Talk:Haditha massacre/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Incident not Biography

This article is about an incident in history. It is not a biography. It would need much more information and more reliable sources to be considered a biography, much less a blp. I am removing the Biography banner, and the shell, but leaving {{blp}} because the article does mention living persons, though not in much detail. (Dates and places of births and life before and after the incident should be included at a minimum.) JimCubb (talk) 18:34, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

This article still reports the state of 2008

Has anything happened in those trials in the meantime? --AndreasPraefcke (talk) 22:42, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

New Info Required

A couple items that are not covered in the current entry: 1. Marine 2-star general Huck was given some kind of reprimand or non-official punishment as a result of the Haditha killings, which he claims in testimony to have not known about until his commander, the 3-star general Chiarelli, asked him about it. 2. When the killings were first reported in a press release by the Marine Corps, they were described as being the result of the same bomb that killed the marine. Testimony at the Article 32 hearings for the accused marines revealed that the press release was written by a marine civil affairs officer who knew the killings were not bomb related. That seems relevant to this article but does not appear in the current version. Pondboy (talk) 09:11, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

The story on the Public Affairs Officer is here: Military Cites 'Negligence' in Aftermath of Iraq Killings

It's not that he was intentionally wrong. He wasn't there, and was sloppy in the way he reported it.

The captain, Jeffrey Pool, told Bargewell's investigators that he was given reports from battalion commanders that accurately described the marines' killing of civilians, said lawyers who read the report. But Pool said he issued a news release blaming the insurgents for the deaths because he believed that they were ultimately the result of the roadside bombing of the convoy that led the marines to strike back, the lawyers said.

"The way I saw it was this," Pool told two colonels questioning him, according to a lawyer who read the report. "A bomb blast went off, or was initiated, that is what started, that is the reason they're getting this, is a bomb blew up, killed people. We killed people back and that's the story."

Lawyers for the four officers charged with failing to properly investigate the civilian killings say the inaccurate news release created a false perception that the U.S. Marine Corps chain of command had covered up the killing of civilians.

Some Marines are still mad about his mistake.

It's certainly worth adding to the article. I'll get to it later this week if no one else does.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 02:49, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Sloppy? That's one word for it. Spin and consciously deceptive would be others. And Wuterich goes to trial Jan '12. That should be added. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.81.96.200 (talk) 02:48, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

24 civilians

As far as i can see the sources say that all 24 killed are civilians. So i would like to change the lede accordingly. Any objections? Rura88 (talk) 02:10, 26 January 2012 (UTC) Changed, reference added. Rura88 (talk) 03:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

There's a reason for the difference.

Earlier stories (like this one) used the number 15.

I know they use the number 24 now. It would be good to know the story behind that. I suspect that reporters simply got lazy.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 04:34, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

The story behind? Obviously the result of the cover up. Rura88 (talk) 04:44, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Nope. Nothing obvious about the situation.

The link I gave you that says 15 civilians was long after. Only 15 received condolence payments.

There was no cover up. Wuterich reported what happened as he saw it. It was a public affairs officer who mangled the story. Wuterich never had to change his.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 05:40, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

They initially said that the civilians were killed by a road site bomb while knowing that they shot them from close range and then even one of the guy urinated on the corpse. No cover up? Not to be rude but i think you must be either blind or you might belong in the same category as the people who deny the holocaust. Rura88 (talk) 05:59, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Did you even read what I wrote? (It was only three lines.)

I said "It was a public affairs officer who mangled the story." Got that? (I even gave you a link.) Wuterich never said the civilians were killed by a roadside bomb. If he had, he'd be in prison.

The military really isn't as portrayed in graphic novels.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 06:20, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

The public US military public affairs office covered it up? So did Wuterich and his gang report to them they had killed a bunch of unarmed women, children, and infant and a man in a wheel chair or did the report they were killed by a road side bomb. What do you think? Rura88 (talk) 06:31, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Apparently, you didn't do any reading.

The public affairs officer didn't intentionally "cover it up." He simply wasn't there, made assumptions, and thought it was good enough. People make stupid mistakes, particularly in wartime.

Wuterich did indeed report that they had accidentally killed women and children. Fog of war. If he hadn't reported it, he'd be in prison.

