Word: haditha
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...Today's Marine is better educated, better trained and better led than ever before. Marines of all ranks are aware of the standards of battlefield conduct. Yet there apparently was a disregard of those standards by a very few. Even in a combat zone, one can commit murder, and Haditha looks like such a case...
...never forget the thousands of Marines, many on their third and fourth tours, whose conduct on this most treacherous of battlefields has been not just honorable, but selfless and heroic. And even if proved, Haditha is no My Lai, with its victims in the hundreds, attendant sexual crimes, direct officer involvement and high-level cover-up by a dozen officers, including colonels and generals...
...That is why the apparent failure by at least a dozen Marines to come forward and tell the truth about what happened in Haditha has senior Corps commanders as worried about the incident as they are about the actions of the two or three Marines who allegedly did most of the killing. If the horrors of Haditha are borne out, and becomes the worst massacre in the 231-year history of the Corps, it will cause a shudder to the very top. Explains a former Marine officer, "We build a small Corps of men and women who truly believe that...
...most Marines, it is the second investigation (the first is a criminal inquiry being conducted by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service), the one being done by Army Major General Eldon Bargewell, that is so crucial to the Corps. In early March, the Marine leadership, recognizing the potential impact of Haditha, recommended that an officer from a different service conduct an investigation into how the incident was reported. The Marines also asked for a two-star general to do the inquiry to ensure that it be able to go to the highest Marine levels in Iraq. In the military, a junior...
...Haditha has caused the senior Marine officer, the one reading up on historical atrocities, to reexamine the concept of punishment in America, and it is here that he is resentful of the outside world, not just those who may have committed such acts. He was surprised by a passage in America in Vietnam which details how Americans traditionally think a soldier who commits a war crime should be put to death with little regard to the conditions or insight into the soldier himself. But a common murderer is treated more thoughtfully - his background, childhood, education and social circumstances are taken...