On 19 November 2005, 24 Iraqi civilians, including women and children, were killed by U.S. Marines in Haditha, Iraq. Eight Marines were charged. Charges against six were dropped, one was acquitted, and the last case ended in a plea to a single count of negligent dereliction of duty. No one was ever held accountable. 

Twenty years later, the investigative podcast and YouTube series Fault Line: Haditha reported that Marine Corps prosecutors suborned perjury, granted immunity to Marines they knew (or should have known) committed war crimes, and withheld from their own NCIS investigator testimony from a survivor who was an eyewitness to the murder of her mother, aunt, brother and four sisters. When that NCIS special agent’s findings contradicted the prosecution’s case, senior officials pressured him to change his sworn testimony.

This is not about politics. It is about the truth and whether the United States military can be trusted to investigate itself when civilians are killed in war.

We demand that the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, or the appropriate subcommittee, convene an investigation, one with subpoena power, to finally uncover the truth about potential war crimes committed by United States Marines on 19 November 2005 and the failed prosecution that followed.

These signatures will be delivered to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in February 2027.