Death in Haditha

A QUICK WAR in Iraq has become a long, violent occupation, and US troops are under intense strain. But that is no excuse for massacre. If the killings in Haditha were unprovoked, as they seem to have been, the Marines responsible should be prosecuted with the full power of military law. Anyone who tried to cover up a war crime should be held to account as well.

Over the last few weeks, investigators from the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service have done a thorough job of interviewing witnesses and collecting other evidence about what happened last Nov. 19 when Marines swept through a neighborhood in Haditha, a town in Anbar province, hotbed of the insurgency. But it is reasonable to ask why it took them so long to investigate an incident known to many Marines in the area.

Members of the 3d Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, were understandably angry when Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas was killed by a roadside bomb. But then, according to eyewitnesses quoted by Time magazine, several Marines took their revenge by murdering 24 civilians in the vicinity of the attack.

The killings prompt comparisons with the My Lai massacre, in which US soldiers slaughtered more than 300 Vietnamese in 1968. The troops there were draftees. The Marines in Haditha were professionals; the battalion was on its third posting to Iraq. Both soldiers and Marines were fighting on battlefields where enemy combatants blended with civilians. As in Vietnam, most US troops in Iraq do not engage in wanton killing. The ambiguities of insurgent war may partially explain, but do not excuse, atrocities.

In March, Time was the first news organization to report on the possibility of a massacre in Haditha. Since then the battalion commander and two company commanders have been relieved. General Michael Hagee, commandant of the Marine Corps, has gone to Iraq to tell Marines to follow the rules of warfare. Defense Department briefers have told congressmen to expect indictments. It sounds as if the Pentagon is serious about criminal prosecutions.

Most high-ranking officers escaped unscathed from the fallout of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. The Pentagon needs to probe deeply to determine whether a cover-up of the Haditha killings extended beyond the battalion.

The Senate Armed Services Committee will also be investigating. The My Lai massacre, covered up for more than a year, symbolized the moral bankruptcy of the Vietnam War. Senators need to determine whether the Haditha killings were a shameful anomaly or, three years into the occupation, a manifestation of a deep coarsening in the US force.