously highlighted the suspicious circumstances involving the massacre. The Independent quotes Mr. Alston, who says that not only did Former Sec. Rice fail to respond to the war crimes report... but that it was standard policy not to do so.
posted by markkraft (21 comments total)

US troops handcuff, execute women, children... and a 5 month old baby.

Wikileaks' cables tell us nothing we don't already know about the United States.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:11 PM on September 1, 2011 [5 favorites]

From the "Marines in ancient Rome" thread:

blue_beetle: "Are modern soldiers accustomed to killing dozens and dozens of men with their bare hands in the most gruesome ways imaginable? Are they used to the level of raw up-close-and-personal violence that the ancients were? Can they kill women and children without a second though? Are they ready for pure barbarism?"

Yes.
posted by dunkadunc at 6:15 PM on September 1, 2011

I'd only be surprised if this had stopped happening, or if the standard policy was to give a fuck about war crimes.
posted by signal at 6:15 PM on September 1, 2011 [4 favorites]

This came up in the recent Wikileaks thread. It should be stressed the cable is seeking clarification of the reports, not laying out what surely happened. The troubling part is, as pointed out, the US has not apparently made public their answers to those questions.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 6:15 PM on September 1, 2011 [4 favorites]

Please note the word "various".
posted by Trurl at 6:16 PM on September 1, 2011

Wikileaks appears to be down and the site it tries to redirect me to has an invalid certificate.
posted by chemoboy at 6:17 PM on September 1, 2011

The details revealed in the cable are a valuable insight into how many of these house raids turn out. The raids, often carried out in the middle of the night, have become one of the primary strategies of the US war in Afghanistan, with tens of thousands orchestrated just in the last year.

In one notable and comparable incident in February of 2010, US Special Operations Forces surrounded a house in a village in the Paktia Province in Afghanistan. Two civilian men exited the home to ask why they had been surrounded and were shot and killed. US forces then shot and killed three female relatives (a pregnant mother of ten, a pregnant mother of six, and a teenager).

Instead of calling in an airstrike to hide the evidence, US troops, realizing their mistake, lied and tampered with the evidence at the scene. The initial claim, which was corroborated by the Pentagon, was that the two men were insurgents who had “engaged” the troops, and the three murdered women were simply found by US soldiers, in what they described as an apparent honor killing. Investigations into the incident eventually forced the Pentagon to retract its initial story and issue an apology.

Civilian deaths are a common occurrence in these commonly occurring raid operations. In May, NATO killed another four civilians in a night raid, and another three in early August. No soldiers or US officials have been held to account.

posted by Trurl at 6:19 PM on September 1, 2011 [7 favorites]

Sec. Rice fail to respond to the war crimes report...it was standard policy not to do so.

EX! CEPT! TIONAL! ISM!
posted by DU at 6:20 PM on September 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

It's not a war crime if the victim can't fight back!
posted by norabarnacl3 at 6:24 PM on September 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

Losing its role as the sole superpower in the world is the least the US deserves.
posted by Legomancer at 6:24 PM on September 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

Why is one of the links posted, revealing such stuff, "unclassified" but handled by Wiki, which I thought tried to work with that which was classified and not made available?
posted by Postroad at 6:24 PM on September 1, 2011

Hey, sometimes it's necessary to destroy the family to save the family.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:25 PM on September 1, 2011

When life gives you a few bad apples, juice 'em!
posted by dunkadunc at 6:26 PM on September 1, 2011

What? I was told wikileaks had blood on it's hands!
posted by delmoi at 6:29 PM on September 1, 2011 [3 favorites]

Does this topic really seem like the appropriate place to toss out one liners and I-told-you-sos?
posted by The Hamms Bear at 6:32 PM on September 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

We do it in every other Wikileaks thread.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 6:32 PM on September 1, 2011

There was some guy out in front of the grocery store today trying to collect money to help disabled US veterans. What do you say to that guy when you know things like this are being done by the people he's trying to help?
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 6:33 PM on September 1, 2011 [3 favorites]

(If anyone parliamo Italiano enough to roughly translate what they are saying on the Italian video report of the war crime too, it would be appreciated if you'd share the details with the rest of us.)

That video is horrible... but it's as close to the facts as reported at the time of the event as we're likely to get.
posted by markkraft at 6:35 PM on September 1, 2011

Does this topic really seem like the appropriate place to toss out one liners and I-told-you-sos?

What else is there to do at this point?
posted by ennui.bz at 6:35 PM on September 1, 2011 [3 favorites]

Does this topic really seem like the appropriate place to toss out one liners and I-told-you-sos?

What else is there to do in a Metafilter thread?
posted by fatbird at 6:36 PM on September 1, 2011

Hans......Are we the baddies?
posted by schmod at 6:36 PM on September 1, 2011 [12 favorites]