Haditha

The LATimes has a interview with marine Roel Ryan Briones who participated in the "cleanup" operation at Haditha. I don't think there's any significant new detail here, although there seems to be some confirmation of an officer level coverup, but the emotional first person nature of the account adds a lot of depth. In the last third of the article, Briones describes his PTSD from the incident. It puts the Haditha events in a very human context.

"I used to be one of those Marines who said that post-traumatic stress is a bunch of bull," said Ryan Briones, who has prescriptions for anti-depressants and sleeping pills. "But all this stuff that keeps going through my head is eating me up. I need immediate help."

Talkleft has a post full of links on Haditha, although I'm not too happy talking about this today. It's Memorial Day.

Something like half a million soldiers have rotated through Iraq, 2,464 have died, around 18,000 have been wounded, with another 296 killed and 718 wounded in Afghanistan. The Haditha incident appears to have involved less than ten marines directly and then another ten plus in the coverup.

Haditha is a story, a horrible story, and I do think it's important that it is talked about, investigated, and resolved, but today, let's not let that overwhelm the rest.

(Note: LATimes is a subscription site, but it's free. It does require an active email, so I set up a temporary email to get registered then deleted it, but another temporary option I use alot is www.bugmenot.com linked on the right. It's a newsjunkie's best friend. You enter the site and it gives you a number of possible usernames and passwords. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it's a good way to get a temporary login and not give away personal info. Here's the LATimes entry.)