Not good news about the Haditha Marines:
Marines will face criminal charges for a Nov. 19 incident that left 24 Iraqi civilians dead, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Michael W. Hagee confirmed Wednesday to Marine Corps Times.
While not revealing who will be charged, or the severity of the charges, Hagee said the investigation shows mistakes were made that will result in courts-martial.
Hagee’s comments came after a late-in-the-day briefing with Sens. John W. Warner, R-Va., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., the chairman and ranking Democrat of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
He was visiting Capitol Hill in anticipation of the release of two investigative reports, which are expected to show that among the 24 civilians killed in Hadithah, 125 miles northwest of Baghdad, five of the victims — all unarmed — were shot in a car with no warning, according to Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who received a briefing earlier in the afternoon.
At least seven of the victims were women and three were children.
Hagee would not say when the reports, one on administrative issues and the other on criminal charges, would be completed. He would only say that parallel investigations, which have been under way for six months, “are ongoing.” Congressional members said, however, that the administrative report by Multi-National Forces Iraq is expected before the end of the week, and the criminal investigation report by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service is due in June.
If it turns out these Marines did murder these people in cold blood then they should all be strung up. For dishonoring my Marine Corps and their country.
But, unlike Murtha, I will await the investigations and the trials. The American way states that they are innocent until proven guilty and I still believe that. The story still seems farfetched to me. It would entail a whole platoon of Marines to go off the deep end and murder these people.
Could it be they reacted to a situation where they believed they were threatened…and they shouldn’t have? This seems more plausible but until the trials start its all conjecture. The Commandant even stated “mistakes” were made, not murder.
Also, unlike Murtha, I will not turn this into a trial against the war. The bad ones get sent to prison or to the death chamber, but those bad ones still only compose a miniscule percentage of those who serve our country. His attempts to politicize this case, as I’m sure many on the left will also participate in soon, are pathetic and wrong.
UPDATE 5/26/06
The MSM has picked up on the story:
Investigators believe that their criminal investigation into the deaths of about two dozen Iraqi civilians points toward a conclusion that Marines committed unprovoked murders, a senior defense official said Friday.
The Marine Corps initially reported 15 deaths and said they were caused by a roadside bomb and an ensuing firefight with insurgents. A separate investigation is seeking to determine if Marines lied to cover up the killings.
The official, who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the yet-to-be-completed investigation, said the evidence developed by investigators strongly indicates the killings last November in the insurgent-plagued city of Haditha in the western province of Anbar were unjustified.
