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October 20, 2007
HADITHA
Posted by Tina Grazier
If you care about facts you must read the Wall Street Journal article, “What Happened at Haditha.” Here’s the bottom line:
" The allegations of a deliberate massacre are entirely unfounded. They are contradicted by credible testimony, and remain a "story unsupported by evidence." *** If any of the reduced cases do move to courts martial, as some likely will, they will turn on the rules of engagement. Decisions made in the heat of battle are hard to judge from the outside. At the critical moment, hesitation can result in a soldier or his unit getting killed. Thus military justice usually presumes a benefit of the doubt if decisions that were reasonable in the line of fire appear wrong in hindsight. A bad result does not imply a bad decision.
And the awful political and media shame is this:
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 *** --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 atmospherethat 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.
Posted by Post Scripts at October 20, 2007 10:59 PM