First the killings, then the cover-up

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/first-the-killings-then-the-coverup/2006/06/02/1148956547970.html

Ghosts of an old massacre loom large as details of the incident at Haditha emerge, writes Michael Gawenda.
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WHAT happened in Haditha just after dawn on November 19 is no longer in dispute. The US President, George Bush, pleaded with Americans this week to wait until two military inquiries are finished before they make any judgement about what occurred at the insurgent stronghold in western Iraq on that autumn morning.

But Bush's body language suggested he knew that US marines had massacred 24 civilians. Senior military officers, including General Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have already warned him to "expect the worst".

Bush promised that as soon as the inquiries were completed - one into the killings and the other into whether there had been a cover-up by senior marines - the reports would be released.

"If, in fact, laws were broken, there will be punishment," he said. He looked like a man who knew that laws had been broken and that the Haditha massacre could become a symbol of what has gone wrong in Iraq, and for many Americans confirmation that the war is unwinnable.

Memories have already been revived of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in March 1968, when the men of Charlie Company, led in part by Lieutenant William Calley on a search-and-destroy mission to root out Vietcong, killed 300 unarmed civilians, including women and children. Old grainy black-and-white footage of US forces, bewildered and frightened as they patrol the heavily mined area around My Lai, a Vietcong stronghold, are being shown nightly on US television.

we will pay dearly...