Smash hit

According to the US military, the troops have been cleared of misconduct at Ishaqi, but in yet another incident, seven marines and a navy corpsman are likely to face charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy for dragging an Iraqi from his home, shooting him and faking his killing to look as though he was burying a roadside bomb.

The events at Haditha have shattered the credibility of official military accounts of Iraqi deaths. It has left Bush lamely insisting that the marines who “violated the law, if they did, will be punished”. Yet, had it been up to the military, the public would never have learnt what happened at Haditha.

Only after Time magazine revealed details of the incident in March did the Pentagon launch two inquiries: one into the facts of the case and another, damningly, into its cover-up.

IT was just after 7am on November 19 last year when the convoy of marines rolled past the date palm groves on the outskirts of town towards the settlement of low-rise, stone houses. Moments later, a roadside bomb struck the Humvee bearing Miguel Terrazas, 20, a lance-corporal from El Paso, Texas.

Briones was Terrazas’s best friend. He was at the marines’ base in an abandoned school less than half a mile away when his unit received news of the attack. He raced to the scene and found the body of his friend, torn in two, inside the wrecked Humvee.

“He had a giant hole in his chin. His eyes were rolled back up in his skull,” Briones recalled. He covered Terrazas’s body with a poncho and said a prayer. “Rest in peace. You are my brother by another mother. I love you, man.” Two other marines were wounded.

Terrazas’s companions had not paused to mourn. The IED (improvised explosive device) had been attached to a propane gas canister and triggered by remote control. The bomber had to be nearby.

THE marines threw up a rudimentary check-point just as a taxi bearing four students rounded the corner. Abu Makram, 50, a neighbour who watched the horror unfold from his window, says all five men, including the driver, were ordered out of the car and shot on the spot.

From there, witnesses say, a three or four-man fire squad stormed the nearest house, while up to 20 marines stayed on guard outside.

Iman Waleed, 10, was lying in bed in her nightclothes when she heard the bomb go off. Her blind, wheelchair-bound grandfather, 76, lived in the guest room at the front of the house. The marines shot him on the way in.

“Grandpa was sitting close to the hall and they shot him dead,” she recalled.

Her father was reading the Koran when the marines burst in. Iman heard shots and an explosion. “They burnt the room and my father was in the room,” she said.

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