Jim,
The use of deadly force at the time was limited to those who display a hostile act or a hostile intent.
Some acts are determined to exhibit hostile intent that might ordinarily be seen as innocent, such as carrying a shovel at night along a road. Running from a bomb blast is not on that list. If these men popped up out from behind a blind or hole, that might be considered hostile intent as they are likely the triggerman. But it’s a bit of a stretch to decide that a car that is on the road and stops because of an IED blowing up nearby indicates that they were the triggermen. People are allowed, heck, expected to run when a bomb goes off next to them.
The car is “parked” because the Marines are driving by. In Haditha traffic is light enough that all vehicles are required to pull off to the side when Marines are drving by. They had to stop. I think it would be hard to get a car to pass a Marine convoy at the exact time they would need to stop so that they can detonate a bomb. The timing is not impossible, but unlikely. And it turns out that they were not the triggermen.
It is almost unheard of to find a triggerman at an IED incident. Shooting after an IED is pretty unproductive because anyone you see is likely not involved.
Haditha is not Iwo Jima. Haditha is not even Second Fallujah. They are not allowed to go around killing everyone in sight. It is the hallmark of Marines to be ruthless, but disciplined. Here they were only ruthless. Any numbskull can just be ruthless.
And the facts clearly bear out, as presented here, that they were wrong, the families were not insurgents. The five men were probably not insurgents so far as we’ve been told. So it would seem that not only were the rules ignored, but the very people the rules were designed to protect were killed. You can’t get much more wrong than that.
Perhaps Uncle J is correct in that Wuterich’s acts were not criminal, only negligent. I can see that argument. I think that is giving more benefit of the doubt than I would like, but it may be all that is provable in a court martial.
