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WASHINGTON - Stark evidence is emerging of deliberate reprisal killings of about two dozen civilians, including women and children, by a handful of U.S. Marines last November in what may prove to be the worst atrocity yet by U.S. forces in Iraq.
On the eve of Memorial Day weekend, when Americans honour their armed forces with parades and marching bands, President George W. Bush's administration was girding for a new spate of horrific revelations. Although no charges have yet been laid, the Pentagon is in damage-control mode and the top Marine general has flown to Iraq to steady his charges.
In closed sessions, senior military officers have been briefing key lawmakers about the two-month-old investigation, which is nearing completion. As many as a dozen Marines could face charges to include murder, dereliction of duty and making false reports for trying to cover up what happened.
It is alleged that a small squad of Marines killed at least three separate groups of people in cold blood - five men in a taxi and two larger groups, including women and children, in two houses in the city of Haditha. It appears to have been a deliberate set of reprisal killings after a Marine was killed by insurgents, according to reports pieced together from those who have attended the briefings.
"This was not an accident," said Minnesota Republican John Kline, a former Marine colonel who was briefed about the killings along with other members of the House of Representatives armed-services committee. "This was not an immediate response to an attack. This would be an atrocity," he told The New York Times.
In preparation for what will be a massive blow to morale in the intensely proud and close-knit Marine Corps, General Michael Hagee flew to Iraq yesterday.
"The most difficult part of courage is not the raw physical courage that we have seen so often on today's battlefield," the commander said in a statement to all his troops. "It is rather the moral courage to do the 'right thing' in the face of danger or pressure from other Marines."
The implication, that subordinates may have failed to resist an unlawful order to kill innocent civilians, awakened echoes of Abu Ghraib, the Baghdad-area prison where Iraqi prisoners were abused and humiliated by a group of army reservists on the orders of a former guard. It is the most vile stain to date on U.S. forces in Iraq.
"It will be worse than Abu Ghraib; nobody was killed at Abu Ghraib," retired Marine Brigadier-General David Brahms told The Washington Post.
A scandal of such magnitude could send shock waves all the way to the White House.
It was just this week that President George W. Bush described Abu Ghraib as "the biggest mistake that's happened so far, at least from our country's involvement in Iraq." The pictures of abused Iraqis that rapidly circulated throughout the Arab world undermined Mr. Bush's claims that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq held the moral high ground and stood in sharp contrast to the wanton brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime.
"We've been paying for that for a long period of time," Mr. Bush said.
Allegations of an atrocity at Haditha, about 200 kilometres northwest of Baghdad, began circulating in the Arab media after a video of bloodstained walls surfaced. Time magazine published the first U.S. report on the allegations in March.
At first, Marines said that 15 civilians had died in a roadside bombing. Then it was reported that some had died in the crossfire as Marines fought with Iraqi insurgents in violence-torn Anbar province.
But John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and a 37-year Marine Corps veteran, said the investigation now indicates otherwise.
"There was no fire fight," said Mr. Murtha, one of the most respected congressmen on military affairs and the first to openly call for a withdrawal from Iraq.
He added: "There was no IED [improvised explosive device] that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."
Virginia Republican John Warner, chairman of the armed-services committee, confirmed there were "very serious allegations and there have been facts substantiated to date to underpin those allegations."
But he also said he hopes that people "will keep in mind the magnificent performance of nearly one million men and women of the United States armed forces who have rotated in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan."
The marines deployed to Haditha at the time of the alleged atrocity were from the Third Battalion of the First Marine Regiment of the First Marine Division. They have since returned to their home base at Camp Pendleton, Calif. Last month, the battalion commander and two company commanders were relieved of their duties; it is not clear whether it was related to the probe.