Hell in Haditha, before the Marines got there

This report is from the liberal UK Guardian posted on August 22, 2005 several months before the Marines of Kilo Company got to Haditha.

The executions are carried out at dawn on Haqlania bridge, the entrance to Haditha. A small crowd usually turns up to watch even though the killings are filmed and made available on DVD in the market the same afternoon.

One of last week's victims was a young man in a black tracksuit. Like the others he was left on his belly by the blue iron railings at the bridge's southern end. His severed head rested on his back, facing Baghdad. Children cheered when they heard that the next day's spectacle would be a double bill: two decapitations. A man named Watban and his brother had been found guilty of spying.

With so many alleged American agents dying here Haqlania bridge was renamed Agents' bridge. Then a local wag dubbed it Agents' fridge, evoking a mortuary, and that name has stuck.

A three-day visit by a reporter working for the Guardian last week established what neither the Iraqi government nor the US military has admitted: Haditha, a farming town of 90,000 people by the Euphrates river, is an insurgent citadel.

That Islamist guerrillas were active in the area was no secret but only now has the extent of their control been revealed. They are the sole authority, running the town's security, administration and communications.

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There is much more. As usual the Guardian theme was one of the US losing and not in control of the situation, but the truth of the wickedness of the enemy slips through. Meanwhile Antonio Castaneda, an AP reporter, discusses his time with Kilo comany last fall. What is interesting is the contrast to the situation described by the Guardian a few months before.

Antonio Castaneda was embedded with the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment last October, a month before the alleged massacre in Haditha. This is his account of the unit.

They were one of the first Marine battalions to do a third tour in Iraq, a battle-hardened group of young men who seemed older than their years.

When I last saw the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, they were on yet another offensive, just landed in Haditha only 10 months after storming through Fallujah. In Haditha, they faced an unnervingly quiet city whose lazy, waving palm trees hid a resilient insurgency.

The Marines I observed were sharp, thoroughly searching homes as they swarmed Haditha's streets. Their commanders gave thoughtful responses to my questions. The unit fired only a few shots as it retook the city in just a couple of days.

Now, a few of these Marines, from the battalion's Kilo Company, are under investigation in the killings of up to two dozen civilians in Haditha. The allegations threaten to undermine the military's efforts in Iraq. President Bush, struggling to sustain public support for the war, says he's troubled by the reports.

I spent about 10 days with the battalion, including three to four days with Kilo Company when the Marines transformed a commandeered school into their headquarters. I remember talking to Marines on foot patrols, stopping to interview them as they nailed up fliers urging Iraqis to vote in the constitutional referendum.

Residents didn't seem overtly hostile to the American presence, which led some newcomers to mistake the place as an idle, carefree city.

Some Marines called their latest mission "boring" compared to the last assignment in Fallujah. But the wiser ones knew the insurgents would eventually fight back - and take a toll.

Iraq's most wanted terror leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, once had a home in Haditha, commanders said.

Before the 3rd Battalion's arrival, the lethality of Haditha already was clear. Over three days last August, 20 Marines from an Ohio-based reserve unit were killed, including several I had met on prior visits to the city. The local police force had deserted en masse after insurgents overran police headquarters.

For several months, Haditha was a no-man's-land. There weren't enough U.S. troops to patrol all the cities in the western desert, so Marines periodically swooped in to chase out insurgents, who would return later.

In between, insurgents had weeks and even months to set up traps and ambushes. Over 30 roadside bombs were found when I was in Haditha in October.

The battalion was remarkably open to the media, and the Marines seemed mature and self-confident. For several days, I slept on a crowded schoolroom floor alongside a company commander and several senior Marines. I sat in on meetings that most commanders would have barred me from.

At least two officers attended the U.S. Naval Academy, including one who was named a Marshall Scholar, and another well-spoken lieutenant in Kilo Company. They clearly were a select group, nurtured within the military's finest institutions and trained to lead an important mission.

I remember 1st Lt. David Jackson, a fast-talking New Yorker, spewing a string of crisp directives into his headset and his platoon automatically reacting.

They also seemed sensitive to local concerns.

On one mission, a lieutenant from Kilo Company ordered his Marine lookouts down from the rooftop of a house they temporarily occupied. The homeowner, a middle-aged mother, had started weeping and the Marine couldn't stomach the crying.

Another officer, Capt. Timothy Strabbing, who graduated at the top of his class at the Naval Academy, gave me thoughtful answers about how best to stabilize the city.

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There is more. Castaneda is a good reporter who spends most of his time with the troops. He is one of the best in Iraq. It is too bad there are not more like him.