Marine Says His Staff Misled Him on Killings - New York Times: "CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., May 10 — The general who led a division in charge of the marines who killed 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in 2005 testified Thursday that he was kept from weighing accusations that the killings were illegal because his subordinate officers withheld information for nearly three months.
The officer, Maj. Gen. Richard A. Huck, the Second Marine Division commander in Iraq at the time, testified in a military hearing here that he had learned that women and children had been killed within hours of the attack, on Nov. 19, 2005.
But he said he had believed that the deaths were the unfortunate but unavoidable result of combat with Sunni Arab insurgents.
General Huck said he had not learned until February 2006 about inquiries into the deaths by Time magazine because his own chief of staff and regimental commander kept him in the dark."