Posted on 06/05/2008 5:56:26 AM PDT by Triple
A US marine has been acquitted of charges that he ordered a cover up of the Haditha massacre, an incident in which 24 Iraqis were killed in cold blood in 2005. Lieutenant Andrew Grayson was declared "not guilty on all charges" by a military courtmartial after his defence accused the prosecution of relying on a botched and politically motivated investigation.
The military intelligence official was the sixth of eight accused to be cleared over the controversial incident. The deaths of 24 people in the central Iraqi town ranks as one of the darkest incidents since the 2003 invasion.
The killings occurred after a roadside bomb killed Marine Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas and wounded two others.
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A military press release originally stated that 15 Iraqis had been killed by the bomb.
Time magazine later reported that most of the dead were killed as Marines conducted a vengeful raid through three houses near the site.
An official investigation then concluded that five men were shot by a car stopped at the scene. The squad then broke into the houses, clearing rooms with grenades and gunfire, killing more Iraqis, including women and children, in the process.
Lt Grayson, 27, who has always maintained he did nothing wrong, was not at the scene of the killings of men, women and children in Haditha. He was accused of telling a sergeant to delete photographs of the dead from a digital camera and laptop computer.
Lt Grayson was found not guilty of two counts of making false official statements, two counts of trying to fraudulently separate from service, and one count of attempting to deceive by making false statements.
A charge of obstruction of justice was dismissed by the military judge but Lt Grayson would have faced as many as 20 years in prison...
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
BTW - it is official military policy to delete pictures of slain civilians, when the have no military intelligence value - grayson was an inteligence officer assigned to do his job - determine intel from the photos.
“acquitted of charges that he ordered a cover up of the Haditha massacre, an incident in which 24 Iraqis were killed in cold blood in 2005.”
No press bias here. Move along...
When is Murtha going to apologize to the Marines?
Maybe we should email him and ask that question.
;-))
Murtha should be sued eight times for slander and any other charge that fits here.
What a disgusting pond-scum of a FORMER Marine.
My thoughts exactly. They couldn't have said, "an incident in which 24 Iraqis were killed during a terrorist ambush in 2005," because readers might not have reached the proper conclusion if they just gave us the facts.
But wait!! CNN said our guys were guilty, and Congressman Murtha said our Marines were cold blooded murderers! There is obviously a mistake!
It's sooo obvious that the "journalist" who wrote this piece sooo much resents these marines being exonerated.
Any news/prognostications on the remaining two?
Can’t Murtha be censured and impeached?
EX Marine
OOH_RAH!
An EX Marine that qualifies for Bill Clinton’s famous description, “scumbag”...
PS: There was no “massacre”.
no massacre and no cover-up.
Just marines doing their jobs.
Nifong should have been a military prosecutor.
And the JAGs doing their jobs, advancing their own petty careers at the expense of the fighting men and women of America.
Just tried emailing him. His office email will not take messages from outside Penna.
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