Amy Goodman: That was Abdul Salam Al-Kubaissi speaking on Sunday. One of the reporters who first broke the Haditha story, Aparisim Ghosh, joined us in our Firehouse studio in March. He's the chief international correspondent for Time magazine. We wanted to go back to replay a clip of Aparisim from that day. I began by asking him to tell us about his story in Time called "One Morning in Haditha."

Aparisim Ghosh: Haditha is a small town northwest of Baghdad, a very, very dangerous place. It's in the heart of what's known as the Sunni Triangle, and Marines and soldiers who operate in that area are under constant threat. On the morning of the 19th of November, a four-Humvee patrol going through town was hit by an I.E.D., an improvised explosive device, which sheered off the front of one of the Humvees, killed one of the soldiers inside. What happens next is a matter of some debate, as you pointed out. Initially the Marines claimed that a total of 23 people were killed on the spot, 15 of them innocent civilians, all of whom the Marines said were killed by the I.E.D., and eight of them, enemy combatants who were shot by the Marines.

Amy Goodman: In addition to the 15?

Aparisim Ghosh: In addition to the 15. We looked into this case, and the more we dug, the more we thought that something didn't quite add up. And when we finally got our hands on this videotape, it became very clear to us that these people could not have been killed outdoors by an explosive device. They were killed in their homes in their night clothes. The night clothes are significant, because Iraqi women and children, especially, are very, very unlikely to go outdoors wearing their night clothes. It is a very conservative society.

When we first approached the Marines with this evidence, they responded in quite a hostile fashion. They accused us of buying into enemy propaganda. That aroused our suspicions even further, because it seemed to be excessively hostile on their part. And we dug even more. We spoke to witnesses. We spoke to survivors of this incident. And then we became quite convinced that these people were killed by the Marines. What is left to be seen is whether they were killed in the course of the Marine operation as collateral damage or by accident, or whether the Marines went on a rampage after one of their own had been killed and killed these people in revenge.

Amy Goodman: You are very graphic in the piece, "One Morning in Haditha." Describe what the survivors say happened when the U.S. military went into the nearby houses around where the roadside bomb had exploded.

Aparisim Ghosh: Well, the survivors claimed - let me back up a little bit. The Marines claim that they received small arms fire from nearby homes and that they responded to this fire, they shot back, and then they went into the homes to try and flush out the bad guys, the terrorists who were in there. It's clear from the video that those homes don't have any bullet marks outside, which would suggest that there was very little, if any, shooting by the Marines at the facades of these homes. But there are lots of signs of bullets inside.

The victims told us that the Marines came in and they killed everybody inside. In one house they threw a grenade into a kitchen. That set off a propane tank and nearly destroyed the kitchen and killed several people in that home. The scenes that were described by the survivors and the witnesses were incredibly bloody and very graphic. But they are, unfortunately, very commonplace in Iraq.

Amy Goodman: Inside, you talked to - you have the description of a nine-year-old girl.

Aparisim Ghosh: Yes.

Amy Goodman: Tell us about her and her family and what she says happened.

Aparisim Ghosh: Well, she was indoors with her family when the explosion took place. The explosion was loud enough to wake everybody up in the neighborhood.

Amy Goodman: The bomb that killed the Marine.

Aparisim Ghosh: The first explosion, yes. And she says when she heard gunshots - of course, she's a child, she was frightened. When the Marines stormed towards their home, her grandfather slipped into the next room, as is, apparently, was his custom to pray, to reach out for the family Koran and pray to God that this crisis would pass. On this occasion, the Marines came into the home. They entered the room where the grandfather was, and other members of the family, and killed him.

Amy Goodman: And she was left alive.

Aparisim Ghosh: She survived, yes.

Amy Goodman: And her little brother.

Aparisim Ghosh: And her brother was injured by a piece of - either by a bullet or a piece of shrapnel, we're not sure.

Amy Goodman: But her parents, her mother, her father, her grandparents -

Aparisim Ghosh: Her parents, her grandparents, I believe her uncle, were also killed.

Amy Goodman: And then, another house.

Aparisim Ghosh: Four houses in all, involving a total of - indoors, total of 19 people, and four people outside.

Amy Goodman: [That was] Aparisim Bobby Ghosh on Democracy Now!, on March 23 of this year. On Saturday, the Marines released their first official statement about the Haditha killings. It read in part, "All Marines are trained in the Law of Armed Conflict and our core values of honor, courage and commitment. We take allegations of wrong-doing by Marines very seriously and are committed to thoroughly investigating such allegations. We also pride ourselves on holding our Marines to the highest levels of accountability and standards. The Marines in Iraq are focused on their mission. They are working hard on doing the right thing in a complex and dangerous environment. It is important to remember that the vast majority of Marines today perform magnificently on and off the battlefield. Tens of thousands have served honorably and with courage in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Again, those, the words of the U.S. military. We invited a representative of the Pentagon to be on the program. They declined our request.

We're joined now in studio by John Sifton, an attorney and researcher at Human Rights Watch, where he focuses on Afghanistan, Iraq and military and counterterrorism issues. We're joined been the telephone by Nancy Youssef. She's the Baghdad Bureau Chief for Knight Ridder.

And we're joined on the phone from the Bay Area of California by independent journalist Dahr Jamail, who has written a piece for TruthOut.org called "Countless My Lai Massacres in Iraq." He spent more than eight months in Iraq.

