The chain of command

Has a senior commander been held accountable for anything in this war?

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.

The documents, including a report by Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell of the Army, copies of e-mail messages among Marine officers in Haditha and sworn statements from several ranking officers, focus only on how the Marine chain of command handled the killings and have not been made public. Portions of the report and commanders’ reactions to the killings were reported by The Washington Post in January and April. The documents were provided to The New York Times by people familiar with the investigation only on condition that they not be identified.

Captain Stone, 34, of Dunkirk, Md., is accused of failing to investigate reports of the civilian deaths. In an interview that repeated similar frustrations voiced by lawyers for other accused officers, Captain Stone said he did not investigate the killings because his superiors told him not to.

“The regimental judge advocate informed me that we don’t do investigations for ‘troops in contact’ situations,” said Captain Stone, referring to the regiment’s lawyer, Maj. Carroll Connelly. Troops in contact is military language for combat against enemy fighters.

“That’s my understanding of what higher wanted,” Captain Stone said, referring to his superior officers, “and that’s why there was no investigation.”

“I don’t think I did anything wrong,” he went on. But he added, “There is a certain level of disappointment that the Marine Corps decided that, in the entire chain of command, that I am the one who should be held accountable.”

Major Connelly, who was not charged with any crime, has been granted immunity to testify at the coming hearings, said Captain Stone’s civilian lawyer, Charles W. Gittins.

So, an investigator is on trial for not investigating something his commander told him not to investigate. Matt Yglesias notes that at least on TV the cops typically go after the low-lying fruit in order to get to the higher-ups. Apparently, the opposite is true in the military.

But the story is also remarkable for the various threads it brings together which illustrate our misadventure in Iraq: suspicion that a journalist is nothing more than a naive dupe for the enemy; distrust of local Iraqi politicians; low-level officers taking the blame for institutional failures; the horrendous death of civilians and the fear that those deaths might be "used" as propaganda.