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Soldiers Say They Were Ordered to Kill Young Iraqi Men
By ALICIA A. CALDWELL, AP

EL PASO, Texas (July 22) - Four U.S. soldiers accused of murdering suspected insurgents during a raid in Iraq said they were under orders to "kill all military age males," according to sworn statements obtained by The Associated Press.

The soldiers first took some of the men into custody because they were using two women and a toddler as human shields. They shot three of the men after the women and child were safe and say the men attacked them.

"The ROE (rule of engagement) was to kill all military age males on Objective Murray," Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard told investigators, referring to the target by its code name.

That target, an island on a canal in the northern Salahuddin province, was believed to be an al-Qaida training camp. The soldiers said officers in their chain of command gave them the order and explained that special forces had tried before to target the island and had come under fire from insurgents.

Girouard, Spc. William B. Hunsaker, Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, and Spc. Juston R. Graber are charged with murder and other offenses in the shooting deaths of three of the men during the May 9 raid.

Girouard, Hunsaker and Clagett are also charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly threatening to kill another soldier if he told authorities what happened.

In sworn statements obtained this week by the AP, Girouard, Hunsaker, Clagett, and a witness, Sgt. Leonel Lemus, told Army investigators they were ordered to attack an island in northern Salahuddin province on May 9 and kill anti-Iraqi fighters with ties to al-Qaida.

All four soldiers charged are members of the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. They have been jailed in Kuwait since their June arrests. Their first hearing is Aug. 1 near Tikrit, Iraq.

Michael Waddington, Hunsaker's civilian lawyer, said his client followed orders and killed the detainees in self-defense after he and Clagett were attacked.

"They did (their job) honorably, they did it admirably," said Paul Bergrin, Clagett's civilian attorney. "If they did want to kill these men, they could have and been within the rules of engagement."

Officers from their unit initially cleared the soldiers of wrongdoing. Charges were filed when witnesses changed their testimony after repeated interviews with Army investigators, Bergrin said.

Reached by e-mail in Iraq, Girouard's Army lawyer, Capt. Theodore Miller, declined to comment because the investigation was continuing.

An Army prosecutor, also deployed to Iraq, did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.

Army spokesman Sheldon Smith asked that a request for comment be e-mailed to him in Virginia. He did not immediately respond.

Military officials have released few details of the case.

But statements from Girouard, Hunsaker and Clagett describe a tense early morning scene, with soldiers immediately opening fire on buildings.

Girouard told investigators he expected he and his comrades would immediately be attacked when they landed on the island. Intelligence officials had warned that at least 20 al-Qaida operatives were hiding there.

But it was only once the men moved to the northern half of the island that they found anyone, Girouard said. He said he and others shot and killed a man they spied in a window in one building and then rushed into a house where they found three other men hiding behind two women.

A fifth man, holding a 2-year-old girl in front of him, later came out of another building, Girouard and Hunsaker told investigators.

Girouard said the four surviving men were not immediately killed because of the human shields. Once the women and child were moved to safety, he told investigators, the men did not appear to pose a threat and the soldiers took them into custody.

But Hunsaker said three of the men then attacked him and Clagett as the soldiers were trying to bind the men's hands with heavy-duty plastic ties.

"I had felt this action necessary for they had tried to use deadly force on me and my comrade," Hunsaker wrote about the shooting.

Hunsaker told investigators he was stabbed. Clagett said he was "struck on the face with a fist or something."

Lemus, who only saw the men fall to the ground, told investigators he thought the killings were justified.

"Proper escalation of force was used when the detainee became hostile and armed himself with a weapon and wounded one soldier and struck another," Lemus said. "Our actions ... were in accordance to the ROE (rule of engagement) briefed to us prior to our mission and moments before our air assault was conducted."

Girouard said he did not see the shooting either but was immediately told what happened.

"I think they are telling the truth," Girouard's statement said. "If it would have happened another way they would have told me and the story has been the same the whole time."

Clagett and Hunsaker also told investigators they found AK-47 assault rifles, ammunition and gun parts after the men were killed.

