NYT
WASHINGTON — The second-ranking American commander in Iraq has concluded that some senior Marine officers were negligent in failing to investigate more aggressively the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians by marines in Haditha last November, two Defense Department officials said Friday.
The officer, Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, concluded that in the deaths, including those of 10 women and children and an elderly man in a wheelchair, senior officers failed to follow up on inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the initial reporting of the incident that should have raised questions.
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It was not clear Friday whether General Huck or Colonel Davis, or Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Johnson, the senior marine officer in Iraq at the time, would be personally implicated. But if they were to be disciplined, they would be among the most senior American officers punished since the Iraq war started in early 2003.
An officer who served in Iraq with the Second Marine Division at the time of the killings in Haditha noted that a spate of recent cases in which American troops were being investigated for killing unarmed Iraqi civilians — including the rape and murder of a young Iraqi woman and the killing of her family in Mahmudiya — had raised concerns that commanders may be under pressure to make an example of Marine officers in the Haditha incident.
"We're all waiting anxiously to see how this one gets taken on," said the officer, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to talk about the unit or any part of the investigation. "Major General Huck is about as thorough and detailed a guy as you are ever going to see."
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