Charlotte Observer (North Carolina) March 29, 2003
Friendly Fire May Have Killed Lejeune Marines
Military Won't Comment Officially On New Report
By Scott Dodd, Staff Writer
The Observer's Peter Smolovitz in Qatar contributed to this article.
Nine N.C.-based Marines killed Sunday in the battle for Nasiriyah may have been victims of friendly fire, not Iraqis pretending to surrender as originally believed.
If true, it would raise the number of U.S. and British troops killed by their own side to 15 - nearly a third of the known coalition deaths since the fighting in Iraq began.
Officials at the U.S. Central Command in Qatar would say only that friendly fire is an unfortunate reality of war and that they're still looking into the deaths of the nine Marines based at Camp Lejeune in Eastern North Carolina.
"They're taking quite a bit of time bringing him back to us," said William Buesing III of Port Richey, Fla., whose son Lance Cpl. Brian Buesing was among the Marines killed. Buesing said the military told him his son's body won't be returned to the family until Thursday.
"I don't know exactly what they're doing," he said, "but they said they're looking into it."
On Sunday, Army Lt. Gen. John Abizaid said the Marines were killed during heavy fighting inside the city after a small group of Iraqi solders indicated they wanted to give themselves up. They then fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the Marines' amphibious assault vehicle, according to what witnesses told journalists with the unit.
But a military source told The Washington Post that early indications suggest the nine may have been hit by an A-10 Thunderbolt II plane providing air support, whose pilot mistook them for Iraqi fighters.
Neither the Central Command nor the Pentagon would comment directly on that report, other than to say they were investigating the deaths. A Camp Lejeune spokesman said the base had no information other than what had been provided by the Pentagon.
Friendly fire and accidents have been a significant portion of the U.S. and British death toll so far. Thirty U.S. and 23 British troops are dead, with seven U.S. servicemen and women captured and 16 missing. Accidents, including helicopter crashes, vehicle wrecks and a drowning, caused 21 of the deaths.
The friendly fire incidents include a grenade attack by a U.S. Army soldier that killed two officers at his brigade headquarters in Kuwait; a British Tornado warplane that was mistakenly shot down by a U.S. Patriot missile Sunday, killing the two fliers; and a British Challenger tank that fired into another British tank during a battle Monday, killing two more servicemen.
And Thursday, 31 Marines were wounded when a convoy came under fire from members of their own task force on the road outside Nasiriyah, according to reporters traveling with them. No one was killed in that incident.
Friendly fire is an unavoidable side effect of fast-paced modern warfare, military experts say, especially when pilots are dropping bombs and shooting at enemy soldiers while they're in close combat with U.S. troops.
"The problem with air power is that those people on the ground are really small ants, and it's hard to see what uniforms they're wearing," said Patrick Garrett, an analyst with the Washington think tank GlobalSecurity.org.
Confusing ground conditions, with fighting in and around urban areas and smoke and dust from the desert, further complicate matters, as do the adrenaline and anxiety troops may feel during their first real battles.
"You can train all you want, but once you're in the real thing, there's a lot more intensity," said Jay Farrar, a former Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who remembers U.S. troops being shot at by their Israeli allies in Lebanon during the 1980s.
"There's so much going on, and there are so many variables that you can't control," said Farrar, now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "For all the advances the U.S. military has made, they are not foolproof."
Experts disagree on the number of friendly fire casualties from past wars, but say the percent of servicemen killed or wounded by "fratricide," as it's also called, has grown in recent conflicts.
Of the 148 U.S. troops killed in fighting during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, 36 died in friendly fire incidents. Garrett said they accounted for 77 percent of the casualties on the ground. The only British battlefield fatalities in 1991 were nine infantrymen attacked by a U.S. Air Force plane.
Dr. Richard Kohn, a UNC Chapel Hill professor and former chief Air Force historian for the Pentagon, said friendly fire deaths were more pronounced in the first Gulf War than in past wars and probably will be again because the Iraqi military lacks the ability to kill large numbers of U.S. troops.
"It stands out more when there are fewer casualties," he said. But Kohn doesn't think the incidents will erode public confidence.
"They know what's involved in warfare," he said, "and they know that accidents happen."
Buesing said the military hasn't told him if it suspects friendly fire killed his son or the other Marines who died Sunday.
The length of an investigation could vary greatly, taking from days to months before results are released publicly, experts said. The military would be looking for ways to avoid future incidents.
Buesing said he's been told that his son was fighting at Nasiriyah when an armored vehicle in front of him bogged down and took enemy rocket fire. His son and other Marines rushed to help and were attacked by Iraqi soldiers dressed in civilian clothes, he was told.
If his son was a victim of U.S. weapons during that conflict with the Iraqis, Buesing said, he'd want to know the truth. But it wouldn't make a difference to him.
"Whatever happened, I'm proud of my son," said Buesing, himself a former Marine. "I'm sure he was there helping somebody, and I really don't give a damn about anything else."
Copyright © 2003, The Charlotte Observer
