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TechnoratiHaditha Marine Says He Was Ordered To Delete Iraq Photos
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - A Marine who took pictures of Iraqi men, women and children killed by U.S. forces testified Thursday that he deleted the photos under an officer's orders and later lied repeatedly to investigators about what happened to the images.
The testimony by Staff Sgt. Justin Laughner came during the court-martial of 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson, who is accused of helping cover up the Nov. 19, 2005, killings in Haditha, Iraq.
Laughner said he took the photos of the bodies hours after a roadside bomb hit a convoy, killing the driver of a Humvee and wounding two Marines.
After the bombing, investigators say, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich and a squad member shot five men by a car at the scene. Wuterich then allegedly ordered his men into several houses, where they cleared rooms with grenades and gunfire, killing the Iraqis. In all, 24 men, women and children died.
Laughner testified that Grayson told him to delete the photos. He admitted during questioning by a defense attorney that he lied to five different investigators about what happened to the photographs.
"I wasn't truthful with them because I knew I had already deleted them," he said. "I felt that I had done something wrong."
Laughner also said during cross-examination that he did not know he had been violating military law when he stored photos of the dead Iraqis on his personal laptop computer.
Four enlisted Marines were initially charged with murder in the case and four officers were charged with failing to investigate the deaths. Charges were dropped against five of the Marines but remain against Grayson, Wuterich and Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani.
All three say they are innocent. Grayson, of Springboro, Ohio, is the first to go to trial.
Grayson was not present at the scene of the killings, but is accused of obstruction of justice among other charges for allegedly ordering Laughner to delete the photographs.
In opening statements earlier in the day, Lt. Col. Paul H. Atterbury, the prosecutor, told jurors that Grayson lied to investigators to help cover up the killings. But Grayson's defense attorney said the officer had no motive to lie about the killings because he wasn't there when they happened.
"Lieutenant Grayson is nothing more than a fall guy in a botched investigation under intense media pressure," Maj. William A. Santmyer told the jury of seven officers.
He said the only connection between Grayson and the Haditha case were pictures.
"What the evidence will not show and what the government will not be able to show is a motive for the misconduct Grayson is alleged to have committed," he said.
Grayson is charged with two counts of making false official statements, two counts of trying to fraudulently separate from service, and one count each of attempt to deceive by making false statements and obstruction of justice by trying to impede an investigation.
Grayson, who says he did nothing wrong, faces a maximum of 25 years in prison, forfeiture of all pay and dismissal from the Marine Corps, if found guilty of all charges.
Wuterich, of Meriden, Conn., faces voluntary manslaughter and other charges. Chessani, of Rangely, Colo., is charged with dereliction of duty and violation of a lawful order on allegations he mishandled the aftermath of the shooting deaths.
Chessani was a battalion commander.
© 2008 The Associated Press
12 Comments so far
Show AllI agree with revoltnow - it's not too wise to make generalizations. In fact, if we condemn those who make mistakes and hope that they will be tormented for the rest of our lives, we are doing exactly what we oppose.
Accountability is more than necessary - one of my pet peeves is when people do not take accountability, and don't receive sanctions - but it does not foster peaceful intentions and does not promote progressive thinking, foreign policy, etc. to place value judgments.
Many people have misconceptions of the military, there is the "hero factor." Let us also not forget that the situation was and is more than ripe for abuse. It's harder to speak out, disobey orders than people might think. We might say we wouldn't have done that, but unless we have been in that situation, who knows? A lot of it is due to misinformation, etc.. I've gotten a lot of brochures from the military to try to recruit me, they have many false promises.
cactuspie - I have stopped paying the government, but in order to do so I moved out of the country, and have now endured five months of looking for work in Norway without finding it yet. Perhaps moving out wasn't your point, but I did not want my daughter exposed to the IRS knocking on our door over there. I think you are being a bit harsh on people. There are no easy answers here that I can see. Please share how you go about not paying federal taxes?
If you paid your federal taxes, you supported this. Stop paying up or shut up.
We'll never see the photographs taken by Laughner because they were the bloodied corpses of women, children and men, without the coverings of blankets on them. How different dead bodies appear when they show the true violence which occured, as opposed to the sterilized pictures of rolled blankets. They'll never let us see the true horrors of war, only the whitewashing of it.
The cowards are the ones who who avoid responsibility for their actions, gave the orders for the deeds to be done, and claim no knowledge of the incidents. A society which believes sucess can result from dumbing down is doomed.
I bought this nice little program on clearance (new version came out) for $25US. It's produced by one of the leading memory chip manufacturers, it'll work on any camera memory card. I was able to retreive over four hundred (you read it right, 400+) images that had been deleted over the last six years on this one card alone!