Nancy Youssef, what is the response in Iraq right now? I mean, this actually, the Haditha killings, took place in November. What is the response of Iraqis to the renewed interest in this?

Nancy Youssef: Surprisingly quiet. I think there is a feeling here that there are a lot of people being killed every day in this country, whether it be by U.S. forces or by militias or by gangs. And it hasn't sort of gained a sort of energy or anger that you're hearing in the U.S. On the contrary, it's been quite quiet. The Parliament met the day before yesterday and did not even mention this case.

Amy Goodman: Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist based for more than eight months in Iraq. Your response to this latest news?

Dahr Jamail: Well, two responses really. First is that this type of situation, like Haditha, is happening on almost a daily basis on one level or another in Iraq, whether it's civilian cars being shot up at U.S. checkpoints and families being killed or, on the other hand, to the level of, for example, the second siege of Fallujah, where between 4,000 and 6,000 people were killed, which I think qualifies as a massacre, as well. But even that number hasn't gotten the attention that this Haditha story has.

And the other really aspect of that, I think is important to note on this, is the media coverage, again, surrounding what has happened around Haditha simply because Time magazine covered it, and thank heavens that they did, but this has gotten so much media coverage, and in comparison, so many of these types of incidents are happening every single week in Iraq. And I think that's astounding and important for people to remember, as well.

Amy Goodman: We're going to go to break.... John Sifton, the U.S. military investigations of this, can you explain what they are, if they are reliable?

John Sifton: Well, after Time magazine published their account, the Navy Criminal Investigative Service did open an investigation, and it is on going. And in fact, what we know now -

Amy Goodman: But even that took some work.

John Sifton: Yeah. It took a lot of work for Time magazine to convince the Navy commanders to order that investigation. But once it took place, it actually did find a lot of disturbing things, and the new information we have is in large part due to that investigation. The second investigation, which is much more important in some respects, is the investigation into the possibility that officers lied about the incident when it occurred, tried to cover it up. The question isn't "Did a lie take place?" because definitely the first accounts of the incident were erroneous and appear to be falsified. The question is how high up the chain of command those lies went.

Amy Goodman: And again, the first reports being that there was a roadside bomb that killed a Marine and killed all these people. That's what they originally said.

John Sifton: Yeah. The initial Marine communique on November 20 was entirely false. It was an account about an I.E.D. killing 15 civilians. And the hospital staff later told Time, you know, these were gunshots. There were a lot of holes in that report. It essentially fell apart under the scrutiny of Time magazine's reporting. And that's what started the investigation in March. The problem now is the second investigation, I don't think a lot of people realize how serious that is, because as your earlier commentator said, there's a lot of incidents in Iraq every day, so we shouldn't be just focused on Haditha. We should be focused on the credibility of the Marines and also the possibility that all kinds of incidents take place which don't get reported and don't get investigated.

Amy Goodman: And the second investigation, who is conducting it?

John Sifton: Well, it's not within the Marines. You know, there are different parts of the military. There is the Army Criminal Investigative Division, there's the Navy Criminal Investigative Service. So this has been taken outside of the Marines, which is a good thing. I mean, the thing is sometimes these criminal investigators can do a very good job, if they are allowed to. And that's the question facing the military: are they going to let this investigation really run an independent course? There's a lot of problems with the military justice system in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I think it's time for Congress to start considering whether it needs reform. It's just not independent enough.

Amy Goodman: And this Lance Corporal Roel Ryan Briones, who told the Los Angeles Times he was not involved with killings but took photographs and helped remove the dead bodies and said, "They range from little babies to adult males and females."

John Sifton: Well, if these allegations are true, then this is clearly a war crime. I mean, we're not talking about a firefight or an ambiguous situation where we might wonder if the Marines made a justifiable mistake. This appears, from the allegations made by witnesses, to be murder and a war crime.

Amy Goodman: I wanted to turn to another story of killings that took place right about the same time, the exposing of the killings, as the Haditha massacre. A few days after that story broke, the military launched another investigation into the killing of Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops. In March, Knight Ridder news agency obtained an Iraqi police report accusing U.S. forces of murdering eleven civilians by rounding them up in a room of a house near the city of Balad and shooting them. The U.S. military stated only four civilians were killed in the raid and that they came under fire while trying to capture an al-Qaeda suspect. The reporter who broke the story for Knight Ridder, Matthew Schofield, was interviewed by Democracy Now! in March. Here is an excerpt of that interview:

Matthew Schofield: There are two accounts. There's a U.S. military account, and then there's an Iraqi police account of what happened.As you know, the U.S. military account is that after showing up and getting into a shootout to get into this house, the house collapsed during the shootout. People were killed either in the shootout or by the collapsing house. They left. They found four bodies and left. They found this suspect. They arrested him. And that's pretty much that story.

The other story is that the house was standing when the U.S. troops went in. They were herded into one room - eleven people herded into one room, executed. U.S. troops then blew up the house and left.

We were talking with the police officer who was first on the scene earlier today. He explained the scene of arriving. He said they waited until U.S. troops had left the area and it was safe to go in. When they arrived at the house, it was in rubble. I don't know if you've seen the photos of the remains of the house, but there was very little standing. He said they expected to find bodies under the rubble. Instead, what they found was in one room of the house, in one corner of one room, there was a single man who had been shot in the head. Directly across the room from him against the other wall were ten people, ranging from his 75-year-old mother-in-law to a six-month-old child, also several three-year-olds - a couple three-year-olds, a couple five-year-olds, and four other - three other women.

