Word: haditha
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Three officers have already been removed from their posts in the wake of the allegations that U.S. Marines killed 24 civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha. But while top-level officials in the Marine Corps await the report from Army Maj. General Eldon Bargewell, who is investigating the actions of the Marines and the chain of command after the incident, the promotion of one of the Marines who is the focus of the criminal investigation is drawing new scrutiny...
...Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, the Marine who was the unit leader on the ground that day in Haditha, was put on the Marine Corps list for promotion from sergeant to staff sergeant in October 2005. Being put on the list, however, does not ensure promotion; the Marine's commander must okay it first, and the Marine Corps routinely holds up nominations or promotions if there is any reason to question the actions of a Marine. Even a charge of "driving while intoxicated," for example, can delay or derail a step...
...Still, Wuterich, who has over seven years in the Corps but was on his first combat duty in Haditha, was officially promoted to the higher rank on January 1, 2006, six weeks after the incident took place. That has led some Marine sources to suspect there was at least a failure to report relevant details up the chain of command. Others, including Wuterich's attorney, Neal Puckett, argue that Wuterich acted appropriately under the rules of engagement in Haiditha and that if his superior officers had suspected otherwise, Wuterich's promotion would have been stopped...
...other inquiry into the alleged Haditha massacre, being conducted by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, is not likely to reach its final conclusions until later this summer. One problem slowing that probe is the refusal of Iraqi families to allow the bodies of the victims to be exhumed. In some previous cases where U.S. troops were under suspicion, Iraqi corpses have in fact been brought back to Dover Air Force Base for US forensic specialists to examine. Navy investigators are still trying to get the Iraqi families in the Haditha probe to change their minds...
...ultimate focus should be on the leaders who put our brave men and women in this hellish situation in the first place and who stubbornly and arrogantly leave them there to fight a senseless and unwinnable war. Bill Blackwell Timonium, Maryland, U.S. Your story refers to the Haditha incident as "an alleged atrocity committed by a small group of Marines that promises to haunt the hearts and minds of liberator and liberated alike." Liberated? From what? From living under a dictatorship, but in relative peace, to living under foreign occupation, in fear, poverty, civil war and terror? Under blatantly false...