Nothing about Haditha can be as bad as the fact that our troops apparently purposefully executed 24 Iraqi civilians.
Our government's response comes pretty close.
The Washington Post [
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...]
has an article discussing the official response, once the intial coverup was discovered. Toward the end of the article is this:
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.
Two things about this are bothersome. The most glaring is that Marine officers, not trusting OSD to do the right thing and tell Congress what was going on, went on their own and informed Congress.
More subtle is that apparently, no one in OSD thought the incident was important enough to even think about for "several days." The fact that, once they did deem it worthy of their great minds, their response was to tell the Marines to cover it up, is par for the course for this administration.
The fact that it took "several days" to realize that there might be something wrong with the purposeful execution of women and children makes a pretty strong statement that the "values training" being given to our troops in Iraq is wasted until that same training is given to Secretary Rumsfeld and the people who work for him.
I'll leave for another diary the issue that it was only two months after Congress was briefed that we - the people who pay these assholes' salaries - were told about it.
I suppose that saying "I really have some problems with this crap" is preaching to the choir. Appropriate on a Sunday -