WASHINGTON, 3 June 2006 - An internal military investigation has confirmed that US Marines killed as many as 24 Iraqis - including women and children - in the city of Haditha last November and then tried to cover it up.

The Haditha massacre was a disaster waiting to happen. Since this correspondent was embedded with the Marines at the onset of the US invasion into Iraq three years ago, cultural and Islamic training has never been integrated into the training program for US military personnel being deployed to the region. Servicemen were denied knowledge of the culture, religion, customs, country and history - while asked to be both warriors and peacekeepers. Three years into this war, it is still not mandatory that all servicemen being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan be briefed on Arab culture and Islam.

This correspondent knows because she volunteers crash courses on Islam and the region's culture for Marines deploying to the region. Her former units take her up on the offer, most do not. Tragically, many Marines sent to the region receive no cultural briefing before going in, and this reporter has been told the Army's program is even worse.

Many commanders - especially those who have yet to travel to the region - remain unconvinced of the necessity of arming their soldiers and Marines with knowledge before deployment. And yet every time this correspondent has given her class, Marines have come forward with gratitude and the occasional tear in their eye. Not only because they "feel more secure about their deployment," but also because it is natural to fear, even hate, what you do not understand.

Due to their cultural ignorance, it should come as no surprise that according to British officers serving in Iraq, most recently Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster in an article in Military Review, that many US troops have shown a widespread pattern of institutionalized racism toward Iraqis. It is easier to hate your enemy than to work to comprehend them.

Now, family members of two Marines present at the Haditha massacre say their sons remain traumatized since being ordered clean up the corpses of the unarmed Iraqi civilians that members of their unit are suspected of killing.

In separate interviews with The Associated Press, the parents of Lance Cpl. Andrew Wright, 20, and Lance Cpl. Roel Ryan Briones, 21, said their sons told them the events of last November remain seared in their memories.

Wright and Briones were members of a Marine unit based at Camp Pendleton that was sent into the western Iraqi city of Haditha to help remove the bodies of as many as two dozen Iraqis, including women and children, who were shot.

Briones' best friend, Lance Cpl. Miguel "T.J." Terrazas, was killed the day of the attack by the roadside bomb, his mother said. Briones was still grieving when he was sent in to clean up the bodies of the Iraqi civilians.

"He had to carry that little girl's body," she said, "and her head was blown off and her brain splattered on his boots." While there, the two were ordered to photograph the scene with personal cameras they happened to be carrying the day of the attack, the families said. Navy investigators confiscated Briones' camera, his mother said. Wright's parents said he turned over all of his information to the Navy.

Lance Cpl. Briones told the Los Angeles Times that Navy investigators had interrogated him twice in Iraq and they wanted to know whether bodies had been tampered with. He turned over his digital camera but did not know what happened to it after that.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently told reporters that if certain Marines are responsible for an atrocity, they "have not performed their duty the way that 99.9 percent of their fellow Marines have." This is probably true. And yes, this correspondent maintains great respect, and even a soft spot, for the many wonderful Marines she met in Iraq struggling to serve the Iraqi people humanely. Yet she remains convinced that as long as American troops are not "armed with knowledge," such terrible atrocities will reoccur.