The hearing that began on Tuesday involves 4 soldiers who maintain they were just following orders when they allegedly murdered 3 Iraqi civilians.
ABC News has learned that Steele has already been reprimanded for the incident.
The hearing for the four soldiers that began today will determine if they should stand trial on murder charges. The killings took place as part of Operation Iron Triangle, which targeted a suspected al Qaeda training facility northwest of Baghdad, Iraq, in the city of Samarra.
Army prosecutors said the four American soldiers detained three Iraqi men and then killed them, unarmed, in cold blood.
The defendants claim that they acted in self-defense, claiming they were under orders to kill all military-age Iraqi men, whether or not they were armed.
What were those soldiers thinking by even following such an order?
Steele has a storied military career and it was his unit that came under attack in 1993 in Somalia, as was portrayed in the movie "Black Hawk Down." During the current conflict, Steele has been heard boasting about his unit's record of killing insurgents. Last November he said, "We are absolutely giving the enemy the maximum opportunity to die for his country."
A source familiar with the investigation said Steele kept a "kill board" tallying the number of Iraqis killed by units under his command, and in some cases he gave out commemorative knives to soldiers who killed Iraqis believed to be insurgents.
It sounds like it's time for Steele to go.
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