As usual, with this one I think the cover-up will be worse than the crime. But for the cover story, they might be able to pull off a "we screwed up, gee we're sorry, fog of war" kind of defense. The cover story really hamstrings that approach.
There's a potential. Since Congressman Murtha is currently the ranking member and former chairman of the Subcommittee on Defense, his public statements prior to military court action may be used as evidence of Unlawful Command Influence, resulting in the dropping of charges against the Marines; the comments of a commander-in-chief can similarly be used with similar result, as in the charges of Murder filed against 5th Special Forces Group Commander Robert Rheault and seven other 5th group personnel by Creighton Abrams. Once the defense team announced plans to call Nixon, SecDef Melvin Laird and Abrams as witnesses for the defense, the case was ordered to be made to go away, if Abrams wanted toi remain as MACV Commander and go on to run West Point. The possibility of a legal defense based on the necessity of removal of an enemy spy who had knowledge of the coming invasion incursion into supposedly neutral cambodia could very easily have resulted in impeachment of Nixon for that action, technically a War Crime under the Law of Land Warfare.
Oh, btw: charges of US military *brutality* in Iraq go back to at least 2003 and the court-martial of SEAL Lieutenant Andrew Ledford at Naval Station San Diego. Bob Rheault's take on those charges is interesting, to say the least, since Abrams had the Vietnam SEAL teams dragging Nha Trang Bay for the body of the NVA double/triple agent Thai Khac Chuyen who Rheault had been ordered by the CIA to terminate with extreme prejudice.
As usual, with this one I think the cover-up will be worse than the crime. But for the cover story, they might be able to pull off a "we screwed up, gee we're sorry, fog of war" kind of defense. The cover story really hamstrings that approach.
The question is going to be to how much of an extent the reports of the Marines involved, and the officers who forwarded those reports up the chain of command, were intentional obstruction and perjury, and to what extent they were reasonably if deplorable parsing of the events. Hey, they're just following the example set for them by former c-in-c Clinton and variously charged members of the current administration, right? But once it's thought by individual grunt Marines that their senior leadership- military and political- isn't standing up for them, neither will loyalty or respect flow upwards up the chain of command either.
And now the Iraq mess involves three seperate cases, in three different locales over a period of three seperate months. I'd expect that at least one Marine theater commander is very, very carefully reviewing the Yamashita decision. But I strongly suspect that this is just the first blow of a one-two punch, with the *rest of the story* to come from Afghanistan....
News Item: "Charges tossed for Marine accused in Iraqis' deaths," by Tom Foreman Jr. (AP)
"The Marine Corps yesterday dropped murder charges against an officer accused of riddling two Iraqis with bullets and hanging a warning sign on their corpses as a grisly example to other possible insurgents.... The decision to drop the charges was made by Maj. Gen. Richard Huck, commander of the 2nd Marine Division, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C."