Documents Shredded in 'Friendly Fire' Case

I've been reporting on the tremendous military-related work of Mark Benjamin for years (he features in my book on Iraq and the media, So Wrong for So Long), most recently last month when he published evidence, including video, of a friendly fire case in Iraq, at Salon.com.  He returns today with a disturbing followup.  Here is the opener and video below -- Greg Mitchell

Last month, Salon published a story reporting that U.S. Army Pfc. Albert Nelson and Pfc. Roger Suarez were killed by U.S. tank fire in Ramadi, Iraq, in late 2006, in an incident partially captured on video, but that an Army investigation instead blamed their deaths on enemy action. Now Salon has learned that documents relating to the two men were shredded hours after the story was published. Three soldiers at Fort Carson, Colo. — including two who were present in Ramadi during the friendly fire incident, one of them just feet from where Nelson and Suarez died — were ordered to shred two boxes full of documents about Nelson and Suarez. One of the soldiers preserved some of the documents as proof that the shredding occurred and provided them to Salon. All three soldiers, with the assistance of a U.S. senator's office, have since been relocated for their safety.

Comments

[Linda Tilsen]

For a nation at war in not one but two countries, we hear almost nothing about U.S. troop deaths other than casualty counts. The friendly-fire incidents, "accidental" fatalities, and suicides of returning veterans are among the most significantly underreported stories of our time. We owe a debt of gratitude to E & P's Greg Mitchell and Salon's Mark Benjamin for their tireless persistence in these matters. When the Bush administration's "selling" of the war in Iraq undergoes a thorough historical scrutiny, the American people will see precisely what a bill of goods we bought-- and what a price it exacted.