On Thursday morning, President Bush made some mighty fine sounding statements about Haditha, mighty fine indeed. He assured the world in ringing tones that we would conduct a full, thorough and complete investigation, one that would demonstrate to the world our willingness to deal with issues like this in an up-front way.

One of the things that happens in a transparent society like ours is that there is — there will be a full and complete investigation. The world will see the full and complete investigation.
[…]
I expect this investigation to be … a full and thorough investigation.
[…]
The United States of America has got a willingness to deal with issues like this in an up-front way, in an open way, and correct problems. And that’s what you’re going to see unfold.

Had anyone briefed him, do you think, that it was alleged back in March that another “issue like this” had come up in Ishaqi? It’s really hard to tell, based on the President’s recent statements. There is not one direct or semi-direct reference to the allegations of a second civilian massacre at Ishaqi. And it’s not entirely clear whether they brief him on “issues like this” only when Time reporters start asking questions, or whether they brief him also when the BBC starts airing videotape evidence. But, in any case, BBC aired its evidence only on Thursday afternoon. And it must have taken a while to get a briefing organized, between getting hold of the information, and figuring out who would bell the cat this time. So the Ishaqi briefing probably hasn’t even occurred yet. (The guy who caught a full night’s sleep the night of September 11, 2001 – this link’s a must read; trust me – and the night that Katrina hit surely isn’t going to let a briefing on something as minor as Ishaqi encroach upon his weekend.)

So presumably when Bush blithely did his “I’m the Rhetoric President” thing on Thursday morning, no one had told him that Maj. Gen. William Caldwell would make a statement on Friday afternoon about the Ishaqi allegations. That Gen. Caldwell would declare that a U.S. military investigation had cleared U.S. troops of all wrongdoing. That Gen. Caldwell would reveal no details of the investigation. That the world would not get to see that we had conducted a full, thorough and complete investigation. That the world would only be told: “Move along now, nothing to see here, nothing happened at all, move along please.”

Is this guy the Commander-in-Chief, or is he the Commander-in-Cheap, a knock-off cut-rate K-Mart version of the real thing? For a War President who claims that he’s the Decider, he seems to be out of the loop an awful lot, doesn’t he?

It is somewhat ironic that on Thursday, Gen. Caldwell himself had made a statement so similar to the President’s remarks that one might be forgiven for thinking both statements were scripted by the same writer:

“The coalition does not and will not tolerate any unethical or criminal behavior,” (Major General William Caldwell) said. “Any allegations of such activities will be fully investigated and any members found to have committed these violations will be held accountable.”

Now here’s Gen. Caldwell announcing to the world the findings of what he’s pleased to call the Ishaqi investigation. This is the most detailed account of his statement I have been able to find. In fact, it is the only detailed account of his statement I have been able to find. (As of Sunday afternoon, the Department of Defense website does not have a transcript available, or an official news release.)

“The investigation revealed the ground force commander, while capturing and killing terrorists, operated in accordance with the rules of engagement governing our combat forces in Iraq,” Caldwell said.

Credible intelligence led to the raid, in which Ahmad Abdallah Muhammad Nais al-Utai, also known as Hamza, a Kuwaiti-born al Qaeda cell leader, was captured and Uday Faris al-Tawafi, also known as Abu Ahmed, an Iraqi involved in making roadside bombs as well as recruiting local people to join the insurgency, was killed, Caldwell said.

When ground forces arrived at a house that intelligence reports said was being used as an insurgent safe house, they came under fire from the building, the general said.

“As the enemy fire persisted, the ground force commander appropriately reacted by incrementally escalating the use of force from small arms fire to rotary wing aviation, and then to close air support, ultimately eliminating the threat,” he said.

“Allegations that the troops executed a family living in this safe house, and then hid the alleged crimes by directing an air strike, are absolutely false,” the coalition spokesman added.

In the subsequent search, the general said, coalition forces documented the discovery (of) Abu Ahmed’s body and those of three noncombatants.

“The investigating officer concluded that possibly up to nine collateral deaths resulted from this engagement, but could not determine the precise number due to collapsed walls and heavy debris,” Caldwell said, repeating that the investigating officer ascertained the ground force commander properly followed the rules of engagement as he “necessarily escalated the use of force until the threat was eliminated.”

Caldwell noted that Arab and Western media have focused a great deal of attention recently on allegations of coalition troops killing innocent civilians in Iraq.