Nobody seriously believed Wuterich ever blamed those deaths on the roadside bomb. Not for five years, anyway.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 00:56, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I guess you did not enough reading. I read it all.

So the US military covered it up. Nobody is so stupid to publish a paper that says 15 people were killed by a roadside bomb when in fact these women and children were massacred in their houses in their bedrooms in their night cloth from close range by the weapons of these soldiers.

Why did the US military only started to investigate the case after they were shown the videos and after months when they actually knew what had happened? You say they knew, right? Rura88 (talk) 01:38, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

What they "knew" had happened was that Wuterich and his marines were sent to a house that had been firing upon them. They knew that women and children were killed during their pursuit of the insurgents. At the time, it was reasonable to believe that the marines' version was true. After the investigations, forensic evidence, and trials, it turns out to still be the most likely version to have most truth.

The link I gave you says:

The 130-page report, by Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell of the Army, did not conclude that the senior officers covered up evidence or committed a crime. But it said the Marine Corps command in Iraq was far too willing to tolerate civilian casualties and dismiss Iraqi claims of abuse by marines as insurgent propaganda, according to lawyers who have read it.

You obviously imagine that the marines went in, lined everyone up, and shot them. That's not what happened. In reality, none of the women or children were killed by a direct shot where it is known that the marine could tell they were killing women and children. There was one accusation but it fell apart along with most of these cases.

The original McGirk story reads differently, but most of that comes from Iraqis, who either support the insurgents, or would get their heads chopped off if they opposed them.

The press release was certainly sloppy but not criminal. He justified it in that the IED and the sniper fire were part of the same coordinated attack, which is technically true. But it could easily have been written to follow Wuterich's version of events. Wuterich would initially have been no worse off for it, and McGirk's story could not have had the veneer of a cover up.

Yes, the military should have investigated more, as my quote of their report concludes, but you're forgetting the nature of this war. Insurgents have been fighting around civilians since the beginning. The people who claim to be upset at civilian casualties are (assuming they meant it when they said they care about the Geneva Conventions) supposed to demand that insurgents separate themselves from noncombatants in accordance with the laws of war. The Marines decided to train for this better. What have the critics demanded of the insurgents? Nothing.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 17:47, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Wow randy2063, get off your soapbaox for once. It is amazing how much of what you spew is completely irrelevant. This whole article is a farce and is one of the main examples that taught me how pointless Wikipedia really is. All it takes is one dedicated partisan hack and the truth is smothered and nearly drowned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.172.33.112 (talk) 22:47, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

The discrepancy is because Ahmed Khidher, the taxi driver, plus the four unarmed male passengers in the taxi, as well as four pajama-clad men living in the Haditha houses that were cleared by Wuterich and his squad initially were deemed to be "military age males" by US Marine officers. (ie Iraqis older than kids and younger than senior citizens!) When the NCIS investigation determined that they did not possess weapons the death tally rose. McGirk's original story refers to "at least 23 deaths" and explains "It [the USMC] considers the four men killed in the fourth house, as well as four youths killed by the Marines near the site of the roadside bombing, as enemy fighters."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1174649,00.html#ixzz1lAAwgfOh

Killer between 2006-2008

What about the killers between 2006-2008 and Wuterich 2006-2012? Were these in the normal service of the army?--Falkmart (talk) 15:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Lead section

The lead section is far too long and does not adhere to WP:LEAD. A lead section should be short and serve as a quick-and-dirty introduction to the reader who knows nothing about the subject. This lead simply has too many details. It also seems to focus far too much on the procedure of the hearings. The subject of the article is the killings, not the hearings. The hearings should get no more than one paragraph and should really only talk about the conclusions. Also, as a general rule, it's inappropriate to reference sources in the lead. For example, "The New York times reported..." - this shouldn't go in the lead. Just say what the New York Times reported.

Sorry about the hit-and-run, but I'm busy working on my own unrelated contributions to WP and I just wanted to know a little about the Haditha massacre. Maybe someone with more knowledge about the subject and the article can fix this. --Nstrauss (talk) 06:34, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. --194.16.30.114 (talk) 05:54, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

My Lai section

I have removed the following from the section on comparisons with My Lai...