Lined up, they were covered, and they had all been shot. According to the doctor we talked to today, they had all been shot in the head, in the chest. A number of - you know, generally, some of them were shot several times. The doctor said it's very difficult to determine exactly what kind of caliber gun they were shot with. He said the entry wounds were generally small and round, the exit wounds were generally very large. But they were lined up along one wall. There was a blanket over the top of them, and they were under the rubble, so when the police arrived, and residents came to help them start digging in, they came across the blankets.

They came across the blankets. They picked the blankets up. They say, at that point, that the hands were handcuffed in front of the Iraqis. They had been handcuffed and shot. And the Iraqi assumption is that they were shot in front of the man across the room. They came to be facing each other. There is nothing to corroborate that. The U.S. is now investigating this matter, along with the Haditha matter. That's kind of where we stand right now.

Amy Goodman: Nancy Youssef, can you respond to your colleague at Knight Ridder, Matthew Schofield's report of what happened in Balad?

Nancy Youssef: The name of the town is Ishaqi, and we have inquired about that report, and frankly the people in that town are fearful to talk about it and have told us to go to the Americans and that their findings are that Americans' version of things is correct and that they're very hesitant now to talk about that case. And so, we're very aggressively trying to find out why that is and what the status of the U.S. investigation is.

Amy Goodman: John Sifton of Human Rights Watch, we're reading now in the papers - this is months after the expose of a massacre in Haditha, and this was in Balad, the latest story that we've seen - that when reporters, news organizations like the New York Times will send someone in, say they're an Iraqis historian, but they won't identify them for fear of them being attacked. Can you talk about the significance of the second report that was exposed at the same time as the first?

John Sifton: Well, there have been a lot of reports. It's difficult to keep track of them, especially when a lot of things are going on all over the world. And that's why the institutional issues are so important. I mean, we can talk about the Haditha incident or the Balad incident and about what evidence is out there, but at the end of the day what concerns us as a human rights group is whether the military has the capacity to self-report about abuses and investigate them properly. And it's looking like it simply doesn't. The question is whether the military needs to reform itself, whether Congress needs to consider reforms to the criminal justice system.

Otherwise, the only way you're ever going to hear about these things is when we're lucky enough to have good reporters go in and interview. They can't be everywhere at once. They can't be all over Iraq in every village and every town.

Amy Goodman: On Memorial Day, the Chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Peter Pace, said charges will be brought against U.S. Marines if an investigation into the alleged killing of unarmed Iraqi civilians uncovers wrongdoing. Major General Pace also said he still doesn't know why it's taken nearly three months for the Pentagon to find out about the November 19th incident in the town of Haditha, in which up to 24 civilians were killed.

John Sifton: It's not as though the military can't investigate when it wants to. I mean, when things happen like in Italy when a fighter jet hit a gondola, ski gondola, and knocked it down, a very quick investigation, court-martial happened. Canadian soldiers in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan, very quick investigation and court-martial. It's just a question of will, political will. And often the military is lacking in this regard. So that's why we're proposing for the military to have an independent prosecutor's office, as opposed to this current system which is entirely at the whim of commanders.

Amy Goodman: Dahr Jamail, I'm reading a report from Reuters, and it says, "A U.S. Defense official said Friday, Marines could face criminal charges, possibly including murder, in what would be the worst case of abuse by American soldiers in Iraq since the 2003 invasion." Following up on the theme of your piece in TruthOut, can you respond to that?

Dahr Jamail: Well, it's very clear, actually, that willful killing, like everything that we've been talking about this morning, is considered a war crime under even the U.S. War Crimes Act. And people who commit these crimes, particularly when the victim dies, it's punishable not just by life in prison, but the death penalty. And this, of course, goes for the people who committed the act, the people who helped cover it up, on up the chain of command logically to the people who set up this whole situation to begin with, including the Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary of Defense and other people in the administration.

And I think that that's what we need to keep in mind, that we're talking about war crimes and atrocities on the level of the My Lai Massacre and I think even comparable to things that were done during, you know, that we had the Nuremberg trials for. And this is what people need to be held responsible for, and again, as it was mentioned earlier, not just the people who committed the act, but the people who set up the entire - all of the conditions that made all of these things possible.

Amy Goodman: You mentioned Fallujah before. And I would say most people in the United States have heard of it as a city. But why do you think it needs to be investigated to the extent that we're beginning to see with Haditha right now?

Dahr Jamail: Well, it needs to be investigated because there is irrefutable evidence that war crimes have been committed there. I saw with my own eyes during the April 2004 siege, where I sat in a clinic and watched men and women and young kids brought in, all saying they had been shot by snipers, when Marines pushed into the city, couldn't take the city, so they set up snipers on rooftops and just started a turkey shoot, which was exactly how it was described by one of the soldiers I ran into when I was leaving that city.

Watching a ten-year-old boy die in front of my face, because he was shot by Marines, other war crimes reported heavily. And that was just from the April siege when 736 people were killed, and then the November siege where between 4,000 and 6,000 people were killed. Indiscriminate bombings, snipers, war crimes being committed on the ground by hand, by U.S. Marines, as well, during that siege. And all of these are, of course, gross breeches of the Geneva Conventions. They are war crimes. And there is photographic evidence. There is video evidence. Doctors there to this day will talk to you about what happened. And there is absolutely no reason why all of these shouldn't be investigated, as well.

