thedrifter
06-08-06, 06:43 AM
Photographer confronted Marines with Haditha dead images
By Adam Tanner
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Just days after the suspected massacre of two dozen civilians in Haditha in an incident now under investigation, an American photographer confronted U.S. Marines with the images of the dead, including Iraqi children.
Freelance photographer Lucian Read, 31, had spent months capturing shots of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment. But when Iraqis invited him to photograph their dead two days after the Haditha killings in November 2005, he felt compelled to show the images to the platoon.
"I made a point that day and over the course of the next several days to show all of those pictures to as many of the Marines as possible," Read, who arrived back in Haditha a day after the killings, said in an interview on Wednesday.
"When children are killed, I don't care what the situation is, that's bad, and I wanted those guys to see that so they would keep it in their mind next time something like that happened -- hey, we don't want to be killing any more kids."
An officer and enlisted men reacted to the images with "regretful frowns," he said.
"It was basically, 'man, that's not good,'" he said. "A few, a number of the guys had been there on scene, taken the bodies to the hospitals, to the morgue. Some of those guys already knew what was in the house."
"But there were portions of the company -- a fairly sizable portion of the company that wasn't even there that day -- that had no first-hand knowledge of the fact that there were that many dead people or that there had been children killed."
"Those people were a little more taken aback," Read said.
IGNORED FOR MONTHS
Still, Read did not suspect a massacre at the time, and no one made any effort to discourage him from transmitting the images back to his agency in New York.
"If they are not saying 'don't send them', then obviously they are comfortable with what happened and comfortable with the narrative," was Read's conclusion from their reaction.
He said soldiers told him that Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, one of the most popular men in the platoon, had died in an explosion.
Then "they had taken fire from the surrounding area and ... returned fire from the surrounding area and pursued the contact into the neighborhood," Read said he was told by the soldiers.
"During the course of that there were insurgents killed but in also sort of house-by-house or room-by-room type of fighting -- which is the type of fighting I had seen them do in Falluja -- civilians had been killed in the cross-fire," Read said he was told.
Despite the images of the killings that newspapers and magazines have published in recent weeks, they went largely unnoticed in November.
"I spent months and months over there sending back pictures that were not published," Read said. "It's not unusual to send pictures back that I think are worth publishing that never see the light of day -- that's the life of a freelancer."
Today, Read feels great disappointment with those suspected of being involved in the incident. "I was angry but I knew sooner or later something like this was going to happen over there," he said. "It was just very troubling to me that it ended up involving the guys that I knew."
The sole official account offered by the Marines regarding Haditha came in a press release issued a day after the incident that said 15 civilians were killed by a roadside bomb that also took the life of a Marine.
U.S. defense officials privately have said two dozen, not 15, civilians were killed, that the dead included men, women and children, that they were shot to death not killed by a bomb, and that a preliminary investigation indicated that Marines killed unarmed civilians in an unprovoked attack.
Ellie
By Adam Tanner
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Just days after the suspected massacre of two dozen civilians in Haditha in an incident now under investigation, an American photographer confronted U.S. Marines with the images of the dead, including Iraqi children.
Freelance photographer Lucian Read, 31, had spent months capturing shots of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment. But when Iraqis invited him to photograph their dead two days after the Haditha killings in November 2005, he felt compelled to show the images to the platoon.
"I made a point that day and over the course of the next several days to show all of those pictures to as many of the Marines as possible," Read, who arrived back in Haditha a day after the killings, said in an interview on Wednesday.
"When children are killed, I don't care what the situation is, that's bad, and I wanted those guys to see that so they would keep it in their mind next time something like that happened -- hey, we don't want to be killing any more kids."
An officer and enlisted men reacted to the images with "regretful frowns," he said.
"It was basically, 'man, that's not good,'" he said. "A few, a number of the guys had been there on scene, taken the bodies to the hospitals, to the morgue. Some of those guys already knew what was in the house."
"But there were portions of the company -- a fairly sizable portion of the company that wasn't even there that day -- that had no first-hand knowledge of the fact that there were that many dead people or that there had been children killed."
"Those people were a little more taken aback," Read said.
IGNORED FOR MONTHS
Still, Read did not suspect a massacre at the time, and no one made any effort to discourage him from transmitting the images back to his agency in New York.
"If they are not saying 'don't send them', then obviously they are comfortable with what happened and comfortable with the narrative," was Read's conclusion from their reaction.
He said soldiers told him that Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, one of the most popular men in the platoon, had died in an explosion.
Then "they had taken fire from the surrounding area and ... returned fire from the surrounding area and pursued the contact into the neighborhood," Read said he was told by the soldiers.
"During the course of that there were insurgents killed but in also sort of house-by-house or room-by-room type of fighting -- which is the type of fighting I had seen them do in Falluja -- civilians had been killed in the cross-fire," Read said he was told.
Despite the images of the killings that newspapers and magazines have published in recent weeks, they went largely unnoticed in November.
"I spent months and months over there sending back pictures that were not published," Read said. "It's not unusual to send pictures back that I think are worth publishing that never see the light of day -- that's the life of a freelancer."
Today, Read feels great disappointment with those suspected of being involved in the incident. "I was angry but I knew sooner or later something like this was going to happen over there," he said. "It was just very troubling to me that it ended up involving the guys that I knew."
The sole official account offered by the Marines regarding Haditha came in a press release issued a day after the incident that said 15 civilians were killed by a roadside bomb that also took the life of a Marine.
U.S. defense officials privately have said two dozen, not 15, civilians were killed, that the dead included men, women and children, that they were shot to death not killed by a bomb, and that a preliminary investigation indicated that Marines killed unarmed civilians in an unprovoked attack.
Ellie