You have heard probably about Haditha.  Heard of the massacre.  Heard Sen Murtha accuse Marines of cold blooded deliberate murder.

But do you really know what happened?

Opinion Journal lays it out.

What Happened at Haditha: The massacre that wasn’t, and its political exploitation.

The incident at Haditha–or the massacre, as it is often called–is due for a wholesale rethinking. The allegations are that in 2005 U.S. Marines went on a killing spree and deliberately executed 24 Iraqi civilians. The casualties have drawn an extraordinary amount of political attention, becoming an emblem for everything critics say is wrong with the Iraq war–in the common telling, another My Lai.

Thus Congressman Jack Murtha, a decorated combat veteran, made accusations of war crimes and said the Marines had killed “in cold blood.” These are serious charges; and military justice continues to deal with them seriously, though thankfully at a slower pace than politics. Now the prosecutions have mostly unraveled. It seems Haditha, though tragic, was exploited politically, and the allegations were exaggerated, if not unfounded.

Here is what we know. On November 17, 2005, Kilo Company of the First Marine Regiment’s Third Battalion was returning from a routine logistics mission in Haditha, a town 140 miles northwest of Baghdad. Haditha is in Anbar province, a heart of the Sunni insurgency with one of the highest U.S. casualty rates in Iraq. The security situation at the time was treacherous.

Shortly after 7 a.m., an improvised explosive device detonated under the last vehicle in Company K’s four-Humvee convoy. It instantly killed Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas and wounded two others. Windows were shattered for 150 yards, and smoke and debris were everywhere.

Read the rest in detail at the link.

At Haditha, did  the Marines act reasonably and appropriately based on their training? They were in a hostile combat situation where deadly force was authorized against suspected triggermen for the IED, and were ordered to assault a suspected insurgent hideout. In retrospect, the men in the car had no weapons or explosives; in retrospect, the people in the house were not insurgents. No one knew at the time.

Innocents were killed at Haditha,, as they inevitably are in all wars–though  that does not excuse or justify wrongdoing. Yet neither was Haditha the atrocity or “massacre” that many assumed–though errors in judgment may well have been committed. And while some violent crimes have been visited on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, overall the highly disciplined U.S. military has conducted itself in an exemplary fashion. When there have been aberrations, the services have typically held themselves accountable.

The same cannot be said of the political and media classes. Many, including Members of Congress, were looking for another moral bonfire to discredit the cause in Iraq, and they found a pretext in Haditha. The critics rushed to judgment; facts and evidence were discarded to fit the antiwar template.

Most despicably, they created and stoked a political atmosphere that exposes American soldiers in the line of duty, risking and often losing their lives, to criminal liability for the chaos of war. This is the deepest shame of Haditha, and the one for which apologies ought to be made.

So the answer is, what happened at Haditha is only half the story.

The other half is what happened afterwards when truth once again became a partisan tool and the Military political cannon fodder.

 Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, The Populist, Shadowscope, Webloggin, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, Nuke’s, third world county, DragonLady’s World, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, High Desert Wanderer, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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