Feb. 13: Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, center, arrives for his motions hearing at Camp Pendleton, Calif. Wuterich is being charged for his alleged involvement in the death of Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Iraq in 2005. Mike Blake - Reuters

The program airs this Tuesday night. Bruce Kesler received an advanced copy, and gives a great review of the contents, here.

Curt has followed the story since its inception, and you can see his previous 41 blog entries here.

Good news, the coward Murtha may have to be sworn in and testify:

The defense for a Marine accused in the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians said Wednesday it wants to depose a Pennsylvania congressman to determine whether a general told him that the accused and his squad killed in cold blood.

Jack Zimmermann, an attorney for Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum, told judge Lt. Col. Eugene Robinson that he also wants a deposition from Gen. Michael Hagee, former commandant of the Marine Corps now retired, to find out what he may have said to Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., and to Marines serving in Iraq.

~~~

Zimmermann said Murtha, a former Marine who is an outspoken opponent of the Iraqi war, refused to be interviewed because squad leader Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich — who is charged with unpremeditated murder in 17 of the deaths — filed a defamation lawsuit against him last year.

“Murtha said (during several media interviews) he was briefed at the `highest levels’ that Marines (in Tatum’s squad) committed murder, killed in cold blood … it was another My Lai,” said Zimmermann.

My Lai was the site of the killing of more than 300 apparently unarmed Vietnamese civilians by U.S. soldiers in 1968.

“Could these be construed as political rantings?” the judge asked the defense attorney.

“Murtha said, `I was briefed by the commandant of the Marine Corps,” Zimmermann responded.

The attorney urged the judge to order depositions by Murtha and Hagee.

“We don’t think there’s any congressional immunity here,” Zimmermann said. “We want to ask General Hagee, Did you tell him (Murtha) that? Where did he get this? Is he making it up?”

Recall what he said:

The man is a disgrace to the Marine Corps and to his chosen profession.  The sad thing is even if he is sworn in, I doubt he will tell the truth.  He is so full of corrupt earmark dealings and other lies I doubt he even knows what the truth is anymore.

So one more piece of evidence to show to Jack "coward" Murtha to prove that his calls for the heads of Marines serving this country was nothing but a publicity stunt.

A Marine Corps official has recommended that murder charges be dismissed against a Camp Pendleton squad leader accused in the deaths of 17 civilians killed in the Iraqi city of Haditha two years ago.

The official, Lt. Col. Paul Ware, said in a recommendation obtained by the North County Times that rather than face murder charges, squad leader Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich should be tried for the lesser offense of negligent homicide in the deaths of five children and two women.

Ware recommended 10 other murder charges against Wuterich be dismissed.

“I believe after reviewing all the evidence that no trier of fact can conclude Staff Sgt. Wuterich formed the criminal intent to kill,” Ware wrote in reference to the women and children. “When a Marine fails to exercise due care and civilians die, the charge of negligent homicide, and not murder, is appropriate.”

Ware’s report, issued to prosecutors and defense attorneys this week, found the evidence against Wuterich contradictory. Ware’s role as the case’s investigating officer is akin to that of a judge presiding over a pretrial hearing.

“The case against Staff Sgt. Wuterich is simply not strong enough to conclude he committed murder beyond a reasonable doubt,” Ware wrote. “Almost all witnesses have an obvious bias or prejudice.”

And guess what?  I can guarantee you that he will not be convicted of negligent homicide.  He was following his training, his rules of engagement, and did what needed to be done.  The enemy used human shields to protect themselves and in the process caused all those innocent men, women and children to die.  Sad, but the fault of those who attacked our Marines.

Still, no apology from this disgrace of a Marine named Jack Murtha.  But thats par for the course.  Being a Democrat means you never have to say your sorry.

Another Marine has had the charges dropped in the Haditha case:

Charges have been dropped against a captain who was accused of failing to investigate the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha, the Marine Corps said Tuesday.

Capt. Lucas M. McConnell of Napa was granted immunity and ordered to cooperate with officials looking into the November 2005 killings, the Marines said in a press release.

Charges have now been dismissed against four of the eight Marines who were initially charged with murder or failure to investigate the deaths. A battalion commander has been recommended for a court-martial; a final decision is pending.

And we’re still waiting for Murtha’s apology:

The coward.

The Investigating Officer of Haditha Marine LCpl Stephen Tatum is now recommending that no court martial be done on the Marine.

An investigating officer has recommended that a Marine Corps general drop all charges against a Marine accused of murdering civilians in Haditha, Iraq, finding again that the 2005 shootings were “tragedies” but that the Marine did not violate the laws of combat.

Lt. Col. Paul J. Ware wrote in a 29-page report that there is insufficient evidence to show that Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum did anything other than follow Marine Corps rules when he killed women and children in two houses in a residential neighborhood in Iraq on Nov. 19, 2005. Ware found that Tatum followed orders to attack the houses and shot a group of civilians only because another Marine in the unit was already shooting at them.

