Haditha Marine cleared

A court martial on Wednesday acquitted a US Marine for his role in the deaths of 24 civilians in Haditha in Iraq in 2005, the sixth man to be exonerated in the affair, a military official said.

Lieutenant Andrew Grayson, 27, was declared "not guilty on all charges" by a jury, said a spokesman for the Camp Pendleton military base in southern California where the hearing started on May 28.

Grayson had been charged with making false statements and attempting to fraudulently separate from the Marine Corps. He was also charged with obstruction of justice, but the military judge dismissed this charge Tuesday.

He was the first Marine to stand trial in connection with the killings of 24 men, women and children in Haditha, the most serious war crime allegations leveled at US forces since the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

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Eight military personnel were originally charged over the incident -- four soldiers faced murder charges and four officers, including Grayson, were accused of covering up and failing to properly investigate the killings.

However, since charges were first announced in December 2006, prosecutors have struggled to make the allegations stick.

Six have now had charges against them dropped, while charges of murder against squad leader Frank Wuterich were changed to the lesser offense of manslaughter.

Wuterich faces trial later this year, along with Colonel Jeffrey Chessani, the highest ranking officer accused over the incident who has been charged with dereliction of duty and violation of a lawful order.

I have been told that there was never any serious doubt in the minds of any of the investigators or military prosecutors that the Marines on the ground at Haditha acted correctly given the information they possessed at the time.

The prosecution of these men was the result of intense political pressure brought by congressional Democrats were were demanding that some Marines be charged with some serious crime somewhere in Afghanistan or Iraq.

The incredibly harsh treatment of the "Haditha Marines" as they came to be called included forcing them to wear leg irons and handcuffs even when in their cells and keeping them in solitary confinement. This was, we hear, nothing more than a show for creatures like Nancy Pelosi and Jack Murtha to prove to them that the Pentagon and the Marine Corps took the Marine's "crimes" seriously.

However a court proceeding, whether a civilian trial or a military court martial, is one of the places where truth still has meaning and where both sides get to fully lay out their case (unlike the mainstream media which only reports the politically correct narrative). Under those conditions the case against the Marines was bound to evaporate.