Delgado now tours American anti-war meetings with a slideshow and lecture about the Abu Ghraib scandal. He believes that all the abuse and killings scandals are part of a widespread pattern.
"Until we recognize this as a pattern, not just a few individuals, then we are not going to the root of the problem," he said.
He describes his experiences within Abu Ghraib, painting a picture of prisoners being severely beaten for minor disciplinary problems and saying that guards opened fire on rioting inmates, killing them for throwing stones. He also says he saw US prison guards boasting about abusing or killing prisoners.
One of the issues raised by the scandals is whether cover-ups have taken place and how high up the chain of command knowledge of the killings went. At Haditha it appears there was a clear attempt at a cover-up, both by Marines on the ground and officers back at base who issued a press release claiming the Iraqis had either died in the initial explosion or had been insurgents.
At the same time, the Marines and sailor being investigated in the killing of a civilian in Baghdad also appear to have attempted to cover up the death by planting evidence on the body.
It is a practice that Reppenhagen, who is now a senior member of peace group Iraq Veterans Against the War, said had happened before.
"We have members who can tell you about carrying shovels in their vehicles to throw down next to killed civilians as `proof' that they were planting IEDs [improvised explosive devices]," he said.
Few veterans believe that serious charges will travel very far up the chain of command. After Abu Ghraib, it was only low-level soldiers who stood trial. Many now expect a similar result from the new investigations.
"They make it look like Abu Ghraib, that it was just some bad soldiers who went crazy -- they were the bad apples," Mejia said.
Yesterday, however, Pentagon sources suggested that even before the Haditha court martials take place, some senior officers may be relieved of their commands.
Mejia believes the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Haditha massacre have only come to light because either locals or US soldiers took photographs of the crimes or their aftermath. If left to the Army, they would never have been uncovered.
"These things are just the ones we know about. Just think about how much else has gone that we don't know about. Civilians are dying there almost every day," he said.
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