The Shame Of Kilo Company (Not My Headline!)

The Shame Of Kilo Company
Sparked by a TIME report published in March, a U.S. military investigation is probing the killing of as many as 24 Iraqi civilians by a group of Marines in the town of Haditha last November. Several Marines may face criminal charges, including murder. And new revelations suggest that their superiors may have helped in a cover-up
By MICHAEL DUFFY

Posted Sunday, May 28, 2006
The outfit known as Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, wasn't new to Iraq last year when it moved into Haditha, a Euphrates River farming town about 150 miles northwest of Baghdad. Several members of the unit were on their second tour of Iraq; one was on his third. The men in Kilo Company were veterans of ferocious house-to-house fighting in Fallujah. Their combat experience seemed to prepare them for the ordeal of serving in an insurgent stronghold like Haditha, the kind of place where the enemy attacks U.S. troops from the cover of mosques, schools and homes and uses civilians as shields, complicating Marine engagement rules to shoot only when threatened. In Haditha, says a Marine who has been there twice, "you can't tell a bad guy until he shoots you."

But one morning last November, some members of Kilo Company apparently didn't attempt to distinguish between enemies and innocents. Instead, they seem to have gone on the worst rampage by U.S. service members in the Iraq war, killing as many as 24 civilians in cold blood. The details of what happened in Haditha were first disclosed in March by TIME's Tim McGirk and Aparisim Ghosh, and their reporting prompted the military to launch an inquiry into the civilian deaths. The darkest suspicions about the killings were confirmed last week, when members of Congress who were briefed on the two ongoing military investigations disclosed that at least some members of a Marine unit may soon be charged in connection with the deaths of the Iraqis--and that the charges may include murder, which carries the death penalty. "This was a small number of Marines who fired directly on civilians and killed them," said Representative John Kline, a Minnesota Republican and former Marine who was briefed two weeks ago by Marine Corps officials. "This is going to be an ugly story."

More @ http://tinyurl.com/px5tr Time Mag

OK been there, done that, and heard this tale of woe many times before.

Here is the deal: "This is war! This is a war without front lines! This is a war were the other guys don't wear uniforms and fight you straight up. This is a war where you shoot first and don't ask any questions, if you want to be alive a few minutes hence that's what you do. I dare any of the people who are up in arms about this to change places with one of these Marines and see how they react in the same situations. Tis very easy to Monday Morning Quarterback from the safety of the Pentagon or behind your desk in a news office. Try getting 'your ass in the grass with the troops' before you begin saying what should or should not have been done. Personally I'd kill any number of other people, civilians or otherwise out of hand before I would unnecessarily risk the life of one trooper under my command."