US military condemns music video on killing Iraqis

Washington, June 14 : The Marine Corps condemned today as ''clearly inappropriate'' a music video purporting to show a Marine strumming a guitar and singing a song about killing Iraqis, to the laughter and cheers of other troops.

''We're looking into it,'' Lt Col Scott Fazekas, a US Marine Corps spokesman at the Pentagon, said of the four-minute video posted anonymously in March on a Web site, www.youtube.com, but recently removed.

Asked if the video genuinely showed a Marine, Fazekas said, ''I can't tell. In looking at it, it could be anywhere, it could be anybody.'' The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based civil rights group, urged the military and Congress to investigate who was responsible for the video.

Its existence comes to light at a time when the military is investigating the role of Marines in the deaths of 24 civilians in the city of Haditha in November.

''The Marine Corps has recently been made aware of a video posted to a Web site that purports to show a Marine singing an insensitive song about Iraqis,'' Fazekas said.

''The video that was posted anonymously is clearly inappropriate and contrary to the high standards expected of all Marines,'' Fazekas added.

It does not reflect the sacrifices and dedication shown daily, he said, by tens of thousands of Marines who have helped the Iraqi people gain freedom.

On the video, titled ''hadji girl,'' a man dressed in an olive-colored T-shirt and long pants sings into a microphone in what seems to be a large room with numerous unseen spectators, with the obscenity-laced lyrics describing encountering an Iraqi woman and her family.

At one point, the man sings, ''I grabbed her little sister and put her in front of me. As the bullets began to fly, the blood sprayed from between her eyes, and then I laughed maniacally.'' In the background, laughing, clapping and cheers can be heard.

About 20,000 US Marines are deployed in Anbar province, one of the most dangerous parts of Iraq, and more than 700 have been killed in the war.

CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said the military needs to determine who the Marine was, when the event took place and what disciplinary action will be taken.

''It shows what we hope is not a pervasive culture in the Marine Corps of a complete lack of sensitivity to the suffering of civilians in Iraq,'' Hooper said.

CAIR has posted the video on its Web site, www.cair-net.org.

Reuters