Iraqis don't trust U.S. investigations. Does anyone?

The Iraqis are not at all pleased with the cavalier way in which the U.S. military has dismissed the claims it's soldiers committed atrocities in Ishaqi.

Iraq vowed on Saturday to press on with its own investigation into the deaths of civilians in a US raid on the town of Ishaqi, rejecting the US military's exoneration of its forces.

Adnan al-Kazimi, an aide to the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, said the government would demand an apology from the United States and compensation for the victims in several cases, including the alleged massacre in the town of Haditha last year.

"We have from more than one source that the Ishaqi killings were carried out under questionable circumstances. More than one child was killed. This report was not fair for the Iraqi people and the children who were killed," al-Kazimi told Reuters.

The US military had issued a statement about Ishaqi saying allegations that US troops "executed a family ... and then hid the alleged crimes by directing an air strike, are absolutely false".

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.

The US military repeatedly has pledged to punish any soldier found guilty of atrocities in Iraq, but the decision to clear the troops in Ishaqi fuelled deep mistrust among ordinary Iraqis three years after the US-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein.

"Ishaqi is just another reason why we shouldn't trust the Americans," said Abdullah Hussein, an engineer in Baghdad.

"First they lied about the weapons of mass destruction, then there was the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and now it's clear to the world they were guilty in Haditha," he told Reuters.

Frankly, I have no idea what the truth is in the Ishaqi incident, but I have to agree with Abdullah Hussein. There have been so many cases where the military as well as their civilian bosses up to and including the prez have tried to cover up their mistakes and their deliberate atrocities that I simply don't trust anything they say anymore. Fool me once ...