US military ready for “pain” over Iraqi killings

By Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Commanders can expect a “day of pain”
once the top U.S. general in Iraq reviews a report that finds
they failed to act on complaints their troops killed 24
civilians at Haditha, a U.S. military official said on
Saturday.

The report into whether officers failed to investigate or
even covered up for Marines accused by Iraqis of killing men,
women and children in cold blood was passed to General George
Casey on Friday, the military said in a brief statement.

Disciplinary action now seems likely, officials said, over
failures by 2nd Marine Division officers in their command duty.

“The Marines will go through their day of pain,” said a
military official in Baghdad familiar with recommendations made
by ground forces commander, Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli.

Its findings should be made public soon, possibly in a
week, as U.S. generals and diplomats strive to assure a
skeptical Iraqi public — and their new government — that
soldiers are being held accountable for a string of suspected
abuses.

Those include a rape-murder case that has outraged the
nation and fueled calls for the 127,000 Americans to go home.

It is for Casey to decide what disciplinary action to take
over Haditha. The report prepared by Major General Eldon
Bargewell identified failings in areas “from reporting, to
training to command environment,” the military official said.

He made clear that action is likely, but stressed that the
report is entirely separate from the criminal murder probe
under way into troops accused by Iraqis of shooting the 24
people on November 19 after a bomb killed a Marine.

The key complaint against senior officers is a failure to
question inconsistencies in their troops’ accounts of the day.

Haditha is in violent Anbar province, the heart of the
Sunni minority’s insurgency in the west where three U.S.
soldiers attached to a Marine unit were killed in action on
Saturday.

Broadening efforts to quell the revolt, Iraqi Foreign
Minister Hoshiyar Zebari took part in talks in Tehran with
other regional governments seeking cooperation to calm the
violence.

Iraqi and U.S. leaders have accused Sunni Arab neighbors
and Shi’ite Iran of aiding militants in Iraq. Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the meeting “terrorists” must be kept
out of Iraq to deny U.S. troops an excuse to stay.

Not only Sunni rebels but also nominally pro-government
Shi’ite militias threaten the peace. In a new sign Iraqi and
U.S. forces are clamping down, troops surrounded a Baghdad
mosque. Police said they were hunting Shi’ite militants inside.

FALSE STATEMENT

The Marines said in a statement the day after the killings
in Haditha last year that 15 of the civilian dead were killed
by the same roadside bomb which killed the Marine during a
patrol.

At the heart of the Bargewell report is how that version
was left uncorrected even after medical reports showed all the
dead had gunshot wounds and survivors told Time magazine
Marines went from house to house in a rage. Among the dead was
a girl aged 3.

Time said that when confronted in January with a video of
the dead in the city morgue, a Marine spokesman dismissed the
allegations by Iraqis as al Qaeda propaganda, even though a
Marine officer had also paid out nearly $40,000 in
compensation.

After Time published its story in March, three Marine field
officers from the regiment involved, a lieutenant colonel and
two captains, were relieved of their commands.

Chiarelli, appointed in January, has demanded subordinate
commanders tighten procedures to limit injuries to civilians
that have turned many Iraqis against the army that takes credit
for freeing them from Saddam Hussein.

Officials say killings of civilians by U.S. troops on
convoy and checkpoint duty have dropped to about one a week now
from an average of one a day last year as a result of new
measures.

As Washington seeks a pro-American Iraq, Chiarelli has said
that such deaths at U.S. hands risk making new enemies.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose Shi’ite Islamic bloc
has swept to power on the strength of U.S.-installed majority
rule, complained this week that a failure to hold soldiers
accountable had “emboldened” them to commit crimes such as the
alleged rape and murder of a teenager at Mahmudiya in March.

Stung by the outcry at the killing of Abeer Qasim Hamza,
her parents and sister, Maliki wants a review of troops’
immunity from Iraqi justice. Former private Steven Green was
charged with rape and murder. Serving soldiers are also under
investigation.