Red Flags May Have Been Missed at Haditha

Apparently there were signs of possible problems that were missed at Haditha and not followed up with a closer look at the death of 24 Iraqis. Editors & Publishers noticed the story:

A report by Army Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell said problems with initial accounts submitted by Marines involved in the deaths should have been apparent to commanders in the area, the Times said.

Bargewell questioned why senior military officers in western Iraq did not conduct a thorough investigation, the newspaper said. It cited a portion of his report's executive summary that was read to the Times by a U.S. Defense Department official who requested anonymity because the report had not been released publicly.

"Virtually no inquiry at any level of command was conducted into the circumstances surrounding the deaths," Bargewell wrote, according to the Times. "There were, however, a number of red flags and opportunities to do so."

For example, the 2nd Marine Division comptroller, who was responsible for making compensatory payments to the families of the dead civilians, told the division's legal counsel that he thought the incident "might require further reporting."

Obviously, there's still a lot about the Haditha story that we don't know. I should mention that the story I'm excerpting appears in Editors & Publishers but it is an AP story that is apparently based on a Los Angeles Times story. Shouldn't AP being doing its own reporting? (I can ask since I make no pretense whatsoever of being a reporter; I just nose around newspapers, magazines and websites trying to understand what's happening to our country.)