Haditha: A media-made 'atrocity'?

The New York Times referred to the deaths of as many as 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha as the "defining atrocity" of the Iraq War.

If so, then the Iraq War must be particularly unatrocious. After all, of the eight people charged in the Haditha case, seven have seen the charges dropped for insufficient evidence or actually been found innocent, and the one remaining case is no more likely to produce a conviction than the first seven.

Yet there WAS a Haditha atrocity. And perhaps it even was defining of this war and its larger meaning. But the atrocity was not committed by soldiers in Iraq; it was committed in Washington, D.C., by Rep. John Murtha, and by his friends at the New York Times, Time magazine and MSNBC.

Murtha, the Pennsylvania congressman who became a media darling for opposing the war in Iraq despite his own record of military service in Vietnam, is now even more famous for calling American soldiers cold-blooded killers.

In a press conference on May 17, 2006, Murtha said that U.S. Marines had deliberately killed unarmed Iraqi civilians during an encounter in Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005. "Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood," Murtha said before anyone had been convicted of anything, before any charges had been filed, and indeed before the investigation was even completed.

Time magazine ran a story on "The Shame of Kilo Company"; the New York Times ran front-page exposes of alleged abuse and coverup; and MSNBC and other cable outlets hyped the story for weeks in an effort to pump their ratings on the adrenalin-spiked news of Marines gone bad.

When it was pointed out to Murtha that he was violating the basic principle of "innocent before proven guilty," he didn't back down. "This is what the Marine Corps told me at the highest level," he insisted to ABC's Charlie Gibson. "There's no question the chain of command tried to stifle the story."

Except that Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, the highest ranking officer charged with covering up the incident, was cleared by a military judge on June 17 of this year, as three other people charged with "covering up" the "massacre" were cleared previously.

But yet there has been no apology from Murtha, and there probably never will be. Turns out that it is a lot harder to admit you were wrong than it is to label American Marines "cold-blooded killers" on national TV.

Chessani plans to file a libel lawsuit against Murtha, and staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich has already done so.

Murtha's lawyers claim that Murtha can say whatever he wants because he is a congressman and thus has immunity from lawsuits, whether he tells the truth or not. Hmmm, maybe that explains a lot about why people don't trust Congress. But it still doesn't explain why Murtha's conscience doesn't work as well as his mouth.

Fortunately U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer has ordered Murtha to testify in the libel case, despite his lawyers arguing that he had constitutional protection under the "speech and debate" clause.

"You're writing a very wide road for members of Congress to go to their home districts and say anything they choose about private persons and be able to do so without any liability. Are you sure you want to do that?" Collyer asked. "How far can a congressman go and still be protected?"

Apparently quite far, according to Murtha's lawyers, and there's no reason to think that Murtha will ever be held accountable. Nor that the New York Times and Time magazine will pay a price for sensationalizing the story of Haditha when it looked like American soldiers were "cold-blooded killers" but back-paging the story when they were exonerated.

The lesson? Don't believe everything you hear from the mainstream media about how bad America is, and don't get too stirred up when politicians make sensational statements about the evils of the American military. They may just be telling you what they hope is true.

In the wake of the Haditha incident being made public, for instance, CNN's John Vause said, "There is a perception that U.S. forces are brutal and are, at times, trigger happy."

Gee, do you think? Do CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and John Murtha realize that they are the ones who are creating that perception? Or that their constant drumbeat of anti-American propaganda plays right into the hands of Osama bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and their allies who want to destroy us?

If they do realize it, they should be tried for sedition, and if they don't realize it, maybe they should be tried anyway. Ignorance, after all, is no excuse for betraying your country.

. Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake and writes a weekly column. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com