Amy Goodman: John Sifton is a person who has been researching these human rights issues for a long time. What does it take to break through? It obviously isn't the case itself, a massacre or murders. As you said, this is happening regularly. What does it take?

John Sifton: Well, in this case, we saw that Time magazine ran a story, there was an investigation, but then pretty much everybody forgot about it. And luckily, Representatives John Murtha brought it up a week or so ago, and that rekindled interest in the story, and so now some new facts are coming out. But, again, we can't rely on press reports and pressure from the press, although it helps, to get accountability. Ultimately there are institutional problems in the military that need to be addressed. But otherwise we're just going to see case after case getting covered up or forgotten.

Amy Goodman: Nancy Youssef, you're in Baghdad. The response of Iraqi politicians who could pick this up now?

Nancy Youssef: Well, it's actually been quite silent. There was an initial sort of outpouring from Sunni politicians after Times report and our report, but now there is not. There is this effort to say that we're a coalition government, that we represent everyone. One Iraqi politician told me, "I don't want to talk about it, because I'm afraid I'll be viewed as sectarian. There are so many incidents of injustice, and if I only talk about one and I'm neglecting the others, then I could be labeled as sectarian."

I wanted to go back to a point earlier about the investigation. I think one thing to keep in mind is that it is very hard now to get Iraqis to talk to military investigators. The people in Haditha told us they don't want to talk to the investigators. They don't want soldiers in their house. They don't want to - [inaudible] they're not sure there's any real resolution to it. And I think that's one of the reasons it's so hard to get these sort of investigations completed. The people tell us they don't want to participate. They don't see the benefit in it.

Amy Goodman: They see the same people, for example, in Haditha, who came into their homes, the U.S. military, as the ones who are now coming to ask them about it? Are they afraid of being identified as, for example, eyewitnesses that could be used against the military?

Nancy Youssef: Well, I'll tell you, it's like - when we went to Haditha, we talked to the uncle of one of the families in which everybody was killed but a 13-year-old girl, and he started to tell his story. And in the middle of his story, he paused and looked up at us and said, "Please don't let me say anything that will get me killed by the Americans. My family can't take it anymore." And I think that says it all. I mean, there is a fear to talk about it. There is a fear to challenge the soldiers, particularly after what they've gone through.

Amy Goodman: Nancy Youssef is Knight Ridder Bureau Chief in Baghdad. Can you tell us the story that this man told you?

Nancy Youssef: Sure. As was mentioned, there were several houses involved that the Marines entered, and this man is the uncle of one of the men, and his house is next door. And basically what happened was the Marines went in and, according to his niece who's thirteen and who survived, her father went to the door to try to open it, and they heard the commotion, and they shot her father. And the father had separated - had put the women and children in a separate bedroom. Her mother was recovering from surgery. She was lying in a hospital. Her sisters were surrounding their mother in the arms of their mother, and she said the Marines came in. They shouted something in English. They didn't know how to respond. The shooting started. She fainted. And when she woke up, her family was dead. Everybody was dead.

And all she heard was her three-year-old brother moaning in pain. He was the only one still alive. And she said to him, "Mohammed, get up. Let's go to uncle's house." And he said, "I can't." And so, she took him and she held him in her arms, and he was bleeding profusely. And she said she held him until he died.

And she called over to her uncle's house next door. Her uncle heard all the commotion inside; of course, didn't know exactly what was happening. They kept trying to get to the house to help his family, and he was stopped by soldiers, he said. And this went on for several hours. And he never knew what happened until his niece showed up at the door and said, "Mohammed, my three-year-old brother, and the family are dead." And he took his niece, and his wife and him, they cleaned her up. They took her and they fled, and they have never been back to their house.

Amy Goodman: Nancy Youssef, speaking to us from Baghdad, the Bureau Chief for Knight Ridder, went into Haditha to investigate the story. John Sifton, is Human Rights Watch coming out with a report on this?

John Sifton: Well, we're still working on it, but Nancy pointed out the difficulties in doing this research. Our new approach, which we've been doing over the last year because of the security problems in Iraq, is to interview veterans themselves. And surprisingly, U.S. troops are very engaged to talk about what they've seen in Iraq. A lot of people don't commit abuses. They witness abuses, though, and they want to talk about them. And we've been using that testimony to piece together facts about what's going on. I mean, don't get the wrong idea. There are people out there who see these things and are horrified and report them up the chain of command. And then nothing happens.

Amy Goodman: And then, of course, there are the eyewitnesses, the victims.

John Sifton: Yes. I mean, you have witness testimony on the victims' side, but also, you know, other Marines, other soldiers who see what's going on and are horrified and want to talk about it. And some of them talk to us. Some of them talk to military investigators. And when - we piece together things that way, too. It's extraordinarily difficult, but it is feasible

Indeed, senior military officers, including chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace, have warned Mr Bush to "expect the worst".

Mr Bush promised that as soon as the two military inquiries were completed - one into the killings and the other into whether there had been a cover-up of the incident by senior marine officers - the reports would be released immediately.

"If, in fact, laws were broken, there will be punishment," he said.

Memories have already been revived of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in March 1968, when the men of Charlie Company, led by Lieutenant William Calley on a search-and-destroy mission to root out Vietcong, killed more than 300 unarmed civilians, including women and children.

Old, grainy black-and-white footage of My Lai is being shown nightly on American television.

