Al-Jazeera has gone to extraordinary lengths to track down the actual Iraqi families whose men and women are recorded as being wasted at US checkpoints -- I 've identified one because I reported it in 2004 , the bullet-smashed car , the two dead journalists , even the name of the local US captain -- and it was The Independent on Sunday that first alerted the world to the hordes of indisciplined gunmen being flown to Baghdad to protect diplomats and generals .