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BAGHDAD — There’s a warren of narrow walkways in central Baghdad with stalls and little shops, bags of spices and nuts, food and ice cream. The air has a sweet scent, and clusters of men sip tea and chat, or haggle over antiques. They call it “the Thieves’ Market.”
The last time we were here, as the Iraq War droned on almost 20 years ago, Westerners could scarcely go outside without becoming a target. Today, not even a hard glance. We’ve come to find a piece to the puzzle we’ve been trying to solve.
We’ve been investigating a horrible incident from April 2004 that killed two Marines and an Iraqi man when a mortar was accidentally dropped on a schoolhouse in Fallujah.
The Marines knew almost immediately it was an accidental case of “friendly fire” — the deadliest such Marine-on-Marine attack in decades — and they opened an investigation. But the families of the dead Marines were told it was enemy fire and didn’t get the truth for three years. It seems the son of a prominent politician — Marine 1st Lt. Duncan D. Hunter — was involved in the mishap. His father, Duncan L. Hunter, was chairman of the powerful House Armed Services Committee at the time. Rather than tell the truth, the Marine Corps buried the report of its investigation for years.
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