Murtha Discusses Military Findings Of Iraq Incident
Pennsylvania Congressman Says Inquiry Into Deaths Shows Higher Civilian Toll
By DAVID ROGERS and MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
WASHINGTON -- A top Democratic lawmaker on defense matters said a military inquiry found that more Iraqi civilians were killed than previously reported in a bloody incident last November involving U.S. Marines in Haditha.
"It's much worse than reported," said Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, a critic of the war, but also a Marine combat veteran with close ties to the Marine command. While early reports estimated 15 civilians were killed, Mr. Murtha said the military now believes the number was 24 and that "our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."
"They actually went into the houses and killed women and children," Mr. Murtha said. "It's a very serious incident unfortunately and it shows the tremendous pressure these guys are under every day when they're out in combat and the stress and the consequences."
The Marines announced last month that three officers were relieved of command after the battalion involved in the Nov. 19 incident in Haditha ended its tour of Iraq and returned to the U.S. Those relieved included both the commander of the rifle company involved in the events under investigation and his direct superior. Neither of the two was willing to comment Wednesday, according to a Marine Corps spokesman at their base, Camp Pendleton, in Southern California.
Lt. Col. Sean Gibson, spokesman for the Marine Corps Forces at Central Command in Tampa, Fla., said the officers were relieved for "a series of things that took place during their tour in Iraq" but he wouldn't say whether the alleged killing of civilians was one of the reasons the officers were relieved of duty. Nor would he say whether Mr. Murtha's description of the investigators' findings was accurate.
"There is an ongoing investigation, therefore any comment at this time would be inappropriate and could undermine the investigatory and possible legal process," he said in a statement. "As soon as the facts are known and decisions on future actions are made, we will make that information available to the public to the fullest extent allowable."
A spokesman for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service also refused to comment on its part in the inquiry.
Mr. Murtha had traveled in the Haditha area last summer. After Time magazine published a detailed article in March challenging the initial military account of the incident, prompting an investigation, Mr. Murtha sought out top Marine commanders. He has spoken privately before of his concerns about the alleged killings, but Wednesday was the first time he had discussed the matter so openly.
The occasion was a news conference more generally on the course of the war in Iraq, six months after Mr. Murtha had called for U.S. withdrawal. He first alluded to the alleged killings, which occurred two days after he introduced his resolution calling for withdrawal. And then when questioned by a reporter, he went into more detail.
"I kept hearing reports from Marines who had come out of the field that something like this had happened," he said. The investigation since, he said, has contradicted an early Marine communiqué that 15 civilians had been killed by an explosives blast, that also cost the life of a Marine in the same unit.
"There was no fire fight. There was no explosion that killed the civilians in a bus. There was no bus. There was no shrapnel. There were only bullet holes inside the houses where the Marines had gone in."
He said he hasn't seen a final investigative report, but he appeared to be prodding the Marine command to acknowledge the incident more openly. "This is going to be a very bad thing for the United States," he said. "I don't make excuses for them," he said of the Marines involved. "I'm just understanding what their problem is."