How out of touch is he?

US military officials knew of the Haditha massacre a couple of months ago. The current revelations are not new to them at all. Originally the Marines who led the massacre claimed that two dozen civilians they executed had died in a roadside bombing. This lie was immediately and obviously false as the civilians did not have the wounds of bombing victims.

What they had shown was that the victims died of gunshot wounds to the head or to the chest. In other words all of them showed signs they were executed.

It is known that two Marines took photos of the incident shortly after it happend (though neither participated in the massacre). What happened to those photos? Who has them?

It is also known that the US military paid out $38,000 to the families of victims of the massacre for wrongful deaths -- in other words they knew the Marines had lied at that time or they wouldn't have made the payouts. In typical doubletalk a military official involved in the payouts said: "I didn't say we had made a mistake, I said I'm being told I can make payments for these 15 because they were deemed not to be involved in combat."

Okay, think about this. The 15 were were not "involved in combat". US Marines killed them. but this was not a "mistake".

Perhaps the most bizarre thing about this massacre is that while the US government has been aware of it for months President Bush supposedly first heard about it when reading an article in Time magazine! Much the same way he supposedly only found out about the flooding in New Orleans from news reports. Exactly what sort of commander in chief is so out of touch with the facts of his own military that one of the worst US atrocities in decades only comes to his attention by reading a publication on the news racks?