“Temptation exists to lump all these incidents together,” he said. “However, each case needs to be examined individually. Let me be clear. Multinational Force Iraq does not and will not tolerate unethical or criminal behavior. All allegations of the loss of civilian life are thoroughly investigated. All loss of innocent life is tragic and unfortunate, and we regret such occurrences. We take all reports of improper conduct seriously; we investigate them thoroughly, and hold our troops accountable for their actions.”

The annotator who lives inside of me fights her way to the surface to point out the following:
• He starts by saying everything was kosher.
• Then he repeats in detail the official version of the incident that the U.S. military had put out before the investigation.
• And then he goes: “Move along now, nothing to see here”.
• He does not identify the dead civilians, a strange omission if the intention is to render a complete accounting to the whole world.
• In the course of the entire performance, he makes only one single statement about the investigation itself: that the investigating officer did not even ascertain how many non-combatant deaths had actually occurred.
• No explanation whatsoever is offered for why the coalition forces documented only three noncombatant deaths, when the investigating officer found evidence of up to … is it nine or twelve? Even that is not clear. Did Gen. Caldwell mean the three non-combatants documented earlier and up to nine more collateral deaths, or did he mean up to nine collateral deaths in all, including the three non-combatants documented earlier?
• No details were provided as to the basis on which the investigating officer concluded that up to nine noncombatant deaths had occurred. This does, of course, mean that no judgement is possible as to whether it was reasonable for the coalition forces to have documented only three non-combatant deaths and missed the rest.
• The U.S. military’s official initial account of the incident said that a total of four people were killed in the house. The report filed by Iraqi police said that it was eleven. The investigation has now revealed that it was up to ten, or up to thirteen. But despite the entirely unexplained discrepancy in the body count, the U.S. military’s official initial account of the incident is still fully upheld.

When I say “entirely unexplained”, I confess to assuming that the phrase “collapsed walls and heavy debris” does not constitute an acceptable explanation. And I make this assumption because I have acute trouble fleshing out this story in my mind. I tried “We saw only 4 bodies sticking out of the rubble, so naturally we concluded that only 4 people had been killed”, but I had to ball that up and toss it in the wastebasket. Then I tried: “We dug through the rubble, and when we came to 4 bodies, we decided to stop digging”, but that had to be filed in the same place in the same way. Then it struck me: “I should just leave it to them, the Bush-Rumsfeld-Pace military. Eventually, they’ll explain it to us, and it’s sure to turn out to be something I could never even have imagined.”

The pre-investigation U.S. military version was that 4 Iraqis, including three non-combatants, had been killed in an engagement conducted in accordance with the rules of engagement. The Iraq police version was that 11 Iraqi civilians had been killed in accordance with the rules of Haditha. The investigation was conducted in order to arbitrate, as it were, between these two conflicting versions. The post-investigation official military version appears to be: “Okay, we may have missed six to nine bodies, but every other detail in our original version is still true, and the Iraqi police just made up all those lies.” And no one is asking whether it was credible for the coalition forces to have documented only three non-combatant deaths and missed the rest? At this point, isn’t that the central question in determining which of the two competing versions is the truth?

Under the circumstances, one can begin to empathize with the Iraqi response to Gen. Caldwell’s statement:

The U.S. military rushed to judgment in its exoneration of U.S. troops involved in the March 15 raid that killed civilians in Ishaqi, said an aide to Iraq’s prime minister on Saturday.

It may be premature to trot out the word “whitewash”, since at this stage the military has simply not provided enough information to judge whether that is indeed what has just happened. But it is perfectly clear that on Friday, in the case of Ishaqi, the Bush-Rumsfeld-Pace military has miserably failed to deliver what on Thursday, President Bush had promised for “issues like this”.

The world did not get to see that a full, thorough and complete investigation was conducted. What the world got instead was a “just trust us” account of an investigation that raises far more questions than it answers. It’s looking very much like “a full, thorough and complete investigation” is only on the “to say” list, and not also on the “to do” list.

But maybe President Bush will step forward, take charge, and set everything right. Just as soon as someone can bring all this to his attention. Where’s John Murtha when we need him again?

Previously on Ishaqi:
June 1: Just Gets Worse, Part 2
June 2: How Obscene Is That?
June 4: Ishaqi: New AP Video Corroborates BBC, Raises Troubling Question