>> some are comparing the haditha killings to the vietnam massacre at my lai. >> narrator: haditha ledthe news for weeks and soon became synonymous with other outrages in the iraq war, like abu ghraib. >> haditha, in my judgment, is a metaphor for how the press unconsciously, being in opposition to a war, will take an incident and, simply by reiterating it and reiterating it and reiterating it, build it into something that it wasn't. >> we're supposed to be fighting this war for democracy, and yet something like this happens that sets us back. it's as bad as abu ghraib, if not worse. >> obviously the allegations are very troubling for me. >> narrator: as political pressure mounted that summer, the ncis issued its internal report. >> the ncis report, which is thousands of pages long, came back with recommendations for the command that there were crimes committed. >> narrator: at the same time an independent army investigation looked into the actions of senior officers. >> what they found was that there was a pervasive feeling from the unit on the ground all the way up to the top levels