Justice grinds to a halt in the Haditha murder case.

The preliminary hearing for Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich begins today, marking possibly the last chance for prosecutors to bring to a court-martial any of the Marines charged with murder in the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians in the Iraqi village of Al-Hadithah.

But to prevail, prosecutors have to convince a hearing officer who has been skeptical of the case and also a top general who does not believe in punishing enlisted Marines for mistakes made in a "morally bruising" conflict where insurgents hide behind women and children.

The Al-Hadithah charges represent the most serious case of alleged war crimes committed by Marines in Iraq or Afghanistan. But what looked to some like a slam-dunk murder case against four enlisted Marines could be on the verge of collapsing.

Of the four initial defendants in the slayings Nov. 19, 2005, charges were dropped against one in exchange for his testimony against other Marines; charges were dismissed against another by Lt. Gen. James Mattis after a preliminary hearing; and charges against a third appear on the verge of being dismissed by Mattis, also after a preliminary hearing.

One of the features of all wars is the dehumanizing of the enemy. American troops have called them Rebels, Nazis, Japs, Charlie, Ragheads, and many others. What a soldier rarely calls an enemy is "human". If you do that it just makes it that much harder to kill them.

What happens after awhile is that soldiers do not view the "enemy" as human beings. They see them as less then they are and start actually hating them or being disgusted by them.

And then just hating the men who they fight against is not enough. The soldiers start to hate their whole culture. The women, the elderly, and the children all become the "enemy". This is not new. This has happened repeatedly throughout history.

And after this transformation happens the violence against the civilians begins. They are raped, killed, abused, tortured, and treated like less then animals.

The only way that this pattern can be diffused is by strong, competent leadership. And as we know that is lacking in all levels of this conflict. If the military is ever going to show that this kind of behavior is unacceptable, they must punish ALL who engage in it, or work to minimize it. Not just the soldier on the ground, but his commander, his general, and his civilian leadership.

If this does not happen I am afraid we will see many more incidents like the one at Haditha.

Marine urinated on dead Iraqi civilian at Haditha. If this does not symbolize how America has treated Iraq, I don't know what would.

Angered that a beloved member of his squad had been killed in an explosion, a U.S. Marine urinated on one of the 24 dead Iraqi civilians killed by his unit in Haditha, the Marine testified on Wednesday.

In dramatic testimony in a pretrial hearing for one of the seven Marines charged in the November 2005 killings and reported cover-up at Haditha, Dela Cruz described his bitterness after a roadside bomb ripped Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, known as T.J., into two bloody pieces.

"I know it was a bad thing what I've done, but I done it because I was angry T.J. was dead and I pissed on one Iraqi's head," said an unemotional Dela Cruz in a military courtroom in Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego, California.

Dela Cruz said he had earlier he watched squad leader Sgt. Frank Wuterich shoot five men whose hands were up near a car, then admitted to shooting them as they lay on the ground.
Wuterich "walked to me and told me that if anybody asked, they were running away and the Iraqi Army shot them," testified Dela Cruz.

Sometimes I get so embarrassed by what my country has done in Iraq that it makes me sick to my stomach.

Everything that I learn about the Iraq war and our military makes me just a little sadder everytime.

Recently unclassified documents suggest that senior officers viewed the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in late 2005 as a potential public relations problem that could fuel insurgent propaganda against the American military, leading investigators to question whether the officers’ immediate response had been intentionally misleading.

Is there no integrity left in our military? In our country?