Interviews conducted by The Nation revealed the following about Iraqi civilian deaths:

“ Some participated in such killings; others treated or investigated civilian casualties after the fact. Many also heard such stories, in detail, from members of their unit. The soldiers, sailors and Marines emphasized that not all troops took part in indiscriminate killings. Many said that these acts were perpetrated by a minority. But they nevertheless described such acts as common and said they often go unreported - and almost always go unpunished. ”

... since it has nothing to do with comparisons with My Lai. Perhaps it can be incorporated into another section. 69.255.153.126 (talk) 19:55, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

what kind of article is this

I don't understand how a human being could write this kind of article. Why can't we simply tell? It is completely uncontested what happened there, on a basic level, and yet there is not a single sentence in this article that actually contains any kind of narrative about that.

This is not encyclopedic. We can't just list up a heap of inconclusive and fragmentary "third party reports" - the article "Haditah Killings" needs to actually explain what happened. Namely, that Wuterich and his soldiers methodically went from house to house and killed everybody whom they could find in there - men, women and children. Namely, that an American Soldier trained his gun at the body of a 3 years old girl, a one year old baby, a 14 years old girl, and pulled the trigger each time, killing those children, and many more.

And last but not least, it needs to make clear that the American legal system was not able to find it in the depth of their hearts to actually punish those soldiers, but acquitted them all. We don't have to condemn this, take a side, these brazen murderers will burn in hell quite by their own - but at least we need to tell it like it was. If we don't we are as guilty as those who committed those crimes. Wefa (talk) 02:51, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree, this article is nonsense. It only tells one side of the story - it doesn't tell the story AT ALL from the soldiers' perspective. Though I'm sure many soldiers had a relatively callous attitude toward Iraqis' lives in combat, there are other issues, intelligence issues, which have never been made fully public. This was not a "retribution killing," nor was it gratuitous violence. These soldiers were set up by the insurgents, which is something that happened a lot in Iraq. "Victory," for the insurgents in this situation was getting US soldiers to kill civilians. Luckily, the most hardcore elements of the insurgency in Iraq (also known as "Al Qaeda in Iraq," which is organization the NY Times claims has never existed,) showed their true colors to the Iraqi people each and every day. They killed far more civilians than the coalition forces. They were finally driven into Diyala and Ninevah provinces, where they persist to this day. The "surge" never would have had any success if it hadn't been the Iraqis' idea -- because they (Sunni and Shia alike) despised Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the foreigners waging incessant "jihad" in their country. Iraqis, in the end, saw the "jihadis" as more foreign than the Americans. 75.170.6.188 (talk) 22:33, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Wefa, that is simply not what happened. As far as we know, at NO TIME did any of the US Marines train their weapon on a child and pull the trigger. That's why that isn't in the article. None of the killings were methodical executions. The Marines weren't even in the same rooms as the people they shot. You might think that's just what the Marines claimed, but even the witness testimony of one of the Iraqi survivors confirms this, a girl who survived the incident said she only saw rifle barrels poking through doorways when the shooting happened. That's how this happened, the Marines had learned in previous battles with insurgents that if you peek into a room to see who exactly is in there, and positively identify them as civilian or insurgent, then you will get your head shot off. They watched Marines die doing that in battles such as Fallujah in 2004. The rules of engagement had been greatly loosened by the time of Haditha the following year. Marines attacked the location as though every room had an insurgent inside it, throwing grenades and firing through doorways at where they saw figures moving or heard activity. Walterego (talk) 23:02, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Biased Much?

The Haditha case came down to a he said she said. The Marines are adamant that the civilians died either in the bomb or in the taking of the house. The Iraqis who wouldn't come forward to actually testify are adamant they were all shot. Because of Islamic tradition and the somewhat explosive atmosphere in Iraq a traditional investigation with CSI and everything was impeded. To read this article though you'd think that not only were these marines cold blooded murderers but so were all US service members in Iraq. Did you guys let Code Pink edit this or something? Outcast95 (talk) 06:36, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree, the bias in this article is extreme and at variance even with the facts uncovered by military criminal investigators working to build a case for the prosecution (some dead Iraqi men were armed with fully automatic assault rifles, for example). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.12.230.178 (talk) 03:56, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think you folks know what bias is. Maybe look into the mirror. Blaming Iraqis for having the audacity to not wanting to let an occupying army define itself into compliance with international law is rich. --95.90.54.245 (talk) 09:26, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Repeated deletion of the Category: "Massacres in Iraq"

