Murtha: Marines covered up Iraq atrocity

[thedrifter]

Murtha: Marines covered up Iraq atrocity
By UPI Staff
United Press International
May 29, 2006

WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., says U.S. commanders knew about the killing of civilians by Marines in Iraq last November.

Murtha told ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" it was clear the military knew about the deaths because payments had been made for "accidental deaths."

A U.S. team investigated the incident that took place in Haditha. The same day Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas was killed by a roadside bomb, several Marines went on a rampage -- killing 24 Iraqis, including innocent women and children -- Murtha said.

Murtha said it is still uncertain who authorized the coverup, but he said it may have gone up the chain of command to Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said there was no serious investigation until Time magazine broke the story in March.

Time reported Saturday a videotape of the scene shows that many of the victims, especially the women and children, were in their nightclothes when they were killed.

"We've already lost the direction in this war," said Murtha. "We diverted ourselves from the real war against terrorism into Iraq."

[thedrifter]

Congressman alleges Marines covered up killings
- Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post
Monday, May 29, 2006


Washington -- A powerful member of Congress alleged Sunday that there has been a conscious effort by Marine commanders to cover up the facts of a November incident in which rampaging Marines allegedly killed 24 Iraqi civilians.

"There has to have been a cover-up of this thing," Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, charged in an interview on ABC's "This Week." "No question about it."

John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also raised the issue of whether the military chain of command reacted properly and legally.

"There is this serious question ... of what happened and when it happened, and what was the immediate reaction of the senior officers in the Marine Corps when they began to gain knowledge of it," he said on the same program. He added, "That is seriously a question that is going to be examined."

Warner said he intends to hold hearings on the Haditha incident as soon as he can without interfering with the prosecution of criminal charges, which are expected to be brought this summer.

Iraqi witnesses in Haditha, an Upper Euphrates Valley farm town, say the Americans shot men, women and children on Nov. 19 at close range in retaliation for the death of a Marine lance corporal in a roadside bombing.

Two U.S. military inquiries began earlier this year after Time magazine presented military officials in Baghdad with the findings of its investigation, based on survivors' accounts and on a videotape shot by an Iraqi journalism student at Haditha's hospital and inside victims' houses. People familiar with the case say they expect charges of murder, dereliction of duty and making a false statement will be brought against several Marines.

Murtha, who like Warner is a former Marine, said there was a preliminary investigation by the military but that it was stifled. Until Time's report appeared in March, four months after the incident, he said, there was no serious investigation.

Murtha said he understands the stress being put on Marines fighting in western Iraq's turbulent Anbar province: "The pressure builds every time they go out," with roadside bombs exploding "every day they go out."

But, he said, "I will not excuse murder, and this is what has happened," adding that there is "no question in my mind about it."

He reiterated a previous statement that shootings of women and children occurred in cold blood and there was no firefight in which civilians were killed in a crossfire, as some Marines asserted after the event.

Murtha was most emphatic in discussing his belief that senior Marine officers acted to prevent the facts of the case from emerging. "The problem is, who covered up? And why did they cover it up?" he asked. He said an investigation should have been conducted immediately after the incident, with the facts disclosed to the public at that time.

Instead, he said, the Marine Corps issued a statement that falsely asserted the Iraqis had been killed in the initial bomb blast. The Marines knew that was not true, he said, because they paid the families of the dead, which is done only to compensate for accidental deaths inflicted by U.S. troops.

"We don't know how far it goes," Murtha said of the alleged cover-up. "The Marines knew about it all this time. Somebody in the chain of command decided not to allow this to happen. How far up it went, I don't know."

Asked about Murtha's charges, Lt. Col. Scott Fazekas, a Marine Corps spokesman, said: "The investigation isn't complete, so it isn't appropriate for me to comment."

Murtha also talked about a more recent allegation against a separate group of Marines in western Iraq accused of killing an Iraqi man and then trying to make it look as if the victim had been planting a bomb, or an IED, an improvised explosive device. "A Marine, or some Marines, pulled somebody out of a house, put them next to an IED thing, fired some AK's so they'd have cartridges there, and then tried to cover that up," Murtha said.

The case concerns a man killed April 26 at Mamandiya, near Fallujah. The U.S. military disclosed the case in a press statement Wednesday, saying local Iraqi leaders had brought the killing to the attention of the U.S. military and it is under criminal investigation by the military. Several Marines assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, have been recalled to their base at Camp Pendleton in that investigation.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, a tribal chief who challenged Iraq's most feared terrorist and sent fighters to help U.S. troops battle al Qaeda in western Iraq died in a hail of bullets Sunday -- the latest victim of an apparent insurgent campaign against Sunni Arabs who work with Americans.

Sheikh Osama al-Jadaan, was ambushed by gunmen as he was being driven in Baghdad's Mansour district, a predominantly Sunni Arab area. Al-Jadaan's driver and one of his bodyguards also were killed, police Lt. Maitham Abdul Razzaq said.

Al-Jadaan was a leader of the Karabila tribe, which has thousands of members in Anbar province, an insurgent hotbed stretching from west of Baghdad to the Syrian border. He had announced an agreement with the U.S.-backed Iraqi government to help security forces track down al Qaeda members and foreign fighters.

In all, shootings and bombings killed nine people and wounded 35 across the country Sunday, and the bodies of at least 10 more people were found in Baghdad.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.