U.S. Soldiers Kill Unarmed Iraqis and Afghanis

By forcing repeat combat assignments to Iraq and Afghanistan -- and by winking at torture and indiscriminate killings -- George W. Bush is degrading the reputation of the U.S. military, turning enlisted soldiers and intelligence officers into murderers and sadists.

For instance, on Feb. 10 at Camp Liberty in Iraq, Army Ranger Sgt. Evan Vela was sentenced by a U.S. military court to 10 years in prison for executing an unarmed Iraqi detainee who -- along with his son -- had stumbled into a U.S. sniper position last year.

After letting the 17-year-old son go, Vela's squad leader, Staff Sgt. Michael Hensley ordered Vela to use a 9-millimeter pistol to shoot the father, Genei Nesir Khudair al-Janabi, in the head, an order that Vela carried out. "It was murder, plain and simple," military prosecutor, Major Charles Kuhfahl, told the court.

Janabi's son, Mustafa, was allowed to make a statement, explaining how his father's death had devastated the family and how one of his four younger brothers now avoids their home because he can't stand the sight of his father's empty room.

"Please don't forget about us," Mustafa told the court.

But Vela's guilty verdict was a rare case of holding a U.S. soldier accountable in the killing or abusing of an Iraqi. Among the infrequent cases that have been brought, most end in acquittals or convictions only on minor charges.

Last November, for example, another military jury acquitted Hensley in the same murder of Janabi as well as in the killing of two other Iraqi men south of Baghdad in the early days of Bush's troop "surge." That jury ruled that Hensley was following the approved "rules of engagement," though it did convict him of planting an AK-47 on one victim.

Some of Vela's military comrades complained that it was unfair to single any of them out for punishment because these killings are so common in Iraq.

Vela's former platoon commander, Sgt. First Class Steven Kipling, said that if all U.S. combat soldiers in Iraq were subjected to the same scrutiny applied to Vela, "we would have thousands" of cases. [NYT, Feb. 11, 2008]

Indeed, the evidence does suggest that the handful of homicide cases from Iraq and Afghanistan that reach military trial represent only a small fraction of the unprovoked killings of locals at the hands of U.S. soldiers.

Press Attention

The murder and abuse cases that do result in trials often stem from incidents that get news media attention, like the mass killing of two dozen Iraqis in Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005, which Time magazine exposed.

Even more memorable was the case of the sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison, mistreatment that was documented with photographs that reached the U.S. news media in 2004.

President Bush, who then was seeking reelection, joined in denouncing the low-ranking soldiers who had dressed Iraqi men up in women's underwear or made them pose naked on leashes or in fake sexual positions.

Bush said he "shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated." Other senior administration officials called the Abu Ghraib guards -- mostly poorly trained reservists -- a "few bad apples."

Amid the furor, some Abu Ghraib guards claimed they were simply following guidance from intelligence interrogators on techniques to "soften up" detainees. But the Bush administration stuck to its story that the guards were an out-of-control night shift.

Army Sgt. Sam Provance was the only uniformed military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib to support the guards' claim that the prisoner abuse was part of the "alternative interrogation techniques" that had made their way from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib.

Provance, however, was punished for his candor and pushed out of the U.S. military. The Bush administration went ahead with plans to pin the blame on the MPs. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib."]