Gen. Pace: Wait for probe of Iraq deaths [Archive] - Marine Corps

thedrifter

05-30-06, 11:20 AM

Nation's honor requires full inquiry into Haditha killings
Updated 5/29/2006 9:44 PM ET
It was a hard thing to have to address on Memorial Day.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, responding to a brewing scandal over an alleged massacre of as many as 24 civilians by Marines in the western Iraqi town of Haditha, pledged that two investigations would get to the bottom of what happened and that appropriate action would be taken.

The investigations are another painful reminder that there are no tidy wars. Young soldiers under tremendous stress don't always act honorably. Those dishonorable actions by a few tarnish the vast majority whose sacrifices and courage were marked Monday in ceremonies and remembrances across the USA.

That is all the more reason to make sure that the Haditha inquiries — into the alleged massacre and a possible coverup — live up to Pace's promise.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a former Marine and outspoken critic of the Iraq war, says the preliminary findings sketch a disturbing sequence: that after a bomb rocked a military convoy in the town Nov. 19 and killed a Marine, other Marines shot and killed unarmed civilians in a taxi and at least two homes.

Witnesses cited by The New York Times Monday say the dead included a 77-year-old man in a wheelchair and a 4-year-old boy in one home, and five children in the other.

Jumping to conclusions is, as Pace said, premature. So is any comparison to Vietnam's My Lai massacre, where hundreds died at the hands of U.S. soldiers.

But one particularly disturbing aspect is that it took reporting by Time magazine in March to reopen a quickly closed Haditha probe. Time challenged official accounts that civilians were killed in a roadside bombing or in a crossfire between insurgents and Marines.

It's understandable that military officials might have little appetite for an unvarnished investigation, which is why Congress also needs to play an active role. The war in Iraq has already damaged the image of America's military — particularly, as President Bush noted last week, the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.

And amid all the killing, torture and violence in Iraq, the deaths of a dozen or two more Iraqis — fewer, even, than died in bombings Monday — might seem inconsequential. Many Iraqis have reacted to the reports about Haditha with the numb shrugs of those inured to brutality.

But that is not the point. Iraqi insurgents carry out premeditated slaughter of innocents with appalling regularity. The United States should never stoop to that level. It is a measure of a country's moral strength that it can face up to such horror, investigate it thoroughly and punish it appropriately.

Ellie