While there are clearly differences between the two incidents, there are also striking parallels. Just as in the My Lai region, the marines in Haditha, and in the Anbar province in general, face an insurgency that does not engage in conventional warfare.

According to reporters who have been embedded with them, the whole area is mined with improvised explosive devices. There are constant sniper attacks before the insurgents melt away into the general population. The marines are treated with suspicion, if not outright hostility, by most people. They are constantly on edge, waiting for the next roadside bomb to go off or the next group of snipers to attack them from the rooftops of the houses in which ordinary civilians try to avoid being caught in the crossfire.

And so it was on that morning in November, according to witness reports, that a Humvee of a marine patrol by Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment in Iraq, struck a roadside bomb that killed 20-year-old Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas.

A short time later, according to detailed and harrowing witness reports widely covered by the US media, a group of four marines led by a staff sergeant, screaming abuse, rampaged down the street in which Lance Corporal Terrazas had died, bursting into houses and killing the occupants, including women and children and an elderly man in a wheelchair, whose three sons and their wives were also killed.

Children who survived the shootings by faking being shot have given graphic descriptions of how their fathers and mothers pleaded for their lives before they were killed. One witness says he saw a taxi pull up in the street and he saw four young men, all university students, get out of the car. They were shot before they could say anything. The taxi driver begged for his life before he too was shot.

There is little doubt that the accounts are accurate. One of the members of the marine patrol who was not involved in the killings has said that his fellow marines must have "snapped" and that it was hard to describe just how tough the conditions were for the marines around Haditha.

For Mr Bush, it could mean a further loss of confidence among Americans in his Administration's handling of Iraq - already at a low ebb - and more pressure on him to sack Donald Rumsfeld, his embattled Defence Secretary.

The findings of the second inquiry, into whether there was a cover-up by senior military officers of the Haditha massacre as well as claims that Haditha was not an isolated incident, might be even more damaging for the Bush Administration and the top brass at the Pentagon.

A day after the killings, US military spokesman Captain Jeffrey Pool said in a statement that a roadside bomb in Haditha had killed a marine and 15 civilians and that "Iraqi army soldiers and marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents".

Two months later, Time magazine ran a story based on videos it had obtained of the bodies of civilians killed in Haditha, which showed they had been shot rather than killed by a roadside bomb. Captain Pool told Time that the videos were "al-Qaeda propaganda".

Then in March, Time published several graphic accounts from eyewitness survivors of the killings. A week later, the US military admitted that the civilians had been shot and that the report that they had been the victims of a roadside bombing was false.

The military then launched its two formal inquiries into the massacre and stood down three officers of the marine battalion involved, including its commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Jeffrey Chessani.

Even then, it was not until Democrat congressman John Murtha, a trenchant critic of the war in Iraq but also a decorated marine veteran who has maintained close ties with the military, gave a news conference at which he said the killings in Haditha had been a massacre, that there was evidence of a cover-up and that the Bush Administration realised it had a major problem on its hands.

Indeed, White House spokesman Tony Snow said that Mr Bush had been unaware of the killings until he read media reports and that he had only been briefed by General Pace this week about the continuing inquiries.

Mr Murtha continues to insist that there was a cover-up, "perhaps going up to the highest levels" of the military. The Washington Post reported that the investigation into how marine commanders handled the reporting of the Haditha massacre has concluded that officers gave false information to their superiors, who then failed to adequately question the reports.

Senior military officers have implicitly accepted that the Haditha massacre, while carried out by a small group of marines, raises serious questions about the training of US forces.

General Peter Chiarelli, the commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq, has announced that all US forces in Iraq would go through a month-long "ethical training" course that would emphasise "professional military values and the importance of disciplined, professional conduct in combat".

And military spokesman General William Caldwell revealed there were ongoing investigations into three or four other incidents. But he refused to give further details.

The New York Times last night reported that military prosecutors were preparing murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges against seven Marines and a Navy corpsman in connection with the shooting death of an Iraqi civilian in April.

Earlier this week, Iraq's new ambassador to Washington told reporters that the Haditha killings might not be an isolated incident. He said his cousin had been shot dead by US forces in Haditha last July.Under pressure from a group of retired generals who have criticised the way the war in Iraq was planned and executed and who have called for his dismissal, Mr Rumsfeld has said nothing about the massacre.

But for many Americans who have growing doubts about the war but who have been determined to support the US forces in Iraq - and not repeat what they consider to be the shameful treatment of American soldiers on their return from Vietnam - the massacre will be deeply troubling.

For many, it will be evidence of Mr Rumsfeld's incompetence and apparent lack of concern about the conditions under which the 133,000 American forces in Iraq are fighting and dying. And how some, because of inadequate training and because of the unbearable pressures on them, end up committing unforgivable crimes.

Iraq is not Vietnam, far from it, but this week with the Haditha massacre dominating the news, the Vietnam echoes were impossible to avoid.

The next day, Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, a Marine spokesman in Iraq, released a terse statement: Fifteen Iraqis "were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb in Haditha. Immediately after the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small arms fire. Iraqi army soldiers and Marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another."

Despite what Marine witnesses saw when they arrived, that official version has been allowed to stand for six months. Who lied about the killings, who knew the truth and what, if anything, they did about it are at the core of one of the potentially most embarrassing and damaging events of the Iraq war, one that some say may surpass the detainee abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison.

