On November 19th 2005, twenty-four civilians were murdered by U.S. Marines in Haditha, Iraq. Many were children. None were armed. And none of the perpetrators served any jail time.
In the third season of In the Dark, the hit investigative podcast hosted by Madeline Baran and now produced by The New Yorker, the shocking events of that day, and the Marine Corps’ attempts to cover them up, are explored in granular, upsetting detail.
To some extent, it’s not surprising that the young Marines, barely out of school, hopped up on adrenaline, macho camaraderie and hyper-patriotism, are so eager to be given guns and encouraged to shoot, that they haven’t a thought for those they’re shooting. But when we hear recordings of the more seasoned captains reassuring their young charges during a quiet spell that they’ll be able to kill people soon, that that “special day” will come, it’s as jarring as it is horrifying.
Of course, no group is a monolith, and we do hear from Marines who are appalled at what has been done by their colleagues, and in their name. Yet these voices are so dwarfed by the bloodthirsty contingent that the culture of the institution soon becomes chilling in its clarity — time and again, the basic humanity of the Iraqi citizens is completely disregarded. If the third season of In the Dark is not exactly a binge listen, it’s because being overwhelmed by instance after instance of such awful contempt for human life is so utterly bleak, so maddening, that you need to break it up a little for the good of your soul.
As such, it’s hard to imagine what the four-year-long, extraordinarily labor-intensive research process must have been like for Baran and her team from an emotional perspective. From a logistical one, we’re given far more of a clue. While the brutality of the crimes at Haditha and the lack of accountability for those who committed them are the main takeaways of the podcast, not far behind are the insights we get into what it takes to mount an investigation that unearths sickening facts that one of the world’s most powerful institutions has been determined to keep hidden. From doorstepping the sources who really do not want to talk — one reporter even has dogs sent after them — to suing the government on multiple occasions, the lengths to which In The Dark goes to exhume the truth are extraordinary.
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Over the course of the show’s nine episodes, we hear from Marines, archivists, lawyers, translators, all manner of technicians, and a forensic photographer. The latter here proves to be one of the most helpful — and wrenching — sources. When Baran asks former detective and forensic photography expert Kevin Parmelee to help her understand the photos taken of the massacre, and what they reveal about how the atrocities were committed, he agrees. Still, he advises her that thanks to all the horrific images he’s witnessed over his long career, he knows that even the grisliest don’t necessarily provide investigatory help. The subtext: don’t expect me to be shaken by this, I’ve seen it all.
Baran catches up with him after he’s studied the pictures. He’s spent hours noting bullet trajectories and splatter patterns, and concluded from entry and exit wounds that any bluster from the Marines about shooting in self-defense was fallacious. He walks Baran through, in grim, precise detail, how he’s concluded that these defenseless civilians were executed. The more he talks, the more devastated he sounds.
Throughout the series, we also hear from the surviving relatives of the massacred. Because many of those killed were from the same family, the few left behind have had to live the two decades since it happened without parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. Khalid Salman Raseef, whose contact with the In the Dark team set the whole investigation in motion, lost fifteen members of his family that day. The sheer scale of his loss is hard to fathom.
But just as In the Dark is rigorous in recounting how those innocent civilians died, it’s determined to tell us how they lived — who they loved, what they did with their days, all the hopes they had for a future they’d never see. As a stark counterbalance to the dehumanizing attitude of the Marines, three words that close out the entire series are devastatingly succinct: “They were people.”
It’s hard to recommend any piece of culture that made you feel physically ill for most of its duration. And yet, after hearing military officials gloat about their success in covering up the crimes, hearing how little value was placed on Iraqi lives, and hearing how arduous the process of information gathering was made for the tireless investigation team, listening to the third season of In the Dark feels like a tiny, vital act of rebellion against overwhelming systemic injustice.
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Chloe Walker is a writer based in the UK. You can find her work at Culturefly, the BFI, Paste, and her Letterboxd page.