Thorough Inquiry of Marines Promised

The chairman of the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday “it would be premature for me to judge” the outcome of a Pentagon investigation into the killing of as many as two dozen Iraqi civilians by Marines.

But at the same time, Marine Gen. Peter Pace said he believed it was crucial to make the point that if certain service members were responsible for an atrocity there, they “have not performed their duty the way that 99.9% of their fellow Marines have.”

Interviewed on CBS’ “The Early Show” as the nation observed Memorial Day honoring men and women lost in war, Pace pledged that “we’ll get to the bottom of the investigation and take the appropriate action.”

Pace’s interview came a day after Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), a decorated Marine war veteran and prominent critic of Iraq policy, said the incident could undermine U.S. efforts there more than the Abu Ghraib prison scandal did.

A bomb rocked a military convoy on Nov. 19, killing a Marine. Marines then shot and killed unarmed civilians in a taxi at the scene and went into two homes and shot other people, according to Murtha, who has been briefed by officials.

Asked how such a thing could have happened, Pace replied: “Fortunately, it does not happen very frequently, so there’s no way to say historically why something like this might have happened. We’ll find out.”

Pace’s predecessor, retired Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he had “no idea” what happened but that there “has been and there is an ongoing, thorough investigation.”

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service inquiry into the shootings is continuing. Whether violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, including murder, would be pursued would be determined by a senior Marine commander in Iraq.

The agency also is investigating the death of an Iraqi civilian on April 26, involving Marines in Hamandiya, west of Baghdad.