May 31, 2007 04:41 PM UTC

Will Coffman Testify on Haditha Massacre?

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• by: Colorado Pols

During the heat of the election season last year, questions about what Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman may or may not have known about the apparently illegal killings of Iraqi civilians in the city of Haditha–where Major Coffman was deployed during his recent tour in Iraq–surfaced briefly. Rocky Mountain News columnist Jason Salzman reported at the time:

After returning home from Iraq in March, State Treasurer Mike Coffman was upbeat about the war.

Now he tells the Post (July 3) that fellow Marines “sanitized” a news release about the deaths of 15 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, where Coffman was stationed beginning two months after the tragedy.

Coffman’s story doesn’t appear to have changed since he originally discussed the Haditha deaths in June, when he told the Associated Press that he heard about the incident shortly after his arrival in Iraq and it looked suspicious…

Reporters should ask him why he didn’t mention the Haditha tragedy upon his return to Denver, when he spoke so optimistically about the war…

The Washington Post reported last June:

Kilo Company did not dwell on what happened Nov. 19. Mike Coffman, who was a Marine Reserve officer in Haditha at the time, recalled that another officer, telling him about the incident, “indicated to me that he thought from the beginning that it was overreaction by the Marines, but he didn’t think anything criminal had occurred.”

When the Haditha city council met in January for the first time in many months, “none of them [Iraqi members] ever raised it as an issue,” said Coffman, who attended the meeting. Rather, he said, they complained about how car and truck traffic in the area had been shut down after two Marines were killed at a checkpoint bombing…

The Denver Post reported at roughly the same time:

Military investigators are trying to determine which Marines composed the false report and whether any of their fellow Marines or superiors knowingly approved a coverup, said John Sifton, a researcher for Human Rights Watch familiar with the incident…

Colorado state Treasurer Mike Coffman, a Marine major who recently returned from a voluntary tour of duty in Iraq, was assigned to the area around Hadithah after the November incident and met there with Chessani. As a civil affairs officer, Coffman said he took Chessani to the Hadithah city council after the shooting.

There were many complaints from Iraqis, but not about a massacre…

Maybe not in total contradiction to Coffman’s statement, but still raising serious questions,  the Los Angeles Times reports this morning:

Chessani’s attorneys say that their client’s superiors were aware that women and children had been killed and yet opted not to order an investigation. The attorneys allege that residents of Haditha, a town 130 miles northwest of Baghdad in Al Anbar province, concocted a story to obscure the fact that they were helping insurgents…

Hours later, Frank testified, officers talked about what to say in explaining the incident to the town elders in Haditha, a onetime insurgent stronghold in the Euphrates River Valley.

He said a fellow lieutenant told him, “We should explain it as an unfortunate thing that happens when terrorists use your homes to attack our forces.”

Is it true that the Haditha city government did not raise the issue of civilian killings with Coffman and Lt. Col Jeffrey Chessani (a Rangely native) at their meeting? The answer to that question would help Chessani’s defense–or hurt it, and apparently Mike Coffman is the guy who knows for sure. Will he be called to testify, or will his statements to investigators last year suffice?

No one is suggesting at this point that Coffman knowingly participated in a coverup of the Haditha massacre. But his generally dismissive statements on the matter (with some belated exceptions, as Salzman noted above) seem to echo those made by other Marine officers, statements that are now receiving close scrutiny as the extent of the coverup is determined.