The Marine Corps is saying only that it would be inappropriate to comment while investigations are underway. But since that Saturday afternoon in November, evidence has been accumulating steadily that the official version was wrong and misleading. The more military investigators learned about what happened that day in Haditha, the more they grew disturbed.

On Nov. 29, the Marine unit in question - Kilo Company of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment - had a memorial service at a Marine base for Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, a well-liked 20-year-old from El Paso, Tex. He was killed in a roadside bomb explosion that appears to have been the trigger for what looks to investigators like revenge shootings of Iraqi civilians. Lance Cpl. Roel Ryan Briones said that Terrazas had been "like a brother to me." Staff Sgt. Travis Fields, Terrazas's platoon sergeant, called him "a man of heart." Not long after the bodies were discovered, Maj. Dana Hyatt, a Marine reservist whose job in part was to work with the civilian population when damage was inflicted by the U.S. military, paid out $38,000 in compensation to the families of the 15 dead. The Iraqis received the maximum the United States offers - $2,500 per death, plus a small amount for other damage.

Kilo Company did not dwell on what happened Nov. 19. Mike Coffman, who was a Marine Reserve officer in Haditha at the time, recalled that another officer, telling him about the incident, "indicated to me that he thought from the beginning that it was overreaction by the Marines, but he didn't think anything criminal had occurred."

When the Haditha city council met in January for the first time in many months, "none of them [Iraqi members] ever raised it as an issue," said Coffman, who attended the meeting. Rather, he said, they complained about how car and truck traffic in the area had been shut down after two Marines were killed at a checkpoint bombing.

That same month, a top military official arrived in Iraq who would play a key role in the case: Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the new No. 2 military officer in the country. He is an unusual general in today's Army, with none of the "good old boy" persona seen in many other top commanders. He had praised an article by a British officer that was sharply critical of U.S. officers in Iraq for using tactics that alienated the population. He wanted U.S. forces to operate differently than they had been doing.

Not long after Chiarelli arrived in Baghdad, an Iraqi journalism student gave an Iraqi human rights group a video he had taken in Haditha the day after the incident. It showed the scene at the local morgue and the damage in the houses where the killings took place. The video reached Time magazine, whose reporters began questioning U.S. military officials. Pool, the Marine captain, sent the reporters a dismissive e-mail saying that they were falling for al-Qaeda propaganda, the magazine said recently. "I cannot believe you're buying any of this," he wrote. Pool declined last week to comment on any aspect of the Haditha incident.

But Army Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a more senior spokesman in Baghdad, notified Chiarelli of the questions. The general's response to his public affairs office was short: Just brief the Time magazine reporter on the military investigation into the incident that Chiarelli assumed had been conducted.

The surprising word came back: There had been no investigation.

Chiarelli told subordinates in early February he was amazed by that response, according to an Army officer in Iraq. He directed that an inquiry commence as soon as possible. He wanted to know what had happened in Haditha, and also why no investigation had begun.

Army Col. Gregory Watt was tapped to start an investigation and by March 9, he told Chiarelli that he had reached two conclusions, according to the Army officer.

One was that death certificates showed that the 24 Iraqis who died that day - the 15 the Marines said had died in the bomb blast and others they said were insurgents - had been killed by gunshot rather than a bomb, as the official statement had said. The other was that the Marine Corps had not investigated the deaths, as is the U.S. military's typical procedure in Iraq, particularly when so many civilians are involved. Individually, either finding would have been disturbing. Together, they were stunning.

On March 10, the findings were given to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, the first Marine ever to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Rumsfeld told aides that the case promised to be a major problem. He called it "really, really bad - as bad or worse than Abu Ghraib," recalled one Pentagon official. On March 11, President Bush was informed, according to the White House.

At the Marine Corps headquarters, there was "genuine surprise at high levels," said an Army officer who has been working with the Marine Corps on the case. "It caught a lot of people off guard."

That weekend, almost four months after the incident, "we went to general quarters," recalled one Marine general, using the naval expression for the call to arms. The following Monday, March 13, Marine officers began briefing key members of Congress on defense-related committees. Their message was succinct: Something highly disturbing had happened in Haditha, and its repercussions could be serious. The alacrity of the Marine response surprised some of Rumsfeld's aides in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. OSD, as it is called at the Pentagon, told the Marine Corps a few days later not to say anything to anyone about the investigation, recalled the general. Too late, the Marines responded, we've already briefed Capitol Hill.

The Marines began their own investigation almost immediately, following up on Watt's inquiry, but quickly realized that to credibly examine the acts of their top commanders in Iraq, they would need someone outside their service. The Army offered up Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell, a career Special Operations officer who first saw combat as a sergeant in the Vietnam War, to look into the matter. The Marines, who are part of the Navy Department, also turned over the question of criminal acts to agents of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Notified on March 12, the NCIS immediately sent a team of three Iraq-based investigators to Haditha, one of the most violent areas in Iraq. A few days later, as the scope of the case sank in, it dispatched a team of reinforcements from the United States.

But even then, nothing had been made public about the November event that might have distinguished it from Iraq's daily bloodshed. Then, on March 19, the Time magazine article appeared. "I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head," the magazine quoted Eman Waleed, 9, as saying. Most of the victims were shot at close range, the director of the local hospital told Time.

