Question: if it is that simple...that the incident report was deliberately falsified and so obviously, clearly wrong, and known to be wrong very quickly afterward, WHY would that have been done?? To what end?
You say a lie to cover up something wrong, indeed, horribly wrong. Did it cover up anything? Nope. Something so obviously wrong, so easily discerned, and so horrible, could not be covered up.
Somebody said, oh, it took THREE WHOLE MONTHS before it began to be looked at. They've GOT to be kidding. Three months is not long; if that is all a cover up succeeds in doing, it is useless. And anyone with even half a brain would know that. Actually, even a tiny fraction of a brain... How do you get to be a Marine if you are THAT DUMB?
There is something, something that we aren't getting yet in this story. I don't know how it will shake out, but right now it raises far more questions than it answers, no matter which version is assumed.
The Marine who wrote this letter to the Editor of the Washington Post was charged with premeditated murder and other war crimes in Iraq.
Autopsy evidence showed he did not do what he was charged with doing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/27/AR2006052700846.html
But it seems to me perfectly plausible they simply hoped their version would be accepted by superiors eager to put it behind them. That it did not work precisely because some did have the integrity not to settle for such excuses and kept digging.
I'd love to be wrong. But realistically, when you put thousands of very young men in charge of life or death situations for years, we should not be surprised if occasionally one of them screws the pooch. Which in no way excuses one who did so, nor establishes that it happened in this case. But the idea that is cannot possibly have happened, is naive.