Please [stop deleting] content you do not like. Intention is not needed for a massacre, more than enough sources call it a massacre. Categories are helpful for people to find the stuff they are looking for. That you personally think that the slaughtering of these people is not a massacre does not matter and it just speaks for you. The category is needed so that people can find the article under the category they are looking for. Enough people and sources think it is a massacre and enough people and sources have call it a massacre. Rura88 (talk) 19:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

There's a lot of content I don't like that I don't delete. I deleted this one because it's wrong, not neutral, and it's a BLP. And, let's face it, your viewpoint is out of date. The "cover up" claims were known to be B.S. years ago.

Newspapers sometimes qualify the word "massacre" with quotes because critics do use the word. Sometimes you'll see a reporter use it because they're just plain ignorant. They've watched a few Star Trek reruns, read a few graphic novels, and thought they understood how the military works. You'll also see "massacre" in headlines, without being in the story, when the reporter knows it's not a massacre but the editor either doesn't know any better, or thinks it will sell newspapers. Foreign newspapers, columnists, and bloggers will call it a massacre, but they don't care. They don't have the BLP issues that we do. There's even a BLP warning on this talk page.

If every mass killing was a massacre then we'd call the Costa Concordia disaster a massacre, too. But that's not a massacre, and neither is this.

As for the people looking at the categories for civilian deaths, that's the very reason we have a category for civilian deaths. Haditha is already listed. People looking for any major incidents involving civilian deaths will find it there. The massacre categories are where they go if they want to find genuine massacres.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 00:56, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Your description about what a massacre is and your interpretation of the sources are plain wrong and your arguments are along the lines of someone who denies the holocaust.

I could imagine to discuss about the "war crimes" category but i think we can leave that one out for the moment but that this was a massacre is reflected in the sources and more that enough people on both sides think so.

First sentence Reuters a few hours ago The Haditha massacre that killed 24 Iraqis,... Rura88 (talk) 01:25, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

It's funny you say that. It is actually the people who oppose the Marines, and falsely accuse them of crimes, that either literally deny the Holocaust, or find common cause with those who do.

Yes, literally. It's obvious I'm not on that side.

What Wuterich did would be a war crime, and a massacre, if it was intentional, or intentionally indiscriminate. It wasn't either of those things. If it had been, they'd have killed all the women and children.

For your link, the intro is probably written by the editor, which is like what I said about headlines.

There's only one use of the word "massacre" in that story that's probably intended to be legit. It's the line that begins, "The Haditha massacre that killed 24 Iraqis," but that could be because people called it that. The others are not direct uses of the word.

With this many stories in the news, we're going to get some idiots. When you're talking about living people, you need a higher standard than a couple of odd articles. This is especially true when you're not willing to call other accidents "massacres."

One problem is, you seem to have been of the belief that this wasn't an accident; that they went wild for revenge because that bomb went off; and then targeted children. But you'll have to face the fact that this isn't the case.

Proper news stories don't use the word "massacre" that way: The BBC didn't use the word at all. Neither did [the Seattle Times. CNN uses "alleged." Newsday says "became known as the Haditha massacre."

That's how it's supposed to be done.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 17:47, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

While it is disputed if the massacre constitute a war crime or not, it is not disputed that the slaughtering of these 24 women, children and men is a massacre.

Intention is not needed for a massacre to be a massacre. Please provide references for your claims. What source did you use for your research about what a massacre is and what not?

You mischaracterize the sources in a way that makes me wonder if you might be a 6th grader who has no idea what he is talking about or someone who is so blinded from denial that he can not read the sources. Your words are so full of false statements that i begin to question your good faith.

• Reuters the source i gave you is clear - Reuters says it is a massacre.

"killed by U.S. troops in a 2005 massacre"

"The Haditha massacre that killed 24 Iraqis,... stoked global outrage

"The last U.S. soldier accused in leading the massacre..."

Reuters is a highly reliable source and that are there words.

I guess that you are so blinded by your denial that you simply overlooked all the other sources that contradict your claim. Here are just a few more coming from an easy Google search.

