If this is true, it's very bad

I don't buy much that liberal reporters say, especially when it smells like bias. Iraq Now passes along a story about Sy Hersh speaking at Bezerkley (so take it with a large grain of salt) that, if true, would be extremely bad. According to Hersh, some Iraqis may have been murdered in cold blood.

In the evening's most emotional moment, Hersh talked about a call he had gotten from a first lieutenant in charge of a unit stationed halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. His group was bivouacking outside of town in an agricultural area, and had hired 30 or so Iraqis to guard a local granary. A few weeks passed. They got to know the men they hired, and to like them. Then orders came down from Baghdad that the village would be "cleared." Another platoon from the soldier's company came and executed the Iraqi granary guards. All of them.

"He said they just shot them one by one. And his people, and he, and the villagers of course, went nuts," Hersh said quietly. "He was hysterical, totally hysterical. He went to the company captain, who said, 'No, you don't understand, that's a kill. We got 36 insurgents. Don't you read those stories when the Americans say we had a combat maneuver and 15 insurgents were killed?'

"It's shades of Vietnam again, folks: body counts," Hersh continued. "You know what I told him? I said, 'Fella, you blamed the captain, he knows that you think he committed murder, your troops know that their fellow soldiers committed murder. Shut up. Complete your tour. Just shut up! You're going to get a bullet in the back.' And that's where we are in this war."

It disgusts me that Hersh repeats the standard lie about Vietnam and his rhetoric is over the top, but if this story is true, it needs to be investigated.

There's some oddities in it, however. The phrase "orders came down from Baghdad" is odd. First of all, I doubt very seriously that any high commander of US forces would ever order murder. I'd be more than shocked if that were true.

The comments of the "company commander" are odd as well. "when the Americans say..." indicates that he is not an American. Could these have been Iraqi National Guard troops? There's been rumors that Allawi has had some people killed, or even killed them himself. In any case, I hope this will be investigated, and if Americans are involved, prosecuted if true.