Am I to believe that the military or the investigators did not have this kind of technology available to them in this day and age where you can't even buy a hard drive from Goodwill for fear of someone's info being lifted from it?
And this administration is not even being investigated. And his administration will not be impeached.
The soldiers are to blame for being racists and murderers and for allowing themselves to become so full of hate that they would machine-gun down a family of kids and women. This is unexcusable.
Actually, war is morally unexcusable. A country that believes in war should also legalize settling arguments with gun duels (and for that matter murder should become an acceptable way to solve problems in the neighborhood).
I can't help noticing the blatant hypocrisy of America's right wing always talking down at our inner cities' crime rates, citing "violence on TV" among the more negative influences of our modern times, while promoting endless wars of mass violence to resolve America's "terror problem".
Get real. These soldiers are old enough to kill and old enough to make good decisions. There is hardly any difference in my mind between soldiers that kill in Iraq and thugs who kill in South Central LA. Both believe they are doing what they need to do to survive and both are doing it illegally.
Never support the military because you get what you see in this case, but what y ou do not see in thousands more, including bombing civilians. The volunteer military is full of psychopaths, automotons and losers. John McBush will give us more Wutriche monsters and h is collabators, inside and outside the military.
Bluesky said "They are all cowards." No they're not, you're sweeping statements are not helping. Most of these poor kids over there are essentially good people put into an impossible situation and held there against their wills. "Stop Loss" anyone? I will never lose respect for the soldiers of the military, they only wanted to do their best to protect their country. But they were lied to by an administration mouthing platitudes about supporting the troops even as they were using them like toilet paper.
Were's the outrage now?
Its a war crime to take pcitures of prisoners of war but lucky for this small minded bush soldier - there never was a declaration of war.
I hope these men and the ones who murdered this family, have nightmares for the rest of their lives for what they did, and did not do.
Illegal orders DO NOT HAVE TO BE FOLLOWED. They are all cowards.
The soldiers and officers involved in the aftermath of this invasion need to lay down their arms and refuse to fight innocent poor people any more - period - or they are war criminals just like bush and cheney and rumsfeld and wolfowitz and the rest of this clan of barbarians.
May they all burn in hell for eternity.
because to beat the terrorists...
you must BECOME the terrorists.
-heckuvajob
--remember mcclellen
" bluesky May 30th, 2008 12:15 pm
Its a war crime to take pcitures of prisoners of war but lucky for this small minded bush soldier - there never was a declaration of war."
I don't see why it'd be a war crime, if and when the pictures aren't taken to humiliate the POWs; while all that are for such purposes certainly should be illegal to take. One reason for my view is that pictures replace "a thousand words", or more, and can provide the world with evidence of whether or not the POWs are being starved, etcetera, that is, mistreated. There are forms of mistreatment that pictures likely would not reveal, but starving and therefore thinning (very) POWs and marks of physical abuses applied to the head or face, f.e., should show up with pictures.
That kind of picture would fit along with the law requiring that POWs be humanely treated, and without pictures, all we have are words of war makers, who cannot be trusted.
"The soldiers and officers involved in the aftermath of this invasion need to lay down their arms and refuse to fight innocent poor people any more - period - or they are war criminals just like bush and cheney and rumsfeld and wolfowitz and the rest of this clan of barbarians."
I DO NOT KNOW how that could be, for it's TOO LATE; not for them to stop committing these entirely criminal wars that should have never been started, but for them to be able to legitimately escape from being war criminals. They are indictable and convictable for ... as long as they live; only, we need for some honourable court(s) to indict these criminals. Perhaps the only judge, of the West anyway, who'd do this would be the Spanish one who got Pinochet indicted and tried.
That's for the military officers of the U.S. and its coalition allies; while soldiers, except those who committed the worst crimes, like this case in Haditha, could and should be helped to recover whatever they have left of their psychological and physical persons. Soldiers who committed totally unacceptable crimes even if they also believe the lies of the Bush-Cheney cabal and military officers, and U.S. msm "news" media, should be indicted and convicted for war crimes; therefore, cases involving violence against innocent Iraqis, including rape. I suppose they shouldn't get sentences as long as the military officers and the Bush-Cheney cabal should get, and which is permanent life sentences without any chance for parole, ever; but should still be indicted and convicted for war crimes.
PTSD might be a factor to be considered in some of those cases, but definitely not with the military officers and the Bush-Cheney cabal; even if Bush evidently does suffer PTSD from having been raised in a psychopathic and when not quite that violent, then sociopathic, family for many years, for this PTSD would not be any excuse for his complete war criminality. Not imo, which is the one that counts most for me!
This likely will never become reality, but that does not alter my above opinion.