• The Telegraph "The Iraqi government is planning legal action on behalf of families of victims killed by US troops in a 2005 massacre in Haditha." [1]

• San Francisco Chronicle "Haditha residents and relatives of those killed in the 2005 massacre voiced shock and disgust after manslaughter charges were dropped...", "Haditha outraged as Marine avoids jail in massacre" [2]

• The Christian Science Monitor "Haditha massacre verdict stuns Iraqis.", "...pled guilty to involvement in killing Iraqi civilians in notorious 2005 massacre will serve no jail time,..." [3]

• Newsday "No jail time in massacre" [4]

• The Hindu "...the light sentence meted out to a soldier involved in the massacre.", "...a woman upon whom he had performed an appendectomy a week before the massacre."[5]

• Dailymail "It was the massacre which left 24 unarmed Iraqis dead and cast fresh shame on the American military,..." [6]

• New York Times "Junkyard Gives Up Secret Accounts of Massacre in Iraq", "Transcripts of military interviews from the investigation into the Haditha massacre were found...", "...the 2005 massacre by Marines of Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha." [7]

• Gulfnews "Marine's plea deal for Haditha massacre sparks outrage", "The massacre, which is often described as one the major events in the War in Iraq,..." [8]

• The Sydney Morning Herald "His cousin was killed by the marines in the Haditha massacre in November 2005." [9]

• NewsCore "...will not serve any time in confinement for his role in a 2005 massacre of Iraqi civilians...", "Wuterich is the last of seven Marines to face charges tied to the massacre."[10]

• AFP "...was spared jail by a US military court over the massacre of 24 unarmed civilians..." [11]

• The Atlantic "...for his role as squad leader of a group that massacred 24 unarmed Iraqis in Haditha..." [12]

• The New York Times "Anger in Iraq After Plea Bargain Over 2005 Massacre", "...whose cousin was killed by the Marines in the massacre,...", "The shadows cast by the Haditha massacre,..."[13]

• The Australian "...disgust over the light sentence meted out to a US soldier involved in the massacre.", "...had performed an appendectomy a week before the massacre." [14]

• ABC News "While in court, Wuterich apologized to the victims' families and tried to explain how the massacre occurred." [15]

I stop here as it seems very likely that no matter how many sources someone shows you, you will not agree that these sources are sufficient for the inclusion of the "Massacre in Iraq" category what is a fact. I do not see any reason for further discussion with you here on this talk page. See also your talk page. Rura88 (talk) 20:59, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

First you say I'm a Holocaust denier, which is pretty funny coming from a guy with "88" at the end of his single-use account name. When that turns out to be 180 degrees out of phase, you resort to saying I'm like a 6th grader. That's also pretty funny, considering that this entire discussion is about your insistence on having the article make accusations.

You say "slaughtering" as though that's how it happened. That word also shows intent which hasn't been proved -- or brought to trial.

I'm looking at wiktionary:massacre, which says it's intentional. Is there such a thing as an accidental massacre? I don't think so. But the really sad thing about the incident and its aftermath is that, with all the critics pretending to care about it, none of them bother to ask friends with connections to the insurgents that they put an end to fighting near civilians.

But this is really about your intent. Everything you've said indicates you think it was deliberate. If there was no difference, you wouldn't be so insistent on using the word. As I said, we have a perfectly good NPOV category for civilian casualties.

As for your sources, a number of those articles are either AP or AFP. Yes, they're considered RS. I'm just making the point that your wide variety of sources isn't that wide.

But the San Francisco Chronicle item is an AP story. It doesn't actually call it a massacre in the body of the story. It's as I said about editors trying to sell newspapers. The reporter had the standards I'm talking about.

Same deal with Newsday. But what's interesting about that one is that if you look at all Newsday's stories about it, they're all AP stories, but they don't call it a massacre themselves. The only time those reporters use the word is when it's being quoted by someone else.

The Atlantic link is an opinion piece. I'm surprised you even bothered with Gulfnews.

