Iraq murder cases may signal US military crackdown

WASHINGTON, June 23: The U.S. military charged 12 servicemen this week with murdering Iraqis, signaling to some a stepped-up Pentagon effort to investigate claims after an alleged cover-up of a civilian massacre at Haditha.

Defense officials called the timing of the charges a coincidence.

They said the U.S. military has always taken allegations of wrongdoing seriously and aggressively investigated those claims.

No new directive or initiative has been put in place to crack down any more than normal, those officials said.

Others, however, say the charges could signal heightened sensitivity in the Defense Department to claims of abuse and mistreatment of Iraqi civilians and detainees by U.S. troops.

''It's what should be done all the time,'' said Joe Stork, deputy West Asia director at Human Rights Watch. ''If that's what's happening now, that's for the better.'' Stork said the Pentagon had become ''appropriately very sensitive to the lapses'' in its reaction to the killings of more than 20 civilians at Haditha in November.

Senior military sources in Baghdad also say U.S. allies in Iraq have called for American commanders to ensure tighter discipline to avoid civilian shootings that cause lasting resentment among the Iraqi population.

Still, few saw a political motivation behind this week's murder charges.

Michael O'Hanlon, a security analyst with the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the Bush administration had little to gain politically, at least at home where support for the war has waned, by bringing charges against the troops.

O'Hanlon agreed that the timing of the charges was partly coincidence. But they also point to tougher probes in an environment where ''war fatigue'' has set in, he said.

''DOD (defense department) is probably investigating some of these things a little more tightly,'' he said. ''There is a fatigue of war setting in psychologically among the troops and they're a little more inclined to do this sort of thing than they were at the beginning.''

CHARGES CLIMB Data from the Marine Corps, Navy and Army show this week's charges mark a significant increase in murder charges against U.S. troops over the more than three-year-old Iraq war. In fact, most of the murder charges since the war began in March 2003 came this week.

For example, the U.S. military charged seven Marines and one Navy medic this week with the premeditated murder of a disabled civilian in Hamdania. That was the first such charge against a sailor, according to the Navy. Before this week, two Marines had been charged with murder in separate incidents in Iraq, the service said.

The Army this week charged four soldiers with premeditated murder in the shooting of detainees north of Baghdad on May 9.

Before that case, according to the Army, 11 soldiers had faced charges related to detainee murders. One soldier was found guilty of premeditated murder, but the remaining cases involved other charges, such as negligent homicide.

Premeditated murder can bring the death penalty under military law.

''All along we've had allegations that we've taken very seriously and looked at very thoroughly, and we continue to do so,'' said one defense official.

But some dismissed attempts to call the week's murder charges a coincidence in their timing.

''I do think the timing is not pure coincidence,'' said an expert on the law of war who works for the Pentagon, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of not being authorized to speak to the media.

Still, that expert said the charges were not an attempt to make up for the Nov. 19 killing of the 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha, a case that has drawn comparisons to the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

U.S. Marines have been accused in the Haditha case, and a probe is under way. A separate investigation into whether the Marines lied about the killings has been completed and a top commander is reviewing its findings, the military has said.

''It's happening within the context of Haditha, but it's not a (public relations) move,'' said the Pentagon source of this week's charges.

Reuters