Looking at the chain of command in Haditha incident

NY Times:

Marine commanders in Iraq learned within two days of the killings in Haditha last November that Iraqi civilians had died from gunfire, not a roadside bomb as initially reported, but the officers involved saw no reason to investigate further, according to a senior Marine officer.

The commanders have told investigators they had not viewed as unusual, in a combat environment, the discrepancies that emerged almost immediately in accounts about how the two dozen Iraqis died, and that they had no information at the time suggesting that any civilians had been killed deliberately.

But the handling of the matter by the senior Marine commanders in Haditha, and whether officers and enlisted personnel tried to cover up what happened or missed signs suggesting that the civilian killings were not accidental, has become a major element of the investigation by an Army general into the entire episode.

Officials have said that the investigation, while not yet complete, is likely to conclude that a small group of marines carried out the unprovoked killings of two dozen civilians in the hours after a makeshift bomb killed a marine.

A senior Marine general familiar with the investigation, which is being led by Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell of the Army, said in an interview that it had not yet established how high up the chain of command culpability for the killings extended. But he said there were strong suspicions that some officers knew that the Marine squad's version of events had enough holes and discrepancies that it should have been looked into more deeply.

"It's impossible to believe they didn't know," the Marine general said, referring to midlevel and senior officers. "You'd have to know this thing stunk." He was granted anonymity, along with others who described the investigation, because he was not authorized to speak publicly about it.

In recent weeks, investigators have interviewed the Marine commanders who were serving in Iraq at the time of the killings, including Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Johnson, commander of the Second Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq, and Maj. Gen. Richard A. Huck, commander of the Second Marine Division, a senior Pentagon adviser said.

Military officials said Friday that interviews with all senior officers in the chain of command were a routine part of any wide-ranging inquiry, and did not necessarily indicate culpability on their part.

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There is more. It should be noted that the NY Times still fails to make the distinction between the two investigations. As I pointed out in this post from Maj. Gen. William Caldwell's weekly news briefing in Baghdad:

The difference between these two investigations that are going on is that the Multinational Corps Iraq investigation is looking at policies and procedures, such as those pertaining to training and reporting, whereas the Naval Criminal Investigative Service is looking into allegations of criminal misconduct. (Emphasis added.)

The Times seems to blur that distinction and suggests that Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell's investigation is also looking at criminal misconduct. It appears to me he is looking for systemic failures to catch the problem and deal with it earlier, which is not to say there are not career implications for the Marine officers involved.