But I'll concede here that you have enough reporters using the word, and I don't think WP is going to hold to BBC standards. I will probably bring it up in the noticeboard at some point in the future.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 21:37, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Third opinion: Some of the media constitute reliable sources. The military courts of one of the belligerent parties engaged in counter-insurgency warfare (and therefore with a vested interested in "winning hearts and minds"/"winning the propaganda war"/etc. cannot be treated as the sole neutral arbiter. See also:

• More media coverage: Times of London: "The killings were described by Iraqi witnesses and prosecutors as a massacre of unarmed civilians - including women and children - carried out by Marines angered by the death of a member of their unit in a bombing."
• New York Times: The collapse this week of the prosecution of a Marine for a civilian massacre in Haditha, Iraq — a striking outcome, even in a military justice system with a mixed record of charging soldiers for war crimes — has not only outraged Iraqis but also stunned some American military law specialists.
• So it's clear my bias point isn't simply my own, from the same source: “There is a surprising pattern of acquittals,” said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School. “I think there is an unwillingness in some cases of military personnel to convict their fellow soldiers in the battle space.”

--Carwil (talk) 02:12, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I already said the NYT is among those who do this.

Your other link is different. They're doing what I said about headline writers being different from reporters. The headline and the tease both use the word "massacre" but the article writer qualifies it as "described by Iraqi witnesses and prosecutors." Interestingly, that article has a link to another story with "massacre" in the story, and it does the same thing twice.

Fidell is a well-known critic of the American side of the war. It would be more of an embarrassment to Wuterich if Fidell sided with him this time.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 15:43, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I really have no idea what this "embarassment" issue is; seemingly the Iraqis dead at his unit's hands are more emotionally relevant than a college professor's opinion.

Anyhow, NYT, the Times of London, AP, AFP, etc. being reliable sources, we have a pretty clear basis for this categorization. Rereading Category:Massacres ("This is a spectrum category. Although the title is Massacres, the category collects together events that can be described with a variety of names, and which cover a wide spectrum.") and Wikipedia:Category#Defining_characteristics ("A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define[1] the subject as having"), it seems clear that the category belongs to this article.

Beware going too deep into WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT territory.--Carwil (talk) 16:01, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

For further consideration of the "common" use of the term, note that in recent articles indexed by Google News on Wuterich and the Haditha case we have and 969 with the term (search: haditha "massacre" wuterich) and 813 not including the term (search: haditha -"massacre" wuterich).--Carwil (talk) 16:04, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

The incident is emotionally relevant to me, too. But if it was that emotionally relevant to the critics and the Iraqis then one would think they'd have demanded the insurgents not start fights around civilians, particularly children. They haven't.

I've done those exact Google News searches. I think those without it are a better caliber of sources. But note that your search with "massacre" also includes those who quote somebody using the word, which is proper, but makes my point as well.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 18:07, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Not that this will change minds, but to show you what I mean about your search results, I did the search Google News just now, and examined the first 10 results for the haditha massacre wuterich search at the moment:

• an opinion piece by Marjorie Cohn.
• an opinion piece by a 22-year-old history junior.
• an AP story on a HuffPo that says "Wuterich has been falsely labeled a killer who carried out a massacre", and then later refers to the My Lai massacre.
• a photo story that says "accused of leading a 2005 massacre."
• an AP story on the Daily Mail that does use the word directly.
• the Daily Telegraph does use the word directly.
• CNN story that refers to "the 1968 Vietnam massacre at My Lai", but does not use the word for Haditha.
• a CSM story that does use the word for Haditha.
• an Al Jazeera YouTube video embedded into the results that (of course) does use the word quite a bit.
• an AP story at Time that only says "became known as the Haditha massacre."

That's two opinion pieces, four news articles that qualify the word correctly, and four that use the word directly. So, of the "969 with the term" that you found, keep in mind that about 60% (with an admittedly wide margin of error) don't count. Judging by the rate that they qualify the word "massacre" it's apparent that many news reporters are maintaining their own NPOV standards.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 22:09, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

The New York Times unequivocally describes this incident as a massacre. I do not see where in WP:RS "foreign newspapers" are excluded. You might have a point re "sell newspapers" if the headline was from a notorious headline sensationalizer like HuffPo but that's not the case here. re WP:BLP, tagging this article as a BLP is more than a little bit dubious... it strikes me as more than a little bit odd that Wikipedia should lose interest in the POV of the victims just because they are dead. In any case, WP:NPOV is described as a "pillar" of Wikipedia unlike WP:BLP and accordingly BLP is overruled by NPOV if there is a conflict, not the other way around. Why you want to take issue with this categorization while leaving a clear smear against a US serviceman like "order his men to shoot children in vehicles" stand in the article leaves me at a loss as to what your priorities are.--Brian Dell (talk) 06:01, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I already said, "But I'll concede here that you have enough reporters using the word, and I don't think WP is going to hold to BBC standards." I'd discount it if it was one or two outliers but it's the NYT plus a significant minority.

