Washington — The Marine general investigating the fatal bombing exercise in Kuwait will have authority not only to look for what caused the accident but also to recommend whether anyone should be brought before a disciplinary board, the Pentagon said.
Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, arrived in Kuwait on Thursday to begin the investigation into the military exercise in which three bombs were misdirected.
Meanwhile, the remains of the five American servicemen and one New Zealand military officer who died arrived at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. They received military honors in a brief ceremony in the rain. Autopsies will be conducted at nearby Landstuhl Medical Center.
"General DeLong is going into this with a completely open mind and a very broad charter, as to try to learn all the details that he can," Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said.
DeLong can make "recommendations on the way ahead or corrective actions that might need to be taken. ... Whatever he thinks is the appropriate way to go," Quigley said at a Pentagon briefing.
A central focus of the investigation will be the actions of an Air Force enlisted man responsible for directing a Navy pilot to his target and who survived the still-unexplained attack.
Officials have said it is unclear whether the accident was caused by mistakes by the Navy pilot, the air controller or both. "If human error is a factor, if communications standards are a factor, if equipment failure is a factor all those are certainly fair game and will indeed be looked at," Quigley said.
Central Command, which is responsible for all U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf, wants DeLong to complete his probe by April 16.
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