Marine's Iraq murder case dropped

[frigidmagi]

BBC

Murder charges against a US marine accused of killing three people in the Iraqi city of Haditha have been dropped, the US military has said.

Lance Cpl Justin Sharratt was among several marines accused of going on a rampage against Iraqis after a roadside bombing in 2005 killed a US marine.

Officers ruled there was insufficient evidence to take the case to trial.

Two more marines still face murder charges. Three others have been charged with failing to probe the deaths.

A fourth, Captain Randy W Stone, had his charges of failing to investigate the killings adequately dropped on Thursday.

Charges against another murder suspect, Sgt Sanick Dela Cruz, were dropped in April in exchange for his testimony.

Lance Cpl Sharratt did not deny killing the three men, but says they were insurgents and at least one was holding a rifle.

Twenty-four Iraqi civilians, including three women, seven children and several elderly men, died in the incident.

The Haditha inquiry is just one of a number the US military has been conducting into alleged unlawful killings by US forces in Iraq.

HA!

[Cpl Kendall]

I see three possibilites here:

1) Their innocent. The insurgents or assorted assholes set this up so it looked like the Marines did it.

2) The Marines did it and their good enough at covering their tracks that an investigation couldn't find anything.

3) The general cover your ass approach of the Army that lead them to screw over the Tillman family has started to cross over and infect the Marines and this is yet another example of the system playing CYA so no one gets punished in the typical mould of an Army scandel. See the various friendly fire incidents for an example of what usually happens.

Can't say that I'm a very big fan of number three, considering that the Marines are considerably better than the Army about policing their own. That leaves two or one. Seeing as I know nothing about the Marines investigative process save for the fact that an officer is placed in charge of it, I don't really know how extensive such an investigation would be. Are the MP's or the equivilant of the Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit involved?

[frigidmagi]

Just as a reminder to fans of number 3 most cases have ended in conviction. As for the process, the investigation is still going, and as been going since this hit the airwaves. Basically they'll have men in Iraq trying to hunt down witnesses and gather any phyiscal evidence, men in the States going through the Marines background to see if there are any clues and docs examining the marines themselves to see if they went crazy.

The process was an reaction to Vietnam and the desire of the Powell generation of officers to ensure that 2 and 3 did not happen.

[Knife]

Can't say that I'm a very big fan of number three, considering that the Marines are considerably better than the Army about policing their own. That leaves two or one. Seeing as I know nothing about the Marines investigative process save for the fact that an officer is placed in charge of it, I don't really know how extensive such an investigation would be. Are the MP's or the equivilant of the Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit involved?

Naval CIS should be the primary investigation service in such a case so I'm not sure how much 'old guys club' you're going to have with Naval/Marine investigations. Possible but I'm not going to just assume the Navy will sweep it under the rug for the jar heads