~~~

“What occurred in house 1 and house 2 are tragedies,” Ware wrote. “The photographs of the victims are heart wrenching, and the desire to explain this tragedy as criminal act and not the result of training and fighting an enemy that hides among innocents is great. However, in the end, my opinion is that there is insufficient evidence for trial. LCpl Tatum shot and killed people in houses 1 and 2, but the reason he did so was because of his training and the circumstances he was placed in, not to exact revenge and commit murder.”

Jack B. Zimmerman, a civilian attorney for Tatum, said he is pleased with the report and will await Mattis’s ruling before commenting further. Should Mattis dismiss the charges, it would leave pending murder charges in the case against one enlisted Marine, Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich.

You can read the IO’s report here in PDF format.  Some interesting passages:

In most homicide cases, a killing can be presumed to be unlawful absent evidence to the contrary. That is not the same as placing a burden of raising an affirmative defense upon the accused but recognition that in our society, killing another is not normally legal or authorized. There are two obvious exceptions to which the presumption of a killing is not lawful, law enforcement and military combat operation. Marines engaged in combat are expected to kill. This legal authority to kill, however, is certainly not absolute. Our Marine Corps makes great efforts to ensure Marines are educated and trained on the limits of authority to kill under the rules of engagement.

In a homicide case arising from actions by a Marine within a combat environment, the government may not rest on the normal presumption that killing is wrong and therefore burdened with proving that the killing was in violation of the rules of engagement. The ambiguity that arises in this case is not what the rules of engagement require, but how those rules are applied for criminal liability. Is the requirement to identify hostile act and intent based on subjective or objective criteria? If it is subjective, does that belief have to be honest and reasonable or just honest? If it is an objective test, is that based on the experience of a basic trained Marine or a combat veteran? Government witnesses indicated that the test was subjective. My opinion is that the test should be a subjective, honest and reasonable belief so that Marines in combat that are acting in good faith have the protections of the rules of engagement if they honestly perceive hostile acts or intent and make a decision to use deadly force that in hindsight, with time to reflect, others might consider such a decision to be a mistake.

~~~

The government counsel argued that positive identification of occupants of the room was required under the rules of engagement. Such a theory, requiring positive identification before engaging targets in a room that you hear an AK-47 racking within a home that is declared hostile, would appear to be a rewrite of the rules of engagement and is clearly contrary to the training and experiences of the witnesses that testified. The government did not present even one witness that testified that positive identification under such circumstances is required before employing deadly force.

Using the government’s theory that positive identification was required within the room of house 1 when LCpl Tatum heard a noise he and his fellow Marines believed was an AK-47 racking, they would be authorized to throw a grenade into the room, but when entering the room they would be required to distinguish between enemy and innocents within the room. Such a result seems counter intuitive.

