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Petraeus urges US troops in Iraq to fight by the rules

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 or necessary," he said in the one-page letter.

The Pentagon survey of ethics, released last week, showed that only 40 percent of Marines and 55 percent of US Army soldiers deployed in Iraq said they would report a fellow serviceman for killing or injuring an innocent Iraqi.

It also said more than one-third of soldiers and marines believed torture should be allowed to obtain information that could save the lives of US troops or gain knowledge about Iraqi insurgents.

Petraeus said that while seeing a "fellow trooper killed by a barbaric enemy can spark frustration, anger and a desire for immediate revenge," all troops "must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect."

Claims of US mistreatment of Iraqi detainees and civilians have shadowed US forces in Iraq -- from revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 to reports of the Nov. 19, 2005, killing of 24 Iraqi civilians by Marines in Haditha.

Meanwhile, three more US soldiers have been killed in Iraq, the military said yesterday, as an increased pace in combat operations kept the average rate of US deaths at three per day so far this month.

In the bloodiest incident, one soldier was killed and nine were wounded by an explosion that detonated by their patrol on Thursday while they were "conducting combat operations" in Diyala Province north of Baghdad.

One soldier was shot dead "while conducting combat security operations" in south Baghdad. Another died of his wounds after being hit by gunfire in Diwaniyah.

Thursday's fatalities brought the number of US servicemen who have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 3,385, an Agence France-Presse count based on Pentagon figures showed.
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