One thing I have not seen discussed in this context is that Haditha was one of the worst Islamo-fascist hellholes on earth. That does not mean that "anything goes" for our side, but it does mean that reasonable people should consider all the ways in which evidence and the entire situation may have been manipulated before accepting anything said about this matter. I think your advice is a very wise one. Here is an article from the (London) Times:
The Marines and a 'massacre' in Iraq
snip:
WITH remarkable self-assurance for a ten-year-old girl, Iman Hassan recounted how her family was killed by American troops as she cowered in terror in a corner of her living room.
It happened soon after 7am on November 19 last year, she claimed in an interview with The Times. She was still in her pyjamas and preparing for school when a US military convoy rumbled down the road near her home in al-Haditha, a town on the Euphrates surrounded by date farms that has become a hotbed of insurgents. Three months earlier 20 American soldiers had been killed there.
Two things to note - the media has found their "spokesperson". Iman Hassan will be the face of this atrocity. Before it is too late I would suggest that the US authorities check that this is not a new Mohammed al-Dura
Note also the insidious (or careless) use of the present tense in the penultimate sentence. It would have been correct to write "a town on the Euphrates surrounded by date farms that was [or had become] a hotbed of insurgents". As the sentence now stands it indicates that the insurgency started after November 19 last year (despite the fact that they relate the fact that 20 Marines had been killed there previously).
It may seem pedantic in the extreme to complain about the tempi in the article, but knowingly or unknowingly this is one way the MSM slants their stories.
You are so right, this could well be another Mohammed al-Dura incident..... the Islamo-fascists love to try that sort of thing. I am extremely suspicious about stuff like the video referred to in the Times article -- anything like that from a "trainee Iraqi journalist" is almost certainly from a terrorist propagandist. When you consider that the terrorists run Haditha with a savage fist, no one but their own propagandist would have been allowed to practice "journalism" there on this matter.
Also, the article refers to visits of US investigators long after the fact -- as I've said before, any evidence that was not gathered and preserved before the terrorists resumed control of the area is worthless unless there is reason to be sure it has not been tampered with. If there is supposed to be no evidence of a firefight, I would want to know with certainty that no walls and windows have been repaired or replaced, etc. How can we come in months later and determine what really happened when the area is in control of the scumbags??
"But a video made by a trainee Iraqi journalist was passed to Time magazine. It showed bloodstained bodies, bullet and shrapnel marks inside the Hassan family home, and walls spattered with blood. There was no evidence of a skirmish on the outside of the buildings. Doctors said that most of the victims had been shot from close range in the head or chest."