Initial Response to Marine Raid Draws Scrutiny

Marine Corps commandant, General Michael Hagee is considering relieving some senior Marine commanders who served at the time of the alleged Haditha massacre citing a "loss of confidence" in those officers.

This is part of the ongoing investigation into whether or not there was an attempted cover up following the events in the Iraqi town.

A senior Marine general familiar with the investigation, which is being led by Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell of the Army, said in an interview that it had not yet established how high up the chain of command culpability for the killings extended. But he said there were strong suspicions that some officers knew that the Marine squad's version of events had enough holes and discrepancies that it should have been looked into more deeply.

"It's impossible to believe they didn't know," the Marine general said, referring to midlevel and senior officers. "You'd have to know this thing stunk." He was granted anonymity, along with others who described the investigation, because he was not authorized to speak publicly about it.

It is being reported that Marine commanders knew within two days that victims had died from gunshot wounds rather than from a roadside bomb as the marines had claimed, but that they saw no reason to investigate the incident any further.

The commanders have told investigators they had not viewed as unusual, in a combat environment, the discrepancies that emerged almost immediately in accounts about how the two dozen Iraqis died, and that they had no information at the time suggesting that any civilians had been killed deliberately.

The investigation is also looking into the killing of five men in a taxi shortly after the bomb went off.

In interviews with Col. Gregory Watt of the Army, who conducted a preliminary inquiry into the killings, the marines maintained they gave hand and arm signals, directing the taxi approaching their position to stop, according to a military official in Iraq who was briefed on the colonel's report.

Seconds later, the marines said, the bomb exploded. Fearing that the car's occupants either detonated the explosive or acted as spotters for those who did, the marines ordered the five men who were getting out of the car to stop and lie down on the ground.

Instead, the five men — four students and a driver — turned and ran, and the marines shot them, the troops told Colonel Watt.

But the investigator pressed the marines: if none of the Iraqi men had weapons and none had threatened the marines, why did the troops shoot them? The marines did not have a convincing reply, said the official who was briefed on the report.

I've said it before, but I have much sympathy for the stress levels endured by young men sent into battle to fight a hidden enemy. In such circumstances horrors like Haditha will occur, and for those horrors they will rightly be punished.

However, the far greater crime was committed by the people above them who lied to ensure that this unnecessary war took place.

Without those lies, these young men would never have been in Haditha in the first place.

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Tags: Haditha, massacre, marines, war, crimes,