You got your damn war and it looks like "a mother and young child bent over as if in prayer, shot dead"

Posted by Joshua Holland at 10:50 AM on May 18, 2006.

Lindsay linked to this MSNBC story over in Peek, but it deserves more than a link.

A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood," a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.

From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children.

One young Iraqi girl said the Marines killed six members of her family, including her parents. "The Americans came into the room where my father was praying," she said, "and shot him."

On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true.

Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps' own evidence appears to show Murtha is right.

A videotape taken by an Iraqi showed the aftermath of the alleged attack: a blood-smeared bedroom floor and bits of what appear to be human flesh and bullet holes on the walls.

The video, obtained by Time magazine, was broadcast a day after town residents told The Associated Press that American troops entered homes on Nov. 19 and shot dead 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl, after a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Marine.

On Nov. 20, U.S. Marines spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool issued a statement saying that on the previous day a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians and a Marine. In a later gunbattle, U.S. and Iraqi troops killed eight insurgents, he said.

U.S. military officials later confirmed that the version of events was wrong.

Also known as a stinking lie.

Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a news conference Wednesday that sources within the military have told him that an internal investigation will show that "there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

Military officials say Marine Corp photos taken immediately after the incident show many of the victims were shot at close range, in the head and chest, execution-style. One photo shows a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer, shot dead, said the officials, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity because the investigation hasn't been completed.

One military official says it appears the civilians were deliberately killed by the Marines, who were outraged at the death of their fellow Marine.

"This one is ugly," one official told NBC News.

Ugly, and entirely predictable.

And for every "regrettable incident" like this, where mountains of evidence force the military to admit the truth, there are other little massacres -- God only knows how many -- that are buried in reports of civilians "killed by an IED" or "caught in a firefight with insurgents."

Recall the reports of snipers taking out old ladies trying to get food during the siege of Falluja, or the video of that marine killing a wounded Iraqi in cold blood.

The soldiers, regardless of whether they're ever brought to trial, will be punished forever by the memories of their crimes. There's no escape; my grandfather told me he had nightmares from World War II every single night, without exception, until the day he died sixty years later. And he was a medic with a clean conscience.

But the real culprits won't be punished. There are two damn many of them.

It's not just Bush and Cheney and the rest of the madmen who conjured up this war, it's the Democratic hawks that enabled them. It's Kerry and Lieberman and all the rest and, yes, even Jack Murtha.

And it's the cowardly scumbags who spun their glorious war narrative and convinced a whole bunch of ordinary citizens to jump on board. It's the Tom Friedmans and the Peter Beinarts -- and even some on this very site -- who only realized this war was a mistake when it proved to be as disastrous as every other "war of choice." We told them that war is bloody hell and they called us "pacifists" and "appeasers."

Well there's your fucking war. It's not a video game and it's not glowing green explosions on CNN; it's "a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer, shot dead."

And there's a lot more mothers and young children waiting for you maniacs in Iran.

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.