I never said, "that Wikipedia should lose interest in the POV of the victims just because they are dead." But that would be their opinions, and is often reported as such. As a matter of the laws of war, the people who claim to be upset about this are supposed to first condemn the insurgents for using these homes, and then complain to their allies who have links to the insurgents.

The "order his men to shoot children in vehicles" is more difficult to sort out. It wasn't really relevant to this article, but it's probably true. There have been several cases of insurgents forcing innocents (even families with kids) to drive their cars into checkpoints. It must have been difficult to order them to shoot in such a circumstances but it probably saved lives in the long run. It's no surprise that such context was missing here.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 18:42, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Slight correction: I just realized that it says "shoot children in vehicles" rather than "shoot vehicles with children." Naturally, they shouldn't aim at the children, but I doubt anybody said that's what they were doing. -- Randy2063 (talk) 22:04, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

This "[who will] condemn the insurgents"? argument you regularly advance really has no place here. If you want to extend the chain of causality to some sort of background, it strikes me as arbitrary to then cut it off at a convenient point instead of letting it play all the way out. In other words, if you are going to argue that it wouldn't have happened if there weren't insurgents in or about the house (is that even true?), one could just as easily argue that it wouldn't have happened if there weren't US military in or about the house. Just how sound is the rationale for the US military being in the country if the primary rationale offered was that there were WMD in the country? The bottom line is that arguing about this would not only be off-topic to the article but would invite a ready counter-argument such that little would be resolved.--Brian Dell (talk) 19:45, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

No, that's not what I was arguing. This isn't about a chain of causality. (Iraq had an election a month before these attacks; insurgents could have argued this out politically, if they had wanted to, and that could have ordered the U.S. to leave by the end of 2008 -- if not sooner.)

I was replying to your point, where you said, "it strikes me as more than a little bit odd that Wikipedia should lose interest in the POV of the victims just because they are dead." Who are they the victims of? For that, we need to turn to the laws of war. The problem is that too many people want more blame to be heaped upon Wuterich than the law allows.

BTW: Good summary of the case here.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 22:04, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

No, the problem is that the US military has the luxury to redefine the pertinent law however it feels appropriate. It is unique in its ability to define its members in compliance with laws and treaties it has no authority to interpret and acts in violation of in doing precisely what it does.The laws of war are quite clear in demanding you have a bleeping idea what you are shooting at, that civilians deserve special protection and that proportionality has to be observed. But proportionality for you and the US military means that it's proportional when for every US soldier who dies, a few dozen civilians die. That is a perversion of the laws of war into their precise opposite that is possible ONLY because the US refuses to allow a neutral arbiter AND allows its military to run a state within the state. There's a reason other nations have abolished a dedicated military justice system - it suffers from a built-in conflict of interest. --95.90.54.245 (talk) 20:23, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Again

User:Walterego has deleted the category Massacres in Iraq again (along with the interwiki links that illustrate that most other language wikipedias use cognates of massacre as their article titles). I thought the above discussion, while not a ringing unversal endorsement, ended with grudging acceptance from Randy that plenty of reliable sources use the term "massacre." There had been a dispute between Rura and Randy and I steppped in as a third opinion. Now, Walterego, if you want to contest the numerous RS calling this event a massacre, please do so here. For now, I'm boldly restoring the category.--Carwil (talk) 14:24, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Randy, this wasn't a massacre. Stop citing news sources as "proof!" Media outlets LOVE to use the word, because it sounds horrible and sinister and sells copy. Massacre has everything to do with intent: was the Boston Massacre a "true massacre," when five people were killed, and it appears (in hindsight) to have been an accident? It depends upon whose side you're on. The British apparently call it the "King Street Incident," to this day. I'm glad there's somebody who keeps changing the title to "Killings." The correct term is clearly the "Haditha Incident." In the absence of any actual trial, and very few "facts" at our disposal, we have a "trial by media," which is always predictable. But it isn't history, and the persistent forcing of this issue makes Wikipedia seem like an incredibly biased and useless source. 75.170.6.188 (talk) 22:57, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

