The Iraq War and Honesty

Troubling news from recently declassified documents on the killing of Iraqi civilians by US marines in Haditha in 2005.  A Captain and three enlisted men face charges in a military court tomorrow, but does the cover-up extend much higher up the chain of command?

Recently unclassified documents suggest that senior officers viewed the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in late 2005 as a potential public relations problem that could fuel insurgent propaganda against the American military, leading investigators to question whether the officers’ immediate response had been intentionally misleading. 

Col. R. Gary Sokoloski, a lawyer who was chief of staff to Maj. General Richard A. Huck, the division commander, approved a news release about the killings that investigators interviewing him in March 2006 suggested was “intentionally inaccurate” because it stated, contrary to the facts at hand, that the civilians had been killed by an insurgent’s bomb...

The documents also show that derailing enemy propaganda was important to senior Marine commanders, including Col. Stephen W. Davis, a highly regarded regimental commander under General Huck, who played down questions about the civilian killings from a Time magazine reporter last year, long after the attacks and the civilian toll were clear to the military...

Four officers were charged with failing to properly investigate the civilian killings. The first hearing against one of the officers, Capt. Randy W. Stone, is set for Tuesday morning, in a military courtroom at Camp Pendleton, Calif. Three enlisted marines are charged with the killings. Their hearings, to determine whether the charges warrant general courts-martial, are set to begin in the coming weeks. As Marine Corps prosecutors prepare their evidence against Captain Stone and his fellow officers, the unclassified documents suggest that senior Marine commanders dismissed, played down or publicly mischaracterized the civilian deaths in ways that a military investigation found deeply troubling. The documents suggest that General Huck ignored early reports that women and children were killed in the attack, and later told investigators that he was unaware of regulations that required his staff to investigate further.

And this kind of intentional inaccuracy in word and deed - recently pointed out to the nation in the Tilman/Lynch hearings - is reflected on a diplomatic scale by the Bush Administration.  After basing Speaker Pelosi for meeting with the Syrians, we now hear that Secretary of State Condi Rice is meeting with top representatives of the Syrian and Iranian governments, and it isn't even going very well:

The United States reached out to the Iranians, seeking a diplomatic conversation after years of pursuing a policy of trying to isolate them. But the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, seemed unimpressed, offering a blistering critique of the American role in Iraq. He also used the international platform to attack Israel and to reaffirm Iran’s right to a nuclear program, which it says is peaceful and the West says is intended to build weapons.“The unilateral policy, the arrogant one-sided policy, is a principal reason for the complex situation we are seeing in Iraq,” Mr. Mottaki said of Washington’s stance in remarks made at a news conference at the end of the two-day meeting. “Even the ordinary people of the United States realize that the policies pursued by the United States in Iraq are flawed, and they at least must admit that the policies have failed.” Mr. Mottaki’s remarks disappointed many diplomats here — including Iraqi officials — who had tried to orchestrate a brief meeting between him and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a step toward thawing tensions between the two countries.

And yesterday's tragic news makes it hard to be optimistic about the surge and our presence in Iraq.  Especially since the worst attacks were in a town that had been pointed to as a success.