AMY GOODMAN: Dahr Jamail, I'm reading a report from Reuters, and it says, “A U.S. Defense official said Friday, Marines could face criminal charges, possibly including murder, in what would be the worst case of abuse by American soldiers in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.” Following up on the theme of your piece in truthout, can you respond to that?

DAHR JAMAIL: Well, it's very clear, actually, that willful killing, like everything that we've been talking about this morning, is considered a war crime under even the U.S. War Crimes Act. And people who commit these crimes, particularly when the victim dies, it's punishable not just by life in prison, but the death penalty. And this, of course, goes for the people who committed the act, the people who helped cover it up, on up the chain of command logically to the people who set up this whole situation to begin with, including the Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary of Defense and other people in the administration. And I think that that's what we need to keep in mind, that we're talking about war crimes and atrocities on the level of the My Lai Massacre and I think even comparable to things that were done during, you know, that we had the Nuremberg trials for. And this is what people need to be held responsible for, and again, as it was mentioned earlier, not just the people who committed the act, but the people who set up the entire -- all of the conditions that made all of these things possible.

AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned, Dahr, Fallujah before. And I would say most people in the United States have perhaps heard of it as a city. But why do you think it needs to be investigated to the extent that we're beginning to see with Haditha right now?

DAHR JAMAIL: Well, it needs to be investigated because there is irrefutable evidence that war crimes have been committed there. I saw with my own eyes during the April 2004 siege, where I sat in a clinic and watched men and women and young kids brought in, all saying they had been shot by snipers, when Marines pushed into the city, couldn't take the city, so they set up snipers on rooftops and just started a turkey shoot, which was exactly how it was described by one of the soldiers I ran into when I was leaving that city.

Watching a ten-year-old boy die in front of my face, because he was shot by Marines, other war crimes reported heavily. And that was just from the April siege when 736 people were killed, and then the November siege where between 4,000 and 6,000 people were killed. Indiscriminate bombings, snipers, war crimes being committed on the ground by hand, by U.S. Marines, as well, during that siege. And all of these are, of course, gross breeches of the Geneva Conventions. They are war crimes. And there is photographic evidence. There is video evidence. Doctors there to this day will talk to you about what happened. And there is absolutely no reason why all of these shouldn’t be investigated, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: John Sifton is a person who has been researching these human rights issues for a long time. What does it take to break through? It obviously isn't the case itself, a massacre or murders. As you said, this is happening regularly. What does it take?

JOHN SIFTON: Well, in this case, we saw that Time magazine ran a story, there was an investigation, but then pretty much everybody forgot about it. And luckily, Representatives John Murtha brought it up a week or so ago, and that rekindled interest in the story, and so now some new facts are coming out. But, again, we can't rely on press reports and pressure from the press, although it helps, to get accountability. Ultimately there are institutional problems in the military that need to be addressed. But otherwise we're just going to see case after case getting covered up or forgotten.

AMY GOODMAN: Nancy Youssef, you're in Baghdad. The response of Iraqi politicians who could pick this up now?

NANCY YOUSSEF: Well, it's actually been quite silent. There was an initial sort of outpouring from Sunni politicians after Times report and our report, but now there is not. There is this effort to say that we're a coalition government, that we represent everyone. One Iraqi politician told me, “I don't want to talk about it, because I'm afraid I'll be viewed as sectarian. There are so many incidents of injustice, and if I only talk about one and I’m neglecting the others, then I could be labeled as sectarian.”

I wanted to go back to a point earlier about the investigation. I think one thing to keep in mind is that it is very hard now to get Iraqis to talk to military investigators. The people in Haditha told us they don't want to talk to the investigators. They don't want soldiers in their house. They don't want to -- [inaudible] they're not sure there’s any real resolution to it. And I think that's one of the reasons it's so hard to get these sort of investigations completed. The people tell us they don't want to participate. They don't see the benefit in it.

AMY GOODMAN: They see the same people, for example, in Haditha, who came into their homes, the U.S. military, as the ones who are now coming to ask them about it? Are they afraid of being identified as, for example, eyewitnesses that could be used against the military?

NANCY YOUSSEF: Well, I'll tell you, it’s like -- when we went to Haditha, we talked to the uncle of one of the families in which everybody was killed but a 13-year-old girl, and he started to tell his story. And in the middle of his story, he paused and looked up at us and said, “Please don't let me say anything that will get me killed by the Americans. My family can't take it anymore.” And I think that says it all. I mean, there is a fear to talk about it. There is a fear to challenge the soldiers, particularly after what they've -- if you were directly involved -- what they've gone through.

AMY GOODMAN: Nancy Youssef is Knight Ridder Bureau Chief in Baghdad. Can you tell us the story that this man told you?

NANCY YOUSSEF: Sure. As was mentioned, there were several houses involved that the Marines entered, and this man is the uncle of one of the men, and his house is next door. And basically what happened was the Marines went in and, according to his niece who’s thirteen and who survived, her father went to the door to try to open it, and they heard the commotion, and they shot her father. And the father had separated -- had put the women and children in a separate bedroom. Her mother was recovering from surgery. She was lying in a hospital. Her sisters were surrounding their mother in the arms of their mother, and she said the Marines came in. They shouted something in English. They didn't know how to respond. The shooting started. She fainted. And when she woke up, her family was dead. Everybody was dead.

And all she heard was her three-year-old brother moaning in pain. He was the only one still alive. And she said to him, “Mohammed, get up. Let's go to uncle's house.” And he said, “I can't.” And so, she took him and she held him in her arms, and he was bleeding profusely. And she said she held him until he died.

And she called over to her uncle's house next door. Her uncle heard all the commotion inside; of course, didn't know exactly what was happening. They kept trying to get to the house to help his family, and he was stopped by soldiers, he said. And this went on for several hours. And he never knew what happened until his niece showed up at the door and said, “Mohammed, my three-year-old brother, and the family are dead.” And he took his niece, and his wife and him, they cleaned her up. They took her and they fled, and they have never been back to their house.

AMY GOODMAN: Nancy Youssef, speaking to us from Baghdad, the Bureau Chief for Knight Ridder, went into Haditha to investigate the story. John Sifton, is Human Rights Watch coming out with a report on this?

JOHN SIFTON: Well, we're still working on it, but Nancy pointed out the difficulties in doing this research. Our new approach, which we've been doing over the last year because of the security problems in Iraq, is to interview veterans themselves. And surprisingly, U.S. troops are very engaged to talk about what they've seen in Iraq. A lot of people don't commit abuses. They witness abuses, though, and they want to talk about them. And we've been using that testimony to piece together facts about what’s going on. I mean, don't get the wrong idea. There are people out there who see these things and are horrified and report them up the chain of command. And then nothing happens.

AMY GOODMAN: And then, of course, there are the eyewitnesses, the victims.

JOHN SIFTON: Yes. I mean, you have witness testimony on the victims’ side, but also, you know, other Marines, other soldiers who see what’s going on and are horrified and want to talk about it. And some of them talk to us. Some of them talk to military investigators. And when -- we piece together things that way, too. It’s extraordinarily difficult, but it is feasible.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, John Sifton of Human Rights Watch; also Nancy Youssef, Baghdad Bureau Chief in Iraq right now, of Knight Ridder; and Dahr Jamail, independent journalist based in Baghdad, one of the only independent unembedded journalists in Iraq at the time. He publishes his reports at the blog, dahrjamailiraq.com.

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