Word: haditha
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...knows how long it will be before the world knows precisely what happened along Haditha's Hay al-Sinnai Road on the morning of Nov. 19, when 24 Iraqis, almost all of them unarmed, died during a five-hour encounter with a Marine Corps patrol. The incident, first reported by TIME in March, has sparked two major military investigations--one into the possibility that the Marines deliberately murdered unarmed Iraqis and another into a possible cover-up that followed. It has flung open the door to reports, some real, others already discredited, of other civilians being targeted in battle...
What happened in Haditha has the makings of one of those turning points in a military operation. This one freed a nation from dictatorship, then left Iraq on the verge of anarchy and now looks to many Americans to have been wrong from the start. The crisis has erupted at a distinctly inopportune time, with the Administration trying to reduce the size of the U.S. presence in Iraq, even as military commanders are reporting backsliding in places as diverse as Ramadi in Anbar province and Basra in the south. "We are in trouble in Iraq," says retired Army General Barry...
Whether that trust can be restored depends on what investigators uncover about the Haditha affair and how the military handles the matter going forward. A knowledgeable congressional source monitoring the Haditha probes says congressional aides are being told by Marine officers in the Pentagon that the number of Marines who may be charged with murder is small. But the source speculates that the total number who may be charged with crimes ranging from murder to aiding in the attack or trying to cover it up could be as high as 10, according to Marines who have talked to officials...
...criminal investigation, which will probably produce charges against Marines for committing slayings, is expected to extend into the summer. Three months after TIME published the first account of the incident, new details about the events leading up to the fateful morning in Haditha have shed light on why a small group of Marines apparently abandoned all semblance of self-restraint in a deadly burst of vengeance. But other questions are likely to remain--about who bears ultimate responsibility for the killings, about other possible incidents of military misconduct in Iraq and about whether the U.S. can do anything to stop...
...government in 21 days but too small to maintain order in a nation of 26 million with deep ethnic divisions. That strategic decision had tactical consequences, and they can be seen in the record of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines. Late last year, U.S. commanders tried to hold Haditha, a town of 90,000 riddled with insurgents, at times with just one company of 160 men. The job fell to Kilo, which had already seen some of the ugliest fighting in the postinvasion period. According to Lucian Read--a freelance photographer who has spent 13 months in Iraq, five...