June 06, 2007 07:12 PM UTC

Coffman Responds to Haditha Questions

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• by: Colorado Pols

Republican Secretary of State Mike Coffman has responded to recent posts at Colorado Pols regarding his involvement in Haditha, Iraq. Click below for the complete statement received by email…

In response to recent posts by ColoradoPols, I have drafted the following statement to set the record straight:

My final assignment in Iraq was in the Western Euphrates River Valley just below the Haditha dam.  I was a U.S. Marine Corps Civil Affairs Officer assigned to help develop interim local governments in the towns of Haditha, Haqlaniyah and Barwana.  The area was known to have had strong ties to the insurgency and for giving safe harbor to the foreign fighters who were crossing into Iraq from the Syrian border.

The incident in Haditha where 24 civilians were killed by Marines following an IED attack occurred in November 2005.  I did not arrive in Haditha until January 2006.  There was no mention of the November 2005 incident at my first meeting with the Haditha City Council in early January 2006 and Lt. Col. Chessani was not present at the meeting.

At this meeting, the members of the City Council were angry about a complete ban on all civilian vehicle traffic that was ordered immediately following the deaths of two Marines who were killed by a suicide car bomb.  They were already upset that their bridges across the Euphrates River had been destroyed during a major offensive operation in October 2005 and the newly imposed ban on all civilian vehicle traffic just added to it.  Agriculture was an important part of the local economy and they needed the bridges as well as their trucks to transport their fruits and vegetables to market.

My second meeting with the Haditha City Council was in late January and Lt. Col. Chessani was present.  I did not take Lt. Col. Chessani to the meeting, as was reported in the media; the reporter embellished that point.  The officer in charge of the Civil Military Operations Center (my reporting senior) called the meeting.  At this meeting, Lt. Col. Chessani presented his goals for the area to the members of the Haditha City Council and to local tribal leaders who were in attendance.  I did not participate in the meeting but did observe it and write a report that was forwarded up my chain of command.  There was no discussion of the November 2005 incident during the meeting.

After the meeting, it was clear to me that the governance situation in Haditha, given the recent establishment of a Civil Military Operations Center, was more advanced than the other two towns in the river valley that were in our area of responsibility.  I then requested and was granted permission to focus on the smaller towns of Haqlaniyah and Barwana for the remainder of my assignment.

Before I left Haditha to start working on the other two towns, I asked the Civil Affairs Team Leader, assigned to the town, about the overall civil military situation in his area.  During that discussion, he said that he was on the scene following the November 2005 incident to arrange compensation to the families who suffered losses.  In his opinion, there was an overreaction by the Marines but he never indicated nor inferred that it rose to the level of criminal misconduct (i.e. violated the Rules of Engagement).  I met with him again in March 2006 just before I completed my assignment and asked for an update on the general civil military situation in Haditha.  In that conversation, he informed me that the November 2005 incident was under investigation.

I returned to Colorado in late March 2006 from Iraq and in late May 2006, I saw stories in the media about the November 2005 incident in Haditha.  The media stories referenced a press release, issued by the U.S. Marine Corps that the civilian casualties from the November 2005 incident were caused by the same IED that was used by the insurgents against the Marine convoy.  Because I was previously informed by the Civil Affairs Team Leader assigned to Haditha, that the civilian casualties occurred subsequent to the IED attack, I felt it necessary to notify the U.S. Marine Corps of the discrepancy.  I gave a sworn statement to that effect in June 2006.  I have not been requested to testify at the trial.