Guilty before trial?

Mackubin Thomas Owen:

In May of 2006, the Marine Corps charged a number of Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Division of killing more than 20 Iraqi civilians in the town of Hadithah in retaliation for the death of one of their comrades by a roadside bomb in November, 2005. At the time, I addressed the Hadithah allegations on National Review Online; I observed then that:

In Iraq, our opponents have chosen to deny us the ability to fight the sort of conventional war we would prefer and forced us to fight the one they want — an insurgency. Insurgents blend with the people making it hard to distinguish between combatant and noncombatant. A counterinsurgency always has to negotiate a fine line between too much and too little force. Indeed, it suits the insurgents’ goal when too much force is applied indiscriminately.

For insurgents, there is no more powerful propaganda tool than the claim that their adversaries are employing force in an indiscriminate manner. It is even better for the insurgents’ cause if they can credibly charge the forces of the counterinsurgency with the targeted killing of noncombatants. For many people even today, the entire Americans enterprise in Vietnam is discredited by the belief that the US military committed atrocities and war crimes on a regular basis and as a matter of official policy [thank you, John Kerry]. But as Jim Webb has noted, stories of atrocious conduct, e.g. My Lai, “represented not the typical experience of the American soldier, but its ugly extreme."

In the quest for its own My Lai, the anti-Iraq war faction in this country has had to settle for Abu Ghraib, by far the most hyped stories of the war. But now, allegations of multiple murders in the town of Hadithah, an insurgent stronghold in al Anbar Province, may provide them with the incident they need.

Although the investigation had hardly begun, opponents of the war immediately pounced on the alleged incident to advance their agenda. The Marines were immediately convicted in the press, especially Time magazine, which broke the story, and the New York Times. The odious Rep. John Murtha (D., Pa.) went even further, publicly claiming that the Marines had “killed innocent civilians in cold blood.” This incident, said Murtha, “shows the tremendous pressure that these guys are under every day when they’re out in combat.” Appearing on This Week on ABC, Murtha contended that the shootings in Hadithah had been covered up. “Who covered it up, why did they cover it up, why did they wait so long? We don’t know how far it goes. It goes right up the chain of command.”

The investigation has resulted in murder charges against three Marines. During the Article 32 investigation — the military justice system’s version of a grand jury, which determines whether or not to refer the case to courts-martial — of the first charged Marine, Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt, the prosecution alleged that he and other members of his battalion carried out a revenge-motivated assault on Iraqi civilians that left 24 dead after a roadside bomb killed a fellow Marine nearby. Sharratt contended that the Iraqi men he and his comrades confronted were insurgents and at least one of them was holding an AK-47 rifle when he fired at them.

Now news reports indicate that the presiding officer in Sharratt’s Article 32 hearing has argued that the prosecution’s arguments aren’t supported by forensic and other evidence and has recommended against proceeding to court martial.

...

Will Murtha and the editors of the New York Times apologize to Sharratt if the charges are dropped? Don’t count on it. But at least these Marines didn’t play lacrosse.

There is much more between the ...'s. Murtha's conduct in this matter is disgraceful and is reflective of his political bias and his use of these Marines as props in his campaign against the war. WE should never forget that the events in Haditha were the results of two enemy war crimes before the Marines ever pulled a trigger. By camouflaging themselves as civilians the enemy violated the Geneva Conventions and endangered all civilians. His second war crime was using civilians as human shields in an attack on US forces. The chances are remote that the Marines would have killed any non combatants if the enemy had not committed real war crimes.

Gateway Pundit says that much of the information that prompted the prosecution was provided by insurgents. He also links an interview with Sharratt's father. The Jawa Report also comments on Haditha and Murtha's disgraceful conduct.