Word: haditha
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After pulling out of Fallujah, Kilo returned home, but by last summer it was gearing up for another tour in Iraq. The unit remained about 65% intact from the year before. In October it moved as part of a roughly 900-man Marine battalion into Haditha, a Euphrates River--valley farm town that had been in insurgents' hands for half a year. At first, the Marines encountered almost no resistance. According to Read, Kilo took up residence in a municipal building as other Marine companies spread out around town. But over time, the other units were called to duty elsewhere...
...impossible to know is whether the same lengthy experience that made the Marines more attuned to the challenges of fighting in Iraq also made them more prone to snap if provoked. As TIME reported in March, a 13-man Kilo unit was on patrol in a residential part of Haditha on Nov. 19 when its convoy of four humvees was attacked by an IED. The explosion killed Miguel Terrazas, 20, a beloved member of the unit, who was driving the fourth humvee. Terrazas had a record of being cool under fire. His brother Martin reports that Terrazas once earned...
...mystery of Haditha hinges on whether the others in the unit showed the same kind of sound judgment after Terrazas was killed. As the IED exploded, a taxi carrying five men rolled past the Marine convoy. The taxi stopped, and the men inside got out. The Marines, who suspected that the men were spotters for the IED, ordered them to lie on the ground. When they ran instead, the Marines shot and killed them. The unit then swept through four nearby houses, and in the space of the next few hours, killed 19 more people, only one of whom...
...team of investigators from NCIS has already spent weeks in Haditha unraveling the events of Nov. 19. Khaled Raseef, a spokesman for the victims' relatives and an uncle of some of the children who were killed, says the NCIS agents have visited the houses attacked by the Marines 15 times, taken survivors to one of the homes and performed a re-enactment of the unit's movements. A U.S. military source in Iraq told TIME that investigators have placed the noncommissioned officer in charge of the unit that day, Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, 26, in at least...
...With the Haditha revelations threatening to fuel antipathy toward U.S. troops, military officials have fanned out across Iraq to rerun all the old drills about rules of engagement for Marine Corps and Army units. Marine Corps rules of engagement require personnel on patrol to follow a four-step procedure to distinguish friend from foe. It's an easy mnemonic: Shout. Show. Shove. Shoot. Marines are trained to stop a suspicious Iraqi at a safe distance of about 400 meters with a shout or a gesture. If that does not work, they should make a show of force with a rifle...