Word: commandant
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...Sean MacFarland, the commander of U.S. forces in Ramadi, knows another powerful man when he sees one. MacFarland understood immediately the sway Sheik Abdul Sittar holds in Ramadi when he met the tribal leader for the first time in August. "The walls were just lined with guys in the sheik robes," MacFarland says, describing the scene at Sittar's compound when he arrived for a formal meeting with the sheik shortly after assuming command in the area. Among Sittar's guests that day were local police officials who often fail to turn up for meetings called by the governor...
...Tasked with clearing Ramadi of insurgents, MacFarland and the officers under his command had been looking for local allies to help with the fight since they arrived in the summer as Ramadi became an urban battleground. Seemingly from nowhere Sittar, the leader of the Albu Risha tribe, volunteered himself - and the thousands of followers loyal to him. Shortly before MacFarland met Sittar, a tribal alliance led by the sheik had come together and issued a manifesto denouncing al-Qaeda in Iraq and pledging support to American forces. MacFarland had heard about Sittar and his movement, which the sheiks call...
...took TIME six weeks to piece together our investigation - the clincher was an interview with a girl who survived a killing spree by Marines inside her home - and then we turned our evidence over to the U.S. military command in Baghdad. The military launched a full inquiry, which lasted 13 months, splitting into two separate investigations: the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians, and the failure of Marine superior officers to truthfully investigate and report what had happened. In other words, some of the Marines tried to cover up the slayings...
...well as by Americans. That may help explain the extensive indictment, announced Thursday at Camp Pendleton, California - four Marines charged with murder in the killing of 24 Iraqis, and another four officers charged with dereliction of duty for not relaying accurate information about the killings up the chain of command. The charges send a sharp message of zero tolerance for abuses of civilians to U.S. uniformed personnel in Iraq, but also to Iraqis, whose Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, had branded the incident as emblematic of a contempt for Iraqi civilian life on the part of U.S. forces. Altering that...
...retaliation for a roadside bomb attack that killed one of their men. "As the result of a query by Time Magazine reporter in January 2006, there were several distinct but related investigations into the circumstances of the deaths of the 24 civilians, and into how the chain of command reported and investigated those deaths," said a military statement briefing reporters on the case...