@mladenkovacevic The story of those horrific events has been told many, many times in news outlets, television programs, and books. I think there's even a whole section in The Shadow Factory about it, which I assume is pretty much required reading on HN these days.
This story wasn't "killed" in any sense, it's simply old. The only ostensibly new information here was the photographs, which were fakes.
I don't know the answer to that question, but what I do know is that the psychological end result is "so those horrible pictures I saw weren't of the real event? Ok that makes me feel a little better."
edit: not to mention that it discredits the story for many others. "Well if the pictures weren't real how do I know anything else was."
UPDATE: for anyone still following this thread which was promptly killed here is the story which did in fact happen (although the real pictured were killed by Obama no doubt):http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-3133434.html
This has been a classical demonstration of how unwanted stories are killed and buried in a sophisticated machine called American War Propaganda and PR
The facts remain, however.
-a 14 year old girl's family was shot dead while they lay asleep (including a 5 year old)
-the 14 year old girl was gang raped by a bunch of US soldiers
-the girl was also shoot dead and her body was burned with kerosene
-the soldiers all got between 5 and a 100 prison sentences
-the story was very effectively killed and discredited by publishing it alongside fake pictures... Then again we can't have our freedom dispersing heroes at risk of retaliation attacks based on the acts of these few isolated cases right?
I'm certain US forces have committed rape. Generally, against other US forces. There were probably some cases of US vs. Iraqi rape, such as the Tikrit child-rape referenced in the story, but murder or other non-sexual violence was generally a lot more likely than sexual violence. Plus, the trade embargo, war, breakdown in law and order, and occupation did both directly kill people and contribute to violence which killed or otherwise caused bad things to happen, and I think the US has a lot of responsibility for that (along with Saddam, and the militias, etc.)
The US isn't even perfect at prosecuting US on US rape in the military (although a lot of the most recent fuss about it conflates sexual harassment statistics with rape, which does a disservice to everyone; there is a world of difference between "rude or inappropriate comments" and "forced sex", and blowing up the stats by combining them trivializes the problem by making it seem universal). The US isn't particularly good at finding and prosecuting US vs. LN crime in a war zone, although it's probably better than any military ever has been before (traditionally, the concept of invader vs. LN civilian crime didn't even exist). Once it gets to USA CID or USAF OSI, I'd probably trust the investigation as much as I'd trust a US civilian investigation, but they were very underresourced so it took a long time, and there was a lot of pressure to not let anything actually get reported to them (think the ghetto "no stiching" rule, combined with self-interest.)
Promoting fake images as real doesn't help anyone, though.
(I just tried to find the original of this video; failed, but also now I hate humanity slightly more too. Ugh.)