1115.org

On July 10, 2006 (and let me stress that was more than nine months ago) I posted the following:

On June 16, it was reported that Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell had submitted the report of his Haditha cover-up investigation to Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli.

On July 7, exactly three weeks later, the military said in a statement that Gen. Chiarelli had finished reviewing Gen. Bargewell’s report and had forwarded it to Gen. George Casey, commander of Multi-National Forces-Iraq with his own findings and recommendations.

The findings of the Bargewell report have not been released. Chiarelli’s findings and recommendations have not been released either. But:
(A) military official said it was Chiarelli’s goal to make public the report’s findings as soon as possible, with the goal of “full and total disclosure.”

In this case, “as soon as possible” translated into ten months, from the time that Gen. Chiarelli received the Bargewell report to the time it has appeared in public.

But let’s not rush to extend kudos to Gen. Chiarelli for finally finding it possible to make public the report’s findings. Because it turns out the good general had nothing to do with it. Unless he’s the one whose sense of military honor caused him to leak it to WaPo. That’s right. We learnt about the findings of the report on Saturday only because “Bargewell’s previously undisclosed report” was mysteriously “obtained by The Washington Post“.

Instead of rushing to congratulate Gen. Chiarelli, what we should do instead is reflect on what is obviously the root cause for the whole sorry unending nightmare we are bogged down in in Iraq—nobody in the military chain of command actually obeys the Commander-in-Chief any more.

Because the Commander-in-Chief was crystal clear on how the Haditha investigation was going to be handled. There was going to be a “full and complete investigation” that the whole world would get to see. Because we are such a transparent society, we would handle everything in “an up-front way”, “an open way”. And, oh yes, we were going to correct the problems.

What Bush’s outrageously insubordinate military commanders on the ground chose to do instead was sit on the report, keep its unclassified findings firmly hidden away from the whole world. Till some deeply loyal Bushnik remembered what His Master’s Voice had commanded back on June 1, 2006, and finally found the guts to obey that command. And put the report into the compulsively disseminating hands of WaPo.

The report was apparently unclassified at an unknown date. (Maybe that date is still classified?) But, alack and alas, it was still not released to the public. Allegedly “because of ongoing criminal investigations of three Marines on murder allegations and four Marine officers who allegedly failed to look into the case”.

That make a lot of sense to you? Doesn’t to me. Given the way military justice works — no jury of your peers, for example — I don’t begin to see how releasing the report would or could compromise the ongoing criminal investigations, or any court-martial proceedings resulting therefrom.

The report itself is every bit as direct and scathing as we had been led to expect:

Bargewell has been described by “Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Lambert, a Special Forces officer who has known Bargewell for decades” as a man of “unimpeachable integrity”. In fact
Bargewell is considered so unflinchingly candid that another officer suggested that military leaders “may be sorry they chose him” to lead the probe.

Here’s WaPo’s take on the Bargewell report:

The Marine Corps chain of command in Iraq ignored “obvious” signs of “serious misconduct” in the 2005 slayings of two dozen civilians in Haditha, and commanders fostered a climate that devalued the life of innocent Iraqis to the point that their deaths were considered an insignificant part of the war, according to an Army general’s investigation.

Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell’s 104-page report on Haditha is scathing in its criticism of the Marines’ actions, from the enlisted men who were involved in the shootings on Nov. 19, 2005, to the two-star general who commanded the 2nd Marine Division in Iraq at the time. Bargewell’s previously undisclosed report, obtained by The Washington Post, found that officers may have willfully ignored reports of the civilian deaths to protect themselves and their units from blame.
[…]
“Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get ‘the job done’ no matter what it takes.”
[…]
The report notes errors and oversights at all levels of the Marine command in Iraq. Bargewell says that Marines at the squad level came up with a false story; that Kilo Company officers and the commander of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, passed along insufficient information to the regimental commander; and that regimental officers and officers at the 2nd Marine Division ignored signs of a problem and believed the incident to be insignificant. He also accuses the entire chain of failing to recognize the importance of civilian deaths.

Of particular concern to Bargewell was that nearly all Marines looked the other way when confronted with early reports that many civilians had been shot in fighting on the streets of Haditha after a roadside bomb killed a member of their unit. His investigation found that Marines and officers present that day immediately reported numerous civilian deaths to superiors but that the reports were “untimely, inaccurate and incomplete” — failures he attributed to “inattention and negligence, in certain cases willful negligence.”

Then, no one asked any further questions, Bargewell wrote, despite gruesome photographs circulating among junior Marines that showed that women and children had been killed in their beds. …

“I found that the duty to inquire further was so obvious in this case that a reasonable person with knowledge of these events would have certainly made further inquiries,” Bargewell wrote. “The most remarkable aspect of the follow-on action with regard to the civilian casualties from the 19 November 2005 Haditha incident was the absence of virtually any kind of inquiry at any level of command into the circumstances surrounding the deaths.”

… Maj. Gen. Richard A. Huck, the division commander, dismissed the allegations as insurgent propaganda, according to the report. The battalion commander, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, also refused to investigate, saying, “My marines are not murderers,” according to two of his top subordinates. Bargewell called this “an unwillingness, bordering on denial” …

Yes, it’s strong stuff. But let’s remember that this is a report whose findings came as no real surprise to anyone.

And even after ten months, they had failed to make the findings public. Even after the President had committed to doing so, and generals were allegedly operating in “full steam ahead” mode.

The President has also committed to achieving victory in Iraq, hasn’t he? His generals are allegedly operating in “full steam ahead” mode to achieve that victory too, aren’t they?

So how long is it going to take the U.S. military in Iraq to deliver on that one?

Even if you said forever and a day, I’d still have to grade that as an incorrect answer. Because this isn’t an outcome that can be achieved by one individual leaking a document to WaPo, or Time conducting an investigation. And those are the only outcomes we seem to be capable of achieving with respect to Iraq any more. (Other than providing military cover for safely buying five rugs for five bucks.)