I tried to originally respond to this thread with a middle-of-the-road,
conciliatory entry that said essentially, "we don't know what happened yet, and if it did happen, we don't know how often it happens, and we don't know whether it is an isolated incident or part of some pattern". It essentially got me nowhere.

That is still the case, it is too early to really know what happened, and we have little choice but to rely on our military authorities to investigate this, and for the press to play their role as irritant and gadfly and make sure that it happens, because unless they do, it won't. Eventually it will all sort itself out as the Lt. Calley/My Lai case did during the Viet Nam era.

What I do see is some troubling parallels to the My Lai case, the same public dialogue, the same public accusations, the same ideological overtones thrust upon what is essentially an allegation of failure of discipline on the battlefield, not an issue of left vs right. The only difference is that the debate now is at the speed of light over the internet, not spread out over months in magazine articles and letters-to-the-editor. But the case remains the same. It appears to me that then, as now, the supporters of the war would have been better served by immediately demanding that the facts be brought out, instead of doing everything they could to discredit the investigation and discredit those who asked for it. In the My Lai case, the allegations turned out to be true, but they were exposed, and justice was done, the truth eventually came out. Those who insisted it was all propaganda and lies were the ones who were discredited. On the other hand, My Lai was shown to be not a widespread phenomenon, it was not a matter of army policy, and the incident had little or nothing to do with the war's final outcome. It was nothing but an isolated mutiny and a failure of discipline, and the final trial was a triumph for American military justice.

There is no way the American armed forces can go to war and claim "we do not do this sort of thing". No army can say that. But we should be able to say with a perfectly clear conscience "we will do everything we can to make sure it doesn't happen, and to punish those responsible if it does". The punishment under law of those found guilty in a fair trial will do more to restore American honor than all the nit-picking and finger-pointing and the shooting of messengers.