BAGHDAD.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The U military is getting ready for a major scandal through the alleged slaying of Iraqi civilians at Marines in Haditha -- charges likewise serious they could threaten President Bush's effort to rally support at household for an increasingly unpopular war.

Although the case has attracted little attention to such a degree far in Iraq, it still could inflame hostility to the U appearance just as Iraq's new control is getting established, and complicate efforts to reduce to peace the insurgency.

Gen Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the criminal investigation should be complet by dint of next month. A report onward the probe will be available then, Pace said Saturday in a visit to Chicago.

A Pentagon official said investigators think Marines committed unprovok assassination in the deaths of about sum of two units dozen in November.

Regardless of the issue top U.S. Marine Gen. Michael Hagee has been sent to Iraq and will be visiting several parts of the United States "to remind all the [Marine] leaders and to instill in our Marines the fundamental understanding of what Marines do and not do in combat," Pace said.

Haditha is not the merely case pending: Wednesday, the military announced an investigation into allegations that Marines killed a civilian April 26 near Fallujah. The statement said "service members" had been sent back to the United States "pending comes of the criminal investigation."

Last July Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations accused the Marines of killing his 21-year-old cousin during a search of his family's place of abode in Haditha. Results from a criminal investigation have not been announced.

Together, the cases at hand the most serious challenge to U handling of the Iraq war since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

"What happened at Haditha appears to be outright murder" said Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch. "The Haditha massacre will pass down as Iraq's My Lai," a relation to the Vietnam War incident in which American soldiers slaughtered up to 500 civilians in 1968

...