By Oliver Poole (Filed: June 1, 2006)
In January, shortly before the first published reports emerged about US marines methodically gunning down men, women and children in the Iraqi town of Haditha, The Daily Telegraph spent time at the main camp of the battalion under investigation.
Rumours had spread that what happened on Nov 19 diverged from the official line that locals were killed by a roadside bomb.
None of the troops wanted to talk, but even a short stay with the men of the 3rd Bn 1st Marine Division in their camp located in Haditha Dam on the town's outskirts, made clear it was a place where institutional discipline had frayed and was even approaching breakdown.
Normally, American camps in Iraq are almost suburban, with their coffee shops and polite soldiers who idle away their rest hours playing computer games and discussing girls back home.
Haditha was shockingly different - a feral place where the marines hardly washed; a number had abandoned the official living quarters to set up separate encampments with signs ordering outsiders to keep out; and a daily routine punctured by the emergency alarm of the dam itself with its antiquated and crumbling machinery.
The dam is one of Iraq's largest hydroelectric stations. A US special operations unit had secured it during the invasion and American troops had been there ever since. Now they were spread across the dozen or so levels where Iraqi engineers once lived.
The lifts were smashed, the lighting provided only a half gloom. Inside, the grinding of the dam machinery made talking difficult. The place routinely stank of rotten eggs, a by-product apparently of the grease to keep the turbines running.
The day before my arrival one soldier had shot himself in the head with his M16. No one would discuss why.
The washing facilities were at the top and the main lavatories at the base. With about 800 steps between them, many did not bother to use the official facilities.
Instead, a number had moved into small encampments around the dam's entrances that resembled something from Lord of the Flies. Entering one, a marine was pulling apart planks of wood with his dirt-encrusted hands to feed a fire.
A skull and crossbones symbol had been etched on the entrance to the shack. ...
At the dam there was one American civilian, an engineer sent out by the US government with instructions to keep the facility operational.
It was a difficult task. Each time there was a power cut the turbines stopped working, the water against the dam would start to build up and everybody knew that if the local engineers could not get the generators started in time it would collapse.
The American's job was not helped by the marines viewing his Iraqi workers as potential saboteurs. The troops he was quartered with terrified him, so much so that he would not let his name be quoted for fear of reprisal.
He was keeping a secret dossier of breaches he said he had witnessed, or learned of. He planned to present it to the authorities when he returned to the US.
"Marines are good at killing," he said. "Nothing else. They like it."
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/06/01/wbush101.xml>
BTW, I recall that Soviet generals were regularly ridiculed in the West for being overly bedecked with medals. Believe me, they were models of military understatement compared to the clownish display of decorations sported by the current Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, USMC Gen. Peter Pace. Get a load of the ornamentation this brass-hat buffoon parades around in: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pace#Military_awards>
Carl