Bergrin said the weapons and other evidence not mentioned in the statements were proof that the Iraqi men were a threat.

Several other service members face similar charges in unrelated cases involving the deaths of civilians in Iraq.

According to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the maximum penalty for murder is death, but it was unclear if the government will seek the death penalty in any of the pending cases.


07-22-06 02:06 EDT

__________________
To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

spittle8

It seems that we should be able to do more non-PC things than we can. That might be an overstatement, but, honestly, I wish it were more like the Pacific theatre in WW2: deny your enemy surrender. What do we do with these fellows when we accept their surrender? Do we have to provide them with a trial? Who orchestrates this trial? When we basically know that any one person we detain is an enemy, that seeks our destruction, and would attack us again once released, WHAT DO WE DO WITH HIM? We can't legally shoot him. Things like this give me a headache. It seems as though we're in a frustrating war

Gun Grape

Where did you come up with this?

spittle8

I've heard it said by countless American veterans. In most of the island hopping campaigns, we killed any and all Japanese without offering surrender. That was the generally accepted grunt view of things. If prisoners were needed, or officers intervened, we took them. But it was very common to shoot surrendering Japanese.

Confed999

IT was uncommon for either side to surrender to the other near the end of the war. It was about as close to a genocidal fight as one can get, for both sides by then.

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

spittle8

That's what I thought. From what I know, it seems that, while we didn't face what the Russians faced, we faced equally horrid combat conditions, perhaps amongst the worse combat situations of the entire war, in the island hopping campaign.

leib10

But it wasn't official policy. Plus, most Japanese wouldn't try to surrender in the first place.

__________________
"The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. So wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up and smell the ashes." G-Man

spittle8

Of course not. Just de facto policy. Amongst the grunts. MANY Japanese tried to surrender. Many alluded to surrender, only to drop grenades in front of our troops.

Gun Grape

Not true, We even had Nisei "Cave Flushers" that went into caves to talk Japanese Soldiers into surrendering.

The Japanese were more prone to commit suicide than to surrender. There were mass suicides in Okinawa for instance. It had as much to do with "Honor" as it did with how the Chinese treated Japanese prisoners early in the war. And the IJA had a no surrender policy.

The US had about 20 thousand Japanese POWs at wars end. Doesn't sound like much, but remember that we bypassed alot of islands with Japanese garrisons. Its also about the same number of Australians that became POWs

spittle8

The suicides on Okinawa were women and children jumping off of cliffs, to avoid the suspected rape, torture, and evil they expected in retribution. If the men were doing it, I suspect it was for the same reasons. If the soldiers were doing it, then your point stands.

Japanese surrender was more common than thought. Alot of the younger (children) soldiers surrendered. From what I got out of it, we killed many surrendering Japanese during the island campaign both because they were mutilating dead Marines in obscene ways, were antagonizing our soldiers, tended to allude to surrender, only to try to kill one of ours, and their own policy towards taking prisoners.

Confed999

Japanese soldiers did it in droves.

Anon

As a general rule Japanese troops did not surrender.

Pretty much ever.

Ray

Japanese would rather commit harakiri than gove up.

__________________


"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

sappersgt

It is a truism that "A well defended position yields few prisoners". Asking men to judge the sincerity of "surrendering" troops who had until only recently been trying to kill you can sometimes be a waste of your time.

Gun Grape

No there are many examples of soldiers commiting seppuku. One being the Naval Underground Headquarters where 175 members of the staff killed themselves including Adm Ota. Its in Naha.

The civilians were forced by the Japanese Army to jump. At least thats what the Plaque says at the Peace Park and suicide cliffs Gen Ushijima committed sepuku there in addition to most of the troops that were still left.

Although the Japanese soldiers did mutilate people in Nanking there were never any accusations of them mutulating the bodies of dead soldiers/Marines. It would have been against the teachings of their religion and the Bushido code. Also any Japanese soldier that was found guilty of mutilating a warriors corpse would have been "encurraged" to commit seppuku to regain their honor.