Paying for Haditha

Evidence from the Haditha incident strongly favors the account that U.S. forces shot and killed unarmed civilians. Of note is the fact that death certificates show that all of the victims were killed by gunshot wounds and not by shrapnel from a roadside bomb as originally reported. Also, the Marines have already paid out $38,000 to the families of 15 of the victims. 

As the New York Times reports:

The relatives of each victim were paid a total of $2,500, the maximum allowed under Marine rules, along with $250 payments for two children who were wounded. Major Hyatt said he also compensated the families for damage to two houses.

Though the military has a regulated process of victim compensation, the disbursements are not normally made available, and following the “we don’t do body counts” philosophy, it is often difficult to determine who has received what. The Dayton Daily News and New York Newsday both published interesting pieces last year that delved into the details of victim compensation, painting a grim picture of the process. 

If the military believes that their victim compensation policy is working, then improving transparency would certainly be a good step toward raising their credibility in the area, even if it does highlight some uncomfortable truths about the number of civilian casualties that the United States continues to inflict.  In Haditha, such information may have hastened the awareness that something had gone wrong.