There Was No Military Coverup –

– they just lied… and apparently that’s not the same thing.

The American military admitted Sunday night that a platoon of soldiers raked a car of innocent Iraqi civilians with hundreds of rounds of gunfire and that the military then issued a news release larded with misstatements, asserting that the victims were criminals who had fired on the troops.

 

[ ..... ]

 

But the findings called into question the way the military handled the aftermath of the shootings.

 

For example, a key assertion of the news release issued by the military on the day of the killings was that “a weapon was recovered from the wreckage.” But the military said Sunday that no one claimed to have found a weapon in the car or had seen a weapon taken from it.

 

Instead, one of the soldiers at the scene reported seeing an Iraqi police officer pull something from the burned car and then place it in the front seat of an ambulance, according to Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a spokesman for the Fourth Infantry Division, which patrols Baghdad.

 

The soldier never said the item pulled from the car was a weapon, he said. But the soldier’s account nevertheless formed the basis for a statement in an initial internal military assessment of the attack, which said that a weapon had been pulled from the car.

 

“We don’t believe there was any cover-up,” Colonel Stover said.

Astounding isn’t it?

First they issue a statement full of misinformation about the event, then, when caught, exonerate the trigger happy crew that opened fire on a car load of innocent people on the way to work because “they fired warning shots“.