NYT: 4 G.I.’s Tell of How Iraqi Raid Went Wrong

4 G.I.’s Tell of How Iraqi Raid Went Wrong

By PAUL VON ZIELBAUER | August 7, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 6 — When the burst of machine-gun fire stopped, two of the three Iraqi men were dead, their bodies chewed by bullets sprayed at them by two American soldiers a few yards away. But a third man, brains spattered on his face, was somehow still alive and, with eyes closed, was gasping for air.

Specialists Juston R. Graber and Thomas A. Kemp, surprised to hear gunfire after securing the rural swatch of land northeast of Baghdad, ran over to find the three Iraqis lying in the dirt. Their squad leader, Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard, also arrived and inspected the three bodies. A squad medic came on the scene, quickly examined the man who was still moving and declared him beyond help. Then, according to sworn statements of what Specialists Graber and Kemp later told Army investigators, Sergeant Girouard said, “Put him out of his misery.”

What happened in the minutes before and after the three Iraqis were shot on May 9 are at the core of the military’s case against Specialist Graber and three other members of the Company C, Third Brigade, 187th Infantry of the 101st Airborne Division. All four soldiers have been charged with murder. All have denied any wrongdoing.

Their case is now the subject of a military hearing to determine if there is enough evidence to recommend that the soldiers go before a court-martial.

In more than a dozen sworn statements made to Army investigators and obtained by The New York Times, the four accused soldiers and several other members of Company C recollected their roles in the assault on a remote island in Tharthar Lake, 60 miles north of Baghdad.

Taken together, their accounts provide the first detailed narrative of their combat experience, one part of a much broader mission against insurgent forces that day known as Operation Iron Triangle.

Specialist Kemp later told the investigators that he did not believe in “mercy killings,” and walked quickly away. But Specialist Graber, transfixed, lingered over the dying man, according to his statement.

He lifted his M-4 rifle to his waist, curled his finger around the trigger and fired at the man’s head. He missed, he told investigators later, striking the dirt. He raised his rifle again, this time bringing its muzzle within four feet of the man’s cheek. The bullet pierced the blindfold the man was still wearing. “I felt that it was the humane thing to do,” he wrote in a sworn statement in mid-June. His shot was the last of hundreds fired by two Company C squads during the morning assault.

Several soldiers have said in sworn statements or testimony at the hearing that senior officers, including the Third Brigade commander, Col. Michael Steele, told them in a gathering the night before the raid to kill any military-age male they encountered on the island, where 20 fighters loyal to Al Qaeda were thought to be.

In a statement to investigators, Colonel Steele has denied giving any such order. On Friday, he declined, through his military lawyer, to comment for this article.

In June, the Army charged Specialist Graber with one count of murder. Three others in his squad were charged with the murders of the three Iraqi men after detaining and handcuffing them. They are Staff Sgt. Girouard, Specialist William B. Hunsaker and Pfc. Corey R. Clagett.

An Army special investigator is weighing what punishment, if any, to recommend to the 101st Airborne commander, Maj. Gen. Thomas R. Turner. If their cases proceed to courts-martial, they could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

But a review of more than a dozen statements of several other members of Company C reveals an Army unit caught between their superiors’ prediction of a fierce battle and the scant resistance of the Iraqis they found during the three-hour assault.

In the predawn darkness, about 20 soldiers from Company C’s Third Platoon boarded Black Hawk helicopters before dawn with orders to raid a group of houses on the southern end of the island in Tharthar Lake. Six Iraqi Army soldiers accompanied them.

“Hit the first house, kill all military-age males, hit any secondary houses, then stand by for follow-on missions,” was the way Sergeant Girouard described his squad’s mission to investigators in a May 29 statement. But all they found at the first landing zone were two empty homes and a pump house. Around 6:30 a.m., Sergeant Girouard’s squad landed about 70 yards southwest of the second house, several miles north of the first. As the squad approached, Sergeant Girouard fired his M-4 rifle at a man in a window. Sgt. Leonel Lemus, Specialist Hunsaker, Specialist Graber and Pfc. Bradley Mason also fired. At the front door, Sergeant Girouard sent an Iraqi Army soldier, Sgt. Hamed Muhammad, into the house first. Pouring in behind him, guns ready, they found three Iraqi men hiding behind two women, a tactic Qaeda fighters were known for, several soldiers said.