I also agree, labeling this incident as a "massacre" diminishes the quality, objectivity, and utility of wikipedia. Some sources refer do it as a "massacre", but far more use the less dramatic term "killings". All the evidence and trials and testimony have revealed that this was some Marines who legitimately thought they were being attacked by insurgents in some house, fired into it and at persons they thought were potential insurgents, inadvertently killing a number of civilians. This sort of accident happens in war all the time. Some sources refer to that as a "massacre" but without contradicting the actions described, actions that clearly do not fall under the term massacre. A massacre clearly indicates intent. This is why I removed the category before, and it seems there is support for doing so again. Before the category is restored then it should be discussed why an incident that has been legally determined not to have been a crime should be declared to be a massacre. Walterego (talk) 21:30, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Because it is generally not custom that an organization defines itself into compliance with overarching standards. Kindly move your cursor over the links to other wikipedias, and you will find that internationally, "massacre" is the accepted term. Just because people of the same organization accept excuses doesn't make such excuses in any way valid under the Geneva Conventions. --95.90.54.245 (talk) 20:14, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Summary or facts box

I attempted to edit the box's content by replacing the term "Perpetrators" with "Accused." This resulted not in replacing "Perpetrators" with "Accused" but instead deleted the entire section or portion of the summary or fact box. I am unable to understand how to remedy the problem. The only reason for the change of perpetrator to accused is that only one Marine was prosecuted and he was only found guilty of dereliction of duty. The term perpetrator(s) is appropriate for someone that commits or carries out a crime. The alleged crime here is the unlawful killing of multiple civilians by a squad of Marines. However, as noted only one Marine was charged with acts in conjunction with the killings and he was only found guilty of dereliction of duty. Nevertheless, it was not my intent to have the section eliminated. Ranger2000 (talk) 21:11, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

That's not how the "civilian attack" infobox Wworks, so you effectively blanked the details. It's also rather disingenuous to suggest that because charges against various individuals were successively dropped, that that somehow means that the soldiers who clearly did kill the civilians somehow... didn't. I'm certainly sure that nobody would ever try to seriously suggest that Wuterich alone must have carried out each and every killing, since he was the only one who was actually prosecuted with anything vaguely connected with the deaths. After all, there are numerous Wikipedia pages detailing war crimes that clearly identify the perpetrators, even if - for whatever reason - they never stood trial for them. Nick Cooper (talk) 22:03, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

The term "perpetrators" is problematic, it implies that the soldiers unquestionably did something criminal, or did something very wrong. It is indeed alleged by people (who opposed the Iraq war and have a bias against US forces in that war) that the squad perpetrated a massacre, despite the fact that the Marines have been exonerated. From the testimony and trials this incident seems to simply be a squad that thought they were under attack by insurgents and lawfully fired on those who they thought were those insurgents. Wikipedia does have pages detailing war crimes that identify perpetrators even if they never stood trial, but these "perpetrators" all stood trial in a series of courts-martial facing a determined prosecution spurred on by an intensely hostile media.Walterego (talk) 22:28, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

That the Marines have been "exonerated" is devoid of relevance as the decision was not passed by a neutral authority under the conventions. They might have stood trial in a series of courts-martial, but their superiors supported a cover-up and to call the prosecution "determined" is wishful thinking - totally aside from the fact that the US military justice system suffers from a built-in conflict of interest. If they cannot identify children as children, then maybe they shouldn't be equipped with a firearm. The incident is universally considered a massacre aside from those individuals with a vested interest in not considering it one. The links to corresponding articles in other languages speak volumes. --95.90.52.150 (talk) 20:50, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

The Oxford Dictionary defines perpetrate as "Carry out or commit (a harmful, illegal, or immoral action)." Allowing for "illegal" to be in dispute, this is still a good description. And it's far more accurate word than "accused." The perpetrators are all of the soldiers described by reliable sources as carrying out the acts. Their legal and moral culpability can be discussed in the article, per other RS.

I second Nick Cooper's concern about restricting perpetrators to Wuterich, and the IP users concern about the involved military service's court's place as the final arbitrator of truth as to who is a "perpetrator.--Carwil (talk) 13:13, 16 November 2015 (UTC)"

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