The first public indication that the military was taking those allegations seriously came on April 7, when Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, a reserved, quietly professional officer from northwestern Colorado, was relieved of command of the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Marines, Kilo Company's parent unit. Also removed were two of his subordinates - Kilo's commander, Capt. Luke McConnell, and the commander of another company. Even then, the Marine Corps didn't specify why the actions were taken, beyond saying that the officers had lost the confidence of their superiors.

Then, on May 17, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) let the news slip out. In the middle of a rambling statement at the outset of a news conference on Capitol Hill, he said - almost as an aside - that what happened in Haditha was "much worse than reported in Time magazine." He asserted that the investigations would reveal that "our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

The reporters present barely focused on what Murtha had said. When the congressman finished his statement, the first reporter asked about Iraqi security forces. The second asked about U.S. troop withdrawals. The third asked about congressional support for Murtha's resolution calling for a U.S. pullout from Iraq. Finally, the fourth asked about Haditha. Murtha responded with a bit more detail: "They actually went into the houses and killed women and children. And there was about twice as many as originally reported by Time." Even then, his comments captured little attention and were not front-page news.

It took a few days for the horror of what Murtha was talking about to sink in. "This is just My Lai all over again," Vaughan Taylor, a former military prosecutor and instructor in criminal law at the Army's school for military lawyers, said last week. "It's going to do us enormous damage."

The facts of the shooting incident seem now to be largely known, with military insiders saying that recent news articles are similar to the internal reports they have received from investigators. But considerable mystery remains about how Marine commanders handled the incident and contributed to what some officials suspect was a coverup. "The real issue is how far up the chain of command it goes," said one senior Marine familiar with the case. "Who knew it, and why didn't they do something about it?"

The Marine Corps still has not corrected its misleading Nov. 20 statement asserting that the Iraqi civilians were killed in a bomb blast. A Marine Corps spokesman didn't return calls on Friday asking why it had not.

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Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

The wife of the unnamed staff sergeant claimed there had been a "total breakdown" in the unit's discipline after it was pulled out of Falluja in early 2005.

"There were problems in Kilo company with drugs, alcohol, hazing [violent initiation games], you name it," she said. "I think it's more than possible that these guys were totally tweaked out on speed or something when they shot those civilians in Haditha."

The troops in Iraq have been ordered to take refresher courses on battlefield ethics, but a growing body of evidence from Haditha suggests the strain of repeated deployments in Iraq is beginning to unravel the cohesion and discipline of the combat troops.

"We are in trouble in Iraq," Barry McCaffrey, a retired army general who played a leading role in the Iraq war, told Time magazine. "Our forces can't sustain this pace, and I'm afraid the American people are walking away from this war."

The Newsweek account described a gung-ho battalion that had staged a chariot race, complete with captured horses, togas and heavy metal music, before the battle for Falluja in late 2004. The marines were given loose rules of engagement in the vicious urban warfare that followed.

"If you see someone with a cellphone," said one of the commanders was quoted as saying, half-jokingly, "put a bullet in their fucking head".

At one point in the battle, a marine from the 3rd battalion was caught on camera shooting a wounded, unarmed man as he lay on the ground. However, the marine involved was later exonerated.

The third battalion lost 17 men in 10 days in Falluja and by the time the troops arrived in Haditha, in autumn last year, it was clear morale had plummeted. A Daily Telegraph reporter who visited its headquarters early this year at Haditha Dam, on the outskirts of the town, described it as a "feral place" where discipline was "approaching breakdown". He reported that some marines had left the official living quarters and had set up separate encampments with signs ordering outsiders to keep out.

Other observers, however, have come away from time spent with the marines with different impressions. Lucian Read, a photographer who spent five months with Kilo company, said it was generally well led, although sometimes squads had to go on patrol without an officer because there were not enough to go around.

Mr Read told Time magazine that Kilo company was the "most human" of the many units he had accompanied in Iraq. "They were never abusive," he said. "There was a certain amount of antagonism and frustration when people didn't cooperate. But it's not like they had 'kill 'em all' spray-painted on the walls."

Three senior officers in the Haditha-based 3rd battalion of the first marine regiment, known as the Thundering Third, have been relieved of duty because of a "lack of confidence" in their leadership.

The officers include Captain Lucas McConnell, the head of Kilo company, which was directly involved in the deaths of 24 unarmed Iraqis there on November 19.

Another captain from the battalion, James Kimber, was relieved of duty for a separate incident, according to his lawyer, who said his subordinates in India company had sworn and derided Iraqi security forces in an interview with Sky News.

The commander of the third battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Chessani, has also been made to step down pending the outcome of the Haditha investigation.

A criminal investigation conducted by navy investigators into the Haditha killings is still under way, but a parallel army inquiry into the wider issues has been completed. However, a military official said some findings might be withheld pending the principle inquiry findings.

On Saturday the Iraqi government rejected the findings of a US inquiry into the death of nine civilians in a US raid in the town of Ishaqi and said it would conduct its own investigation.

In an exclusive interview with Knight Ridder on Friday, Awad's family gave their version of what happened to him in the early morning hours of April 26. They said U.S. Marines dragged Awad from his home, killed him and then planted an AK-47 assault rifle and a shovel next to him to make him look like a terrorist.

The family members said American investigators have since harassed them, questioning their allegations in hours-long sessions that begin in the dead of night and last past dawn. They said they once were taken for questioning to nearby Abu Ghraib prison, the scene of previous allegations of American abuse.

There was no way to confirm the accounts. U.S. officials have declined to provide details of the allegations that led them on May 25 to announce that they were investigating the death of an Iraqi civilian and that "several service members from 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment . . . were removed from operations and have returned to the United States."

