RUSH: From the Waterbury Republican American newspaper: ‘On Nov. 19, 2005, 24 Iraqis were killed in city of Haditha, the day after a roadside bomb there had killed a U.S. Marine. Faster than you can say ‘war crimes,’ neighbors anonymously were telling reporters Marines had massacred innocent, unarmed civilians, and journalists and anti-war agitators were comparing the incident to the 1968 My Lai Massacre in Vietnam. The Marine Corps later charged three enlisted men with murder and four officers with failing to investigate the killings properly, thoroughly pleasing Rep. John ‘Cut and Run’ Murtha, R-Pa.: ‘Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.’
In other words, the blood of the victims is on President Bush’s hands. Now that the facts have been discovered, investigating officers have recommended two of the seven Haditha defendants be spared court-martial because of weak evidence, and the cases against the remaining five are unraveling.’
This whole massacre claim at Haditha is now unraveling. I am waiting for the Drive-Bys to ask Jack Murtha back to Meet the Press or Slay the Nation or wherever else and ask him if he’ll apologize for condemning these Marines simply because it fit a political agenda to do so. Here is something I didn’t know. ‘One investigator, Lt. Col. Paul Ware, said some of the dead Iraqis were insurgents, just as the Marines had said, and accounts by Iraqi witnesses are inconsistent with the forensic evidence. To believe the Iraqis, he said, ‘is to disregard clear and convincing evidence to the contrary.’ But this is what I didn’t know. ‘Iraqis have a powerful motive to lie because the United States pays $2,500 to the families of innocent Iraqi civilian killed by U.S. forces.’ Did you know that? Well, it’s the first I had heard of it. No wonder.