~~~

Such restraint might be good practice for law enforcement or special operations forces conducting hostage rescue operations, but not in combat. In combat Marines are trained to neutralize the enemy with overwhelming force. If we adopt the theory of liability espoused by the government, we in tum are placing innocents in grave danger as they will become truly effective shields against our Marines engaging the enemy.

Murtha cares little, it seems, to the "protections of the rules of engagement."  He cares little for the men who were fighting and dying over there because if he did you could damn well bet he wouldn’t  go half cocked and call them murderers.  He wanted to score political points.  Thats it in a nutshell.  Just like Scott Beauchamp and TNR wished to show that Iraq is bad because they force our soldiers into becoming bloodthirsty robots we have Murtha wanting to show the same thing, on the backs of our Marines:

Think we’ll hear an apology from the EX-Marine? 

Remember in 2005 when Haditha was a word on everyone’s lips?  Especially Murtha and his ilk.  They intertwined Murder with Marine over and over and over again.  The nightly news ran stories galore on the incident calling it the new My Lai. 

Well, two more Marines have been cleared of wrongdoing:

The Marine Corps announced Thursday that it had dropped charges against Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt, who was accused of murdering three Iraqi brothers in November 2005.

Sharratt was one of eight Marines initially accused in the slayings of 24 civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha after a roadside bomb killed a Marine.

Four enlisted men were charged with the killings and four officers with dereliction of duty for not ordering a war crimes investigation.

Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of Marine Force Central Command, said he dropped the charges out of a belief that Sharratt acted within Marine Corps standards when forced to make a quick decision while searching a house for insurgents.

In a separate decision, Mattis also dropped charges against Capt. Randy W. Stone, who was a lawyer with the battalion involved.

And very little is said on the nightly news, in our newspapers. 

Mattis also praised Sharratt for his service.  Here is the complete statement from General Mattis:

"The events of November 19, 2005 have been exhaustively reviewed by Marine, Army, and Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigators. An independent Article 32 Investigating Officer has considered all the facts and determined that the evidence does not support a referral to court-martial for LCpl Sharratt. Based on my review of all the evidence in this case and considering the recommendation of the Article 32 officer, I have dismissed the charges against LCpl Sharratt.

"LCpl Sharratt has served as a Marine infantryman in Iraq where our Nation is fighting a shadowy enemy who hides among the innocent people, does not comply with any aspect of the law of war, and routinely targets and intentionally draws fire toward civilians. The challenges of this combat environment put extreme pressures on our Marines. Notwithstanding, operational, moral, and legal imperatives demand that we Marines stay true to our own standards and maintain compliance with the law of war in this morally bruising environment.

"The experience of combat is difficult to understand intellectually and very difficult to appreciate emotionally. One of our Nation’s most articulate Supreme Court Justices, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., served as an infantryman during the Civil War and described war as an ‘incommunicable experience.’ He has also noted elsewhere that ‘detached reflection cannot be demanded in the face of an uplifted knife.’

Marines have a well earned reputation for remaining cool in the face of enemies brandishing much more than knives. The brutal reality that Justice Holmes described is experienced each day in Iraq, where Marines willingly put themselves at great risk to protect innocent civilians. Where the enemy disregards any attempt to comply with ethical norms of warfare, we exercise discipline and restraint to protect the innocent caught on the battlefield. Our way is right, but it is also difficult.

"With the dismissal of these charges LCpl Sharratt may fairly conclude that he did his best to live up to the standards, followed by U.S. Fighting men throughout our many wars, in the face of life or death decisions made in a matter of seconds in combat. And as he has always remained cloaked in the presumption of innocence, with this dismissal of charges, he remains in the eyes of the law - and in my eyes - innocent."

So lets look at what we have here:

And with each dismissal there are calls for Murtha to apologize, and none ever come.  The sign of a true coward.  The case is unraveling but we don’t hear the left and our MSM admitting that maybe, just maybe, they were wrong in convicting these heroes before there day in court. 