Lt. Lawton King, a spokesman at Camp Pendleton, Calif., where the Marines are based, said Friday that the investigation is continuing. He said that he had no idea if or when charges would be filed.

Al Hamdania is on the far western edge of Baghdad province. Insurgents are active in the area, and kidnappings and other violence are common. The town is obscure enough that U.S. officials incorrectly rendered its name as "Hamandiyah" in their official announcement.

The case is one of three involving the deaths of 36 Iraqis, including women and children, that have drawn fresh attention to complaints that U.S. forces in Iraq have wantonly killed unarmed civilians.

U.S. officials also are investigating a Nov. 19 case in the western Iraqi town of Haditha in which at least 24 civilians were killed. U.S. Marines initially said that 15 of them and a Marine died when a roadside bomb exploded and that eight others were killed when Marines returned insurgent fire. But a preliminary investigation found that none of the civilians had died from the explosion, and survivors told Knight Ridder and others that the Marines had stormed into houses and killed the occupants.

Iraqi police also have accused U.S. troops of executing 11 people on March 15 in the town of Ishaqi, north of Balad, including a 75-year-old woman and a 6-month-old. U.S. officials announced Friday that an investigation had found no wrongdoing and that no action would be taken against the soldiers.

On Thursday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki said that American violence against Iraqi civilians had become almost habitual. "We cannot forgive the violations of the dignity of the Iraqi people," al Maliki said.

Awad's family showed Knight Ridder a sheet of paper that appeared to be part of a report on the incident. A Marine sergeant had written that his unit killed the man because he was "digging on the side of the road from our ambush site. I made the call and engaged. He was pronounced dead at the scene with only a shovel and AK-47."

The sergeant signed his name. It was witnessed by a second Marine.

Awad's family members offer a radically different version. Awad's cousin, Farhan Ahmed Hussein, said Americans came to his door in the early morning hours of April 26 and pounded on it so forcefully that he knew that if he didn't open it, they would.

In broken Arabic, a soldier said, "Tefteesh," or search. The Marines asked him if he had any weapons. An AK-47, he told them, and they took it and a shovel resting in front of his house. They thanked him in Arabic for cooperating and left, Hussein said.

He said he didn't think much of it. "I told myself first thing in the morning, I will stop the first patrol I see and ask them for my AK-47 and shovel back," he said.

Next, the Marines knocked on the door of Awad's brother, Awad Ibrahim Awad. The two brothers lived not far from their cousin, in small houses on a barren field.

Awad Ibrahim Awad said the Marines knocked at around 2 a.m., but that he decided not to get out of bed. They left.

Surprised, he said he looked outside - the area is illuminated with generator-powered lights - and saw the Marines walking behind his brother's house toward the home of a neighbor.

"The soldiers asked my mom if there were any men in our house. When she told them no, they left without searching the house," the neighbor, who asked to be identified only as Mohammed, said.

Awad Ibrahim Awad said the Marines then knocked at Hashim Awad's door. When he came to the door, two Marines grabbed each of his hands and pulled him out of the house. The Marines took Hashim Awad and left without searching inside, Awad Ibrahim Awad said.

"They looked like people who found what they were looking for," Awad Ibrahim Awad said. "I told my wife, 'They took my brother, but I think he will be fine.' And I told myself: 'What's the worse they do? Investigate him for a few days and then release him because he is innocent.' Thirty minutes later, I heard gunshots."

The next day, as Awad Ibrahim Awad was working at a nearby gas station, Iraqi police pulled in and asked him to identify the body of someone from his neighborhood who'd been killed by the Americans. He stared at the body, which had an AK-47 and shovel next to it, but didn't recognize his brother.

"I saw a swollen face, and signs that he had been beaten. And it was clear a bullet had been shot into the mouth and broke part of his bottom teeth," he said. "I told the police officers, 'I know this man,' but I cannot recognize him. He was beaten to the point that I couldn't recognize his face."

Awad Ibrahim said it never occurred to him that the body might be his brother's. "He didn't have an AK-47 or shovel when the Americans took him," he said. "And besides, the Americans took him. How can he be dead and in police hands now?"

But something nagged at him, so he went to the hospital and looked at the body again. This time he recognized his brother by his leg, which had been damaged in a farming accident 15 years ago.

Local tribal leaders said the Americans brought Hashim Awad's body, the shovel and the AK-47 to the local police station and reported that they'd caught the man digging a hole and planting an explosive device, so they killed him. The police took the body to the hospital.

Shortly after the funeral, residents showed the family a flyer that Marines were circulating. The flyer said that Hashim Awad had been killed because he was a terrorist planting explosives and "lethal force will stop that." They misspelled his name.

Tribal leaders told Marine officers about the Hashim Awad's death during a regularly scheduled community outreach meeting May 1. U.S. officials opened an investigation shortly after that.

Since then, American forces have questioned the family repeatedly, relatives said, sometimes in the middle of the night. They said the Americans once took several of them to Abu Ghraib prison and held them for hours, questioning only one of them. They rode home in a military convoy.

"We believe the Americans are trying to terrorize us so we won't talk," said Hussein, Hashim Awad's cousin.

The American investigators have taken DNA swabs from his mouth, Awad Ibrahim Awad said. Another brother, Sadoun Ibrahim Awad, gave the Americans permission to exhume his brother's body.