Murtha: Iraqi killings worse than Abu Ghraib

Reuters / Kristin Roberts | May 29 2006

The killing of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines has done more damage to America's aims in Iraq than the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, a Democratic congressman and vocal war critic said on Sunday.

Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a decorated retired Marine, told ABC News there was "no question" that the U.S. military tried to cover up the killing of as many as two dozen Iraqi civilians last year in the town of Haditha.

"I will not excuse murder," Murtha said. "And this is what happened. There's no question in my mind about it."

The military is investigating the November 19 incident, a case some American media are comparing to the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam when U.S. soldiers slaughtered up to 500 villagers.

The U.S. military has said 15 civilians were killed in Haditha, about 140 miles northwest of Baghdad. Other accounts put the number at around 24.

While a senior Republican senator vowed to hold hearings on the Marines' actions, Murtha said the killings hurt the United States' ability to push its political agenda in Iraq, and repeated assertions that the war cannot be won militarily.

"We're set back every time something like this happens," he said. "This is worse than Abu Ghraib."

In a separate case, several Marines have been sent back from Iraq and confined at a military base in California as officials investigate the killing of an Iraqi civilian in April, according to a military official.

The killing of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines has done more damage to America's aims in Iraq than the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, a Democratic congressman and vocal war critic said on Sunday.

"I will not excuse murder," Murtha said. "And this is what happened. There's no question in my mind about it."

The military is investigating the November 19 incident, a case some American media are comparing to the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam when U.S. soldiers slaughtered up to 500 villagers.

The U.S. military has said 15 civilians were killed in Haditha, about 140 miles northwest of Baghdad. Other accounts put the number at around 24.

"We're set back every time something like this happens," he said. "This is worse than Abu Ghraib."

According to the Times, military investigators have concluded that a dozen Marines acted improperly in an incident in which U.S. troops responded to a roadside bomb that killed a Marine by killing unarmed civilians, including women and children, and then tried to cover it up.

Marine Corps spokesman Lt. Col. Scott Fazekas declined to comment on Murtha's charges, saying it could jeopardize those involved or compromise the investigation.

Murtha, who said he based his assertions on briefings he received from high-level military officials, added: "There was an investigation right afterward, but then it was stifled."

Time magazine, whose report on Haditha in March sparked a first investigation, reported on Sunday that members of the 13-member Marine unit involved in the incident had begun "rolling on each other" as contradictions emerged in the initial accounts given by those soldiers and their superiors.

Three Marine officers, including the company commander and battalion commander, were relieved of duty in part for actions related to the Haditha killings, the weekly magazine said.

There are 21,000 Marines serving in Iraq in one of the most violent regions of the country. More than 700 have died since the war began.

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