Review Meltdown in Haditha, The Killing of 24 Iraqi Civilians by U.S. Marines and the Failure of Military Justice

Englade, Kenneth, Meltdown in Haditha, The Killing of 24 Iraqi Civilians by U.S. Marines and the Failure of Military Justice, McFarland & Company, 2015

 

Meltdown in Haditha, The Killing of 24 Iraqi Civilians by U.S. Marines and the Failure of Military Justice by Kenneth Englade deals with a deadly incident in November 2005 in the Iraqi town of Haditha in Anbar province. This eventually led to 8 Marines being charged with various crimes. The author claims there was a failure by the Marines to prosecute the cases because it was more interested in protecting its image. That’s not quite supported by the evidence presented. Instead it appears that Haditha was badly handled by Marine commanders leading to years of missteps that probably should’ve never happened. Most importantly Meltdown in Haditha is not an enjoyable read because it gets bogged down in the court proceedings.

 

On November 19, 2005, a Marine convoy was hit with an IED in Haditha. It killed one Marine and wounded two more. An Iraqi car then pulled up and five men got out who were gunned down by corpsmen. There were then reports that the Marines were taking fire from the rear leading to two houses being assaulted. 24 Iraqi civilians were killed in the process including women and children. This would become known as the Haditha incident.

 

The book does a good job describing how badly this event was handled. Because there was a day long gun battle with insurgents after the IED the deaths of the civilians was never well documented nor investigated. The Marine command thought this was a routine combat incident and therefore never ordered it to be looked into. There were also contradictory reports about insurgents being amongst those dead muddying the waters. If officers were informed about how many civilians had been killed right at the start another course would’ve likely been taken such as interviewing the Marines involved, etc. Because it wasn’t what happened afterwards was murky at best and some acts like many of the trials should’ve never happened.

 

The court cases were also bungled. 8 Marines were charged but some involved in the incident were not brought to court. Then several Marines were given immunity to testify against the others. Why certain Marines were brought up on charges also didn’t make sense. One officer for example was taken to court because of a press release he gave which proved completely wrong. Those that did eventually have a trial had little evidence against them and none of them went to jail. The final case wasn’t adjudicated until 2012 and ended up with a plea of negligent dereliction of duty. It doesn’t appear that any of these cases should have ever been carried out and if the Haditha incident had been investigated immediately they probably wouldn’t have happened to begin with.

 

Meltdown in Haditha runs into some major problems the first being the argument that the Corps was more interested in protecting its image than prosecuting the Marines and therefore tried to keep things secret. It’s true that the Marines did not allow reporters into any of the proceedings but one of the major investigations was released to the public. The actual killings were also never covered up rather they were handled negligently. As stated before it doesn’t seem like any of the trials should’ve happened in the first place so it wasn’t a case of trying to hush things up to protect the Marines.

 

The biggest issue with the book however is that more than half of it deals with the cases. Too much time is spent on each motion filed, the moves by the lawyers, etc. It completely bogs down the story and quickly becomes uninteresting. There’s a whole chapter on how the prosecution tried to get CBS News to release an interview with one of the Marines that went to court. It’s far too detailed.

 

Kenneth Englade’s book turns out to be a drag to read. The beginning that deals with the Haditha killings and its aftermath are engaging. Everything afterwards is caught up in the legal proceedings and gets lost in all the twists and turns of the cases. No Time For The Truth, The Haditha Incident And The Search For Justice is a much better discussion of the topic.

 

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