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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
In his latest exposi, the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh reports allegations that the military committed a massacre against Iraqi soldiers and whitewashed it.
May 15, 2000 | An investigative report for the New Yorker by veteran muckraker Seymour Hersh alleges that Clinton drug czar Barry McCaffrey orchestrated a 1991 massacre of hundreds of Iraqi troops, two days after a cease-fire went into effect at the end of the Gulf War.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist quotes numerous on-the-record combat veterans, both senior officers and enlisted men, describing the "systematic destruction" of a 5-mile-long column of Iraqi armor, vehicles and personnel making what was described as an orderly, U.S.-sanctioned retreat.
According to Hersh's report, McCaffrey ordered an all-out, four-hour assault based on two or fewer instances of fire from the Iraqis -- a move that galvanized the general's staff. The article quotes senior officers decrying the lack of discipline and proportionality in the McCaffrey-ordered attack. Even McCaffrey's operations officer at the time, Patrick Lamar, is quoted dismissing the battle as "a giant hoax."
The report also charges that McCaffrey, who is now a member of President Clinton's cabinet and director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, maneuvered his troops miles beyond what was sanctioned by his commanders and failed to inform superiors of the exact location of his troops. As the attack commenced, a helicopter blew up an enemy ammunition truck, blocking access to a bridge and bottling up the doomed Iraqis.
Hersh writes that "Apache attack helicopters, Bradley fighting vehicles, and artillery units from the 24th Division pummeled the 5-mile-long Iraqi column for hours, destroying some 700 Iraqi tanks, armored cars and trucks, and killing not only Iraqi soldiers but civilians and children as well. Many of the dead were buried soon after the engagement, and no accurate count of the victims could be made."
McCaffrey, then a two-star general, commanded the 24th Division, which led the engagement. American forces suffered no casualties in the attack, and soldiers called it a "turkey shoot" -- which is probably an apt description, given that, as Hersh reports, few of the retreating Iraqis returned the fire and some were even sunbathing on their tanks.
Hersh's story also alleges that, in two incidents, McCaffrey's division fired on unarmed Iraqis. The first incident involved a group of Iraqi POWs, who were reportedly sitting on the ground as they were shot. A group of unarmed civilians were shot in the second incident, according to American soldiers who were present. In both cases, the Army investigated and found no wrong doing. But Hersh dismisses those findings in his story, writing that "few soldiers report crimes, because they don't want to jeopardize their Army careers." In neither case was McCaffrey present.
A series of striking, chronological narratives, the stark tale of alleged war crimes employs primarily on-the-record interviews and features a dramatic, unattributed photo of McCaffrey standing on an armored vehicle, binoculars in hand, overseeing the battle. "He's going to have to wonder where that photo came from. I talked to a lot of people," Hersh told Salon in a telephone interview Sunday night.
According to Hersh's account, the carnage following the cease fire raised questions up and down the chain of command. But it took a detailed, anonymous letter to the Pentagon to spur the Army to launch investigations. Full of inside information supporting its authenticity, the letter accused McCaffrey of committing a "'war crime'" and threatened exposure to the press.
The letter, Hersh writes, stated "that a colleague had overhead McCaffrey urge his commanders on the command radio net 'to find a way for him to go kill all of those bastards.'" The origins of the letter are not revealed in the New Yorker report, though. Hersh told Salon he "probably" interviewed the letter-writer. "But he didn't identify himself to me," he said.
Hersh said he came across the story while researching U.S. military involvement in Colombia. "I started in December looking into the Colombia policy. But I never got far. Generals started talking, and I realized we'd missed a big story on McCaffrey." In the story, Hersh quotes one colonel's statement that the assault "made no sense for a defeated army to invite their own death. ... It came across as shooting fish in a barrel. Everyone was incredulous."
