…Normally, American camps in Iraq are almost suburban, with their coffee shops and polite soldiers who idle away their rest hours playing computer games and discussing girls back home.

Haditha was shockingly different – a feral place where the marines hardly washed; a number had abandoned the official living quarters to set up separate encampments with signs ordering outsiders to keep out; and a daily routine punctured by the emergency alarm of the dam itself with its antiquated and crumbling machinery.
telegraph.co.uk

Probe Clears U.S. Troops
A military investigation into allegations that American troops intentionally killed civilians in Ishaqi, a village north of Baghdad, has cleared them of misconduct, the US said, even though it acknowledged the deaths of up to 13 Iraqis in the March raid.

Gen. Caldwell also acknowledged there were “possibly up to nine collateral deaths” in addition to the four Iraqi deaths that the military announced at the time of the raid. The results of the investigation were released after questions were raised about the original US report as television stations aired AP Television News footage of a row of dead children in the aftermath of the raid. The probe was part of US investigations into possible misconduct by American troops in at least three separate areas of Iraq. Besides Haditha and Ishaqi, seven Marines and a Navy Corpsman could face murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges in the April shootings of an Iraqi man, west of Baghdad.

reuters.com”>Iraq rejects US probe clearing troops of killings
…Police in Ishaqi say five children, four women and two men were shot in the head, and that the bodies, with hands bound, were dumped in one room before the house was blown up.

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