Iraqi parliament, media largely ignoring Haditha killings

BAGHDAD, Iraq — As one U.S. politician charged Sunday that U.S. Marines had murdered 24 Iraqi civilians last fall, and press reports seemed to support the claim, the story remained a non-starter in Iraq.

It didn't come up when Iraq's parliament met on Sunday. The talking heads on Iraqi television issued no new calls for a U.S. troop withdrawal, as often happens after U.S. forces are seen to have made big mistakes. Even local papers ran no stories about possible murder charges against Marines allegedly involved in the Nov. 19 shootings.

Senseless killings — whether at the hands of U.S. soldiers, criminal gangs or militias — have become everyday occurrences in Iraq, some residents explained.

Of the civilian killings, which occurred in the often violent Sunni-dominated town of Haditha, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said on ABC's "This Week": "I will not excuse murder, and this is what happened."

Murthada Abdel Rashid, 29, a Baghdad sandwich vendor, was beyond caring, however.

"I am not surprised by what happened in Haditha because Americans are terrorists and killers. And this is the way of life now," he said. "I don't care if they punish the American soldiers because they cannot bring back the lives of the dead."

Others called the parliament's silence a sign of the Shiite-dominated government's indifference to Sunni civilian deaths.

"The Iraqi politicians have failed in every way. The Shiite politicians have shown that they work for their own interests and their parties. The same thing is true for the Sunnis and Kurds. They do not think about the country," said Ali al-Rubaie, a fabric-store owner in Baghdad.

The Haditha killings began on Nov. 19 after Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20, was killed by an explosive detonated under his Humvee. His fellow Marines set off after those responsible. They entered five houses, killing 24 people, including a 3-year-old boy.

Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he would hold hearings on the killings but cautioned against reaching conclusions until the military finished its investigation.

In a published Knight Ridder interview, a teenage girl who survived the attack said two soldiers shot her father when he answered the door. The soldiers then, the girl said, made their way to a bedroom and killed the rest of her family, including her ailing mother lying in bed, as well as her siblings, who'd sought protection in their mother's arms.

U.S. officials told Knight Ridder that her family was not armed and had had nothing to do with the killing of Terrazas. Nor, they said, did any of the 24 Iraqis killed.

Some argue that Iraqis are numbed by their country's violence.

"There are so many problems in the daily life of the individual and so many casualties in towns like Haditha that it is sometimes difficult to track and talk about every one," said Hazim Abdel Hamid al-Nuaimi, a professor of politics at al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad.

Knight Ridder Newspapers reporters Shatha al Awsy and Mohammed al Awsy contributed to this report, which was supplemented with information from The Associated Press.