The squad moved the women into a separate room and took the three men outside. The man shot by the window was lying on his back, bellowing in pain from gunshot wounds to his midsection and right arm. Soldiers dragged him outside, where the squad medic, Specialist Micah Bivens, performed first aid. Two minutes later, Specialist Bivens pronounced the man dead, Sgt. Kevin Ryan wrote in his May 29 statement.

Sergeant Muhammad testified at the hearing for the accused soldiers last week that the man seemed to be 70 to 75 years old. Soldiers zipped him into a black body bag.

In front of the house, Private Mason searched the three men, two of whom wore what soldiers called a “man dress,” a dishdasha. Specialist Thomas Kemp recorded the men’s names: Ahmed Farhim Hamid al-Jami, Ziad Jasem Hamid and Nahad Yasim Hamid Gumar.

The tactical search, a core discipline in an infantry soldier’s training, would later become a point of contention at the hearing for the four soldiers accused of murder. Private Mason, in testimony last week, said he had thoroughly searched all three. “If there was a dollar bill on them, I would have found it,” he said.

Specialist Graber and Private Mason guarded the three detainees, who were now lying outside face down with their hands bound behind their backs. Private Mason was sent into the house to watch the women. As the three men were being bound, Private Clagett, on an earthen berm 50 yards north of the house, saw a mud hut with people inside.

As the squad approached the hut, a man, later identified by soldiers as Shajeed Wayied Shelish, came out holding a 2-year-old girl in front of him. Sergeant Girouard tried to shoot the man but could not. “I could not properly engage him because as I moved my weapon, he moved the baby and put the baby in front,” he told investigators on May 29.

Several soldiers detained Mr. Shelish and found “several children and women” in the hut, Sergeant Ryan said. Most of the children were about 7 or 8 years old, Sergeant Muhammad testified. Sergeant Girouard grabbed the girl.

Back at the first house, Specialist Bivens and Corporal Helton photographed the four Iraqi men. Sergeant Girouard radioed First Sgt. Eric Geressy and told him they had killed one man.

Sgt. Armando Acevedo, another member of Company C on that day’s mission, later told prosecutors that he heard Sergeant Geressy reply, “We’re bringing back these detainees when they should be dead.” Sergeant Geressy denied saying that.

About that time, Sergeant Lemus and Private Mason told investigators, Sergeant Girouard appeared to have second thoughts about the four detainees in custody. “He mentioned that First Sergeant Geressy transmitted over the radio that the detainees should have been killed,” Sergeant Lemus wrote in a sworn statement in June.

Sergeant Girouard gathered Sergeant Lemus, Specialist Hunsaker and Privates Clagett and Mason around him in a room in the house and, according to Sergeant Lemus, laid out a plan: Specialist Hunsaker and Private Clagett were would kill the detainees after cutting off their wrist ties and ordering them to run away. Sergeant Lemus and Private Mason told investigators they wanted no part of the plan and left.

Several minutes later, Sergeant Girouard dispatched 6 of his squad’s 10 soldiers to secure a pickup zone for an incoming Black Hawk, 70 yards southwest of the house. That left Sergeant Girouard, Specialist Hunsaker and Privates Clagett and Mason at the house. Specialist Hunsaker and Private Clagett were guarding the three men, who were blindfolded, seated and had their hands restrained with zip ties behind their backs.

Sergeant Girouard walked Mr. Shelish, the man they had taken from the mud hut, toward the pickup zone, handing him to Corporal Helton. Minutes later, Private Mason, inside the house with the two women, heard Specialist Hunsaker shout an expletive. He and soldiers at the landing zone then heard fire from Private Clagett’s machine gun and Specialist Hunsaker’s M-4.

Sergeant Ryan and Corporal Helton saw the three men sprinting barefoot toward the mud hut. “That was followed by gunshots as the men fell,” Sergeant Ryan wrote in a sworn statement.

Private Clagett and Specialist Hunsaker told investigators they had cut the flimsy wrist ties off all three detainees at once — a procedure considered tactically unsound — to replace them with thicker plastic cuffs that would not break. They said one man had suddenly attacked Specialist Hunsaker with a knife as a second man punched Private Clagett.

Sergeant Girouard radioed his report to headquarters, saying he no longer had three detainees but three “K.I.A.’s” — killed in action.