Marine units in Anbar province spur half of condolence payouts

[Robbien]

BY DAVID S. CLOUD, The New York Times

WASHINGTON - Almost half of the more than $19 million in funds that the U.S. military allocated last year to compensate for killing or injuring Iraqis and damaging property came from Marine-led units in Anbar province, Defense Department records show.

The $9.5 million in "condolence payments" by the Marines reflects the persistent fighting against insurgents in violent Anbar, but it also provides a reminder of the heavy toll that the conflict has taken on civilians, mostly from insurgents but also from American units.

The figures, contained in a detailed Defense Department report provided recently to Congress, do not include $38,000 paid to relatives of 15 Iraqis killed by Marines at Haditha in November, because those deaths occurred after the end of the 2005 fiscal year, on Sept. 30. That case, in which 24 Iraqi civilians were killed, is under investigation.

The total does include millions of dollars paid to residents of Fallujah after the Marines cleared the city in block-by-block fighting in late 2004, as well as hundreds of smaller payments - from $50 to $50,000 - broken by down by city and date.

Throughout Iraq, payments to Iraqis deemed to be noncombatants skyrocketed, going to $19.7 million in the 2005 fiscal year from approximately $5 million in 2004.

http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_3920529

[DoYouEverWonder]

1. In other words

We're doing a great job killing more civilians not less has the war progresses.

:sarcasm:

[Rose Siding]

2. "Condolence payments" are maxed at $2,500.

and I've seen some documentaries where military officers are negotiating for payment of damages to homes, but the amounts are small. Who's paying out 50K at a time?

[Kagemusha]

3. Probably to chiefs who are expected to not permit revenge attacks

That's my theory.

[Rose Siding]

4. Oh. Like protection money?

I was leaning toward corruption of one kind or another.

[Kagemusha]

5. Distinction without a difference.

nt

[Igel]

7. Diya.

Blood money.

If it was going to be used anywhere in Iraq, I'd expect it in the Salafist area.

It's the time-honored way of preventing blood feuds from going for generations, and not just in shari'a (although it's in shari'a). You kill somebody, intentionally or by accident, and you hurt the tribe and the family financially and in terms of honor; you must either be executed (which reciprocates the crime), or pay recompense. $2.5k isn't enough recompense, I think.

The Sa'udi and Pakistani press from time to time has an article claiming how wonderfully merciful some family is because they scrapped the death sentence against a homicide in exchange for money. We have similar things, in the US, in civil law, but the criminal law holds anyway.

Sometimes 'responsibility' goes to the deepest pockets. An American soldier goes and runs over a goat, but the goat-owner thinks it's a neighbor that killed the goat so he confronts the neighbor with a gun, and gets himself shot and killed. Meanwhile the American files a report, and an Army guy shows up with $10 for the goat, and they all realize that the capricide was a US soldier. Neighbor's poor; the goat owner is poor; Americans are wealthy. Americans are the appropriate person to blame. If not for them ... if it had been a wealthy neighbor and the goat-killer had been from a poor family down the street, the neighbor would be responsible.

Whether diya applies in this case is a question for shari'a experts.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Who wouldn't gladly see someone he/she loves die in agony, amid

terror, and grief, sorrow, bewilderment, totally depersonalized and reduced to a pile of bleeding flesh if it meant one could receive a fistful of currency, and maybe even a few metal coins? Wowie!

IF ONLY the slime who made the decision to rape Iraq could be forced to go in there and do it themselves. If only. What a strange world it is which allows them to make such evil choices and to force others to go do it for them.

[jpak]

8. $19 million = 7600 civilian dead per year

3800 of those by Marines in Anbar...

(more than all US casualties in the 9/11 attacks).

But who's counting anyway...