Baghdad, August 29 (RHC)-- The recently disclosed images from the 2005 massacre by U.S. Marines in the Iraqi town of Haditha have shocked the world, igniting a wave of outrage and condemnation on social media.
Under the Freedom of Information Act and after years of legal battles, The New Yorker magazine obtained and released the images of the carnage that killed 24 civilians, including a three-year-old girl.
One of the most harrowing: A mother, Asmaa Salman Raseef, 32, and her son Abdullah, 4-years-old lie dead in the corner of their living room. Asmaa’s arm is around her son, perhaps in a final attempt to protect him.
The graphic photos, which have been kept hidden for nearly two decades, show the victims, many of them shot in the head at close range.
The carnage, whose perpetrators never spent a day behind bars, adds to the long list of atrocities committed by the US occupation forces in Iraq, including those at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
Social media users are denouncing the bloodshed as a stark reminder of the numerous war crimes committed by the US forces in Iraq and across the region, as well as the lack of accountabilty for those involved.
"This," journalist Murtaza Hussain reminded the world, "is what the U.S. military was doing in Iraq."
Activist Greg J Stoker said in an X post, “This is big. U.S. interventionism must end now.”
American journalist Max Blumenthal said the photos of the U.S. massacre “are indictments of the contemporary U.S. political establishment, including the current president who whipped the vote in support of invading Iraq.”
Another user highlighted Washington's efforts to conceal the truth, while others drew a parallel between the Haditha massacre and the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
A mother, Ayda Yassin Ahmed, who was 40-years-old, surrounded by her dead children in the family’s bedroom. Everyone on the bed was killed in cold blood by US marines. From left to right: Sabaa, 10 years old; Ayesha, 3; Zainab, 5; Mohammed, 8; and Ayda.
The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 based on false claims about Baghdad possessing weapons of mass destruction, leaving a trail of destruction, death, and chaos in the Arab country.
The U.S. and its allies re-launched a military campaign in 2014 to supposedly fight off the Daesh terrorist group.
In an investigative report published on Tuesday, the New Yorker laid bare what people in Iraq already knew but the U.S. military-industrial complex desperately tried to cover up for 19 years.
The U.S. military claimed to be ending its combat mission in Iraq in 2021, but said it would retain some 2,500 troops in the country as alleged advisors, although Baghdad and its allies had decisively defeated terrorists in late 2017.
In 2020, the Iraqi parliament voted in favor of the expulsion of the foreign forces after a U.S. drone strike assassinated Iran’s top anti-terror commander, General Qassem Soleimani, and deputy commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) counter-terrorism force, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, outside Baghdad International Airport.
[ SOURCE: Press TV / The New Yorker ]
