The US military commander in Iraq told his troops to fight by the rules after a Pentagon survey found many soldiers and Marines back torture and would not report colleagues for killing or injuring civilians. “This fight depends on securing the population, which must understand that we – not our enemies – occupy the moral high ground,” General David Petraeus wrote in a letter dated May 10. Petraeus, who took command in February to oversee a troop “surge” aimed at securing Baghdad, said the argument that torture can elicit quick information was “wrong”. “Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary,” he said in the one-page letter.
The Pentagon survey of ethics, released last week, showed that only 40% of Marines and 55% of US Army soldiers deployed in Iraq said they would report a fellow serviceman for killing or injuring an innocent Iraqi.
FOLLOW RULES, US SOLDIERS TOLD
The US military commander in Iraq told his troops to fight by the rules after a Pentagon survey found many soldiers and Marines back torture and would not report colleagues for killing or injuring civilians. “This fight depends on securing the population, which must understand that we
