General Peter Pace, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday that it was too early to pass judgement on allegations that US soldiers killed unarmed civilians in Haditha, Iraq.
“It would be premature for me to judge the outcome” of the Pentagon investigation into the incident, Pace, a marine, told CBS television’s “The Early Show”.
Two separate US military investigations are underway into the killings last November of some 24 unarmed civilians in Haditha, and the Pentaon is facing accusations that it tried to cover up the incident.
While acknowledging the investigations, Pace stressed that, if true, the Haditha case was in contrast to “the 99.9 percent who are doing their job exactly the way the American people expect them to.”
US officials said Friday that the probes into the November 19 killings were nearing an end and that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had been briefed on the investigations.
Time magazine reported Sunday that lawmakers were told in briefings last week that some members of the Marine unit involved may soon face charges as serious as murder.
Pace spoke a day after Democratic Representative John Murtha, himself a former marine, said that US Marines tried to “cover-up” the Haditha case and “stifle” the first investigation.
“Until March, there was no serious investigation. There was an investigation right afterwards, but then it was stifled,” Murtha said.
Senator John Warner, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he would treat the matter like the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and hold congressional hearings into the incident.
