Haditha, In their Own Words
Posted on | August 31, 2007
Preliminary hearings began at Camp Pendleton for a Marine sergeant accused of seventeen counts of murder.
“When I opened the door there was just women and kids, two adults were lying down on the bed and there were three children on the bed … two more were behind the bed,” [Lance Corporal Humberto] Mendoza said.
“I looked at them for a few seconds. Just enough to know they were not presenting a threat … they looked scared.”
After leaving the room Mendoza told Tatum what he had found.
“I told him there were women and kids inside there. He said ‘Well, shoot them,’” Mendoza told prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Sean Sullivan.
“And what did you say to him?” Sullivan asked.
“I said ‘But they’re just women and children.’ He didn’t say nothing.”
Mendoza said he returned to a position at the front of the house and heard a door open behind him followed by a loud noise. Returning later that afternoon to conduct body retrieval, Mendoza said he found a room full of corpses.
This is the ugly face of war—scared people terrorized by scared people, devoid of sense and pity.
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