The Mystery of the Marine Massacre in Iraq - Updated

Last month, the details of a horrific atrocity emerged from Haditha, a town in the Sunni-dominated Anbar province.

In November, a roadside bomb killed Marine Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, a 20-year-old Texan, on a road not far from Haditha. According to Time magazine, "The next day a Marine communique from Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi reported that Terrazas and 15 Iraqi civilians were killed by the blast and that 'gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire,' prompting the Marines to return fire, killing eight insurgents." Another military official later said the military command in Baghdad "knew of no civilian deaths in the engagement."

Marine officials have now confirmed that those accounts were false. What really happened, according to reports confirmed by the Pentagon, was this: A group of enraged Marines entered several homes in Haditha and murdered their occupants, including children, in cold blood. A video of the aftermath -- showing that the residents were unarmed when they were shot at point-blank range -- was obtained by Time. Some were still in their nightclothes.

Five Iraqis in a taxi were also killed. It remains unclear whether they were trying to flee on foot, or drive away from the scene, and the chronology of events hasn't been established. The military is conducting two separate investigations into the events that day.

According to MSNBC, the video was confirmed by the Marines' own investigation: "Military officials say Marine Corps photos taken immediately after the incident show many of the victims were shot at close range, in the head and chest, execution-style." Women and children were among the 24 civilians murdered: "One photo shows a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer, shot dead, said the officials. ..."

The scene was so grim, the two Marines who took the after-action photos are reportedly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Last week, Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., told reporters that "sources within the military" told him that "there was no firefight, there was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

According to the Marine Corps Times, up to a dozen soldiers face possible court-martial. Three officers were relieved of duty in April.

The Associated Press reported that Military officials expect Haditha to become a major scandal. On Saturday, Marine Gen. Michael W. Hagee, the top Marine official, headed to Iraq to admonish his troops to use deadly force "only when justified, proportional and, most importantly, lawful."

The media, hectored by the administration's charges that they don't report the illusory "good news" from Iraq, showed little stomach for the story until Murtha until Murtha's statement last week. Most of the reporting has focused on the Congressman, a former hawk who has become a vocal opponent of the war. It's a tidy storyline that reduces the horrific images of innocent children being blown away by vengeful Marines to a palpable and familiar partisan squabble.

But there's more going on than just the usual simplistic he said/she said reporting; the media's uncritical acceptance of the Iraq hawks' spin in the months leading up to the invasion -- with notable exceptions like Knight-Ridder's Washington Bureau -- makes them complicit in crimes like those alleged in Haditha. They promised America a clean war; smart bombs would spare the innocent, a high-tech military would be finished in a fortnight and casualties on both sides would be limited. Now, the editors at places like the Washington Post and the New York Times have little interest in turning Haditha into the Iraq war's My Lai and exposing the lie behind their clean war narrative.