For a great timeline and rundown of evidence in the case and against Murtha check out this Let Freedom Ring post:

1. Murtha made these malicious accusations before he’d received an official briefing.
2. Murtha initially said that his information came from “commanders” and other people “who know what they’re talking about.”
3. A Marine spokesman said that Gen. Hagee briefed him but that didn’t happen until a week after Murtha went public with his accusations.
4. Murtha said that Gen. Hagee had briefed him before Gen. Hagee had briefed him. I’ll let readers decide whether Rep. Murtha lied outright when he said that.

And from NewsMax comes this rundown of Captain Jeffrey Dinsmore testimony, the battalion intelligence officer, who testified for 8 hours some months back and whose testimony was declassified in June of this year:

• Intelligence gathered by Marine S2 officers in advance of the events of Nov. 19th, 2005, revealed that it was known that an insurgent ambush was planned for the day.
• Although exact details of the planned ambush were not known, some important details were revealed — most importantly, that some 20 insurgents would take part, and a white car would play an important role in the ambush.
• The intelligence was made available to the officers and men of Kilo Company including Sgt. Frank Wuterich who has been charged with, among other things, murdering the occupants of a white car that came on the scene following the IED explosion that killed one Marine and seriously wounded another. The evidence will show that Wuterich acted appropriately when he shot the passengers of the vehicle.
• Although the media continues to report that 24 innocent civilians were killed that day, the S2’s testimony shows that eight of the dead, including four of the five occupants in the white car killed by Wuterich, were known insurgents and the dead civilians therefore numbered 16, not 24.
• The insurgents whose communications were intercepted and which revealed the planned ambush were the same two men who were the sources of the fallacious and dishonest Time magazine story, which was the source of the accusations against the Marines.

As previously reported by NewsMax, the battalion S2 officer made a full and complete report based on his monitoring of the day’s events and the intelligence he and others had amassed then and previous days. As we wrote at the time, the PowerPoint after-action report he sent up the command ladder proved to all the higher officers that the incident warranted no further investigation. None!

It told the full story, was supported by photographic evidence, logs of all the day’s radio transmissions, and included an almost minute-by-minute narrative of the day’s events.

The eight hours of testimony and cross examination offered by Capt. Jeffrey Dinsmore, the S2 officer, gave full details of the intelligence passed on to the officers and men of the 3rd Battalion 1St Marine Regiment including the Marines of Kilo Company. It buttressed previous briefings which alerted the Marines of insurgent tactics such as the killing of seven reconnaissance Marines who were ambushed by insurgents in hospital beds with AK-47s hidden under the bedcovers.

According to Dinsmore, a 20-year up-from-the ranks captain reputed to be one of the best intelligence officers in the Marine Corps, as well as the unit’s only officer awarded a Bronze Star for his service in Haditha, the officers and men of 3rd Battalion 1St Marine Regiment were specifically alerted to the possibility of a white car being involved in the planned ambush.

But they trudged on with this witchhunt because of Murtha and the MSM.  They have put and are putting these Marines through years of hell to satisfy their craving for another My Lai they can trumpet.  Our Marines be damned.

UPDATE

Listen to Bryan from Hot Air calling Murtha’s office and being hung up on after asking if a statement was forthcoming:

The father of one of the accused Haditha Marines spoke to the coward Murtha the other day and he put up an account of the phone conversation at FR:

In a conversation with Congressman John Murtha, my questions still remain unanswered. With the help of the American people, I hope to find justice.

On Wednesday morning, July 17th I spoke with Congressman John Murtha via telephone from his Washington, DC office. We had a courteous conversation. I knew what to expect from a career politician and Congressman Murtha did not disappoint. Mr. Murtha avoided answering the hard questions and I was unable to press him for the answers. I wanted the conversation to remain amicable and decided to let him speak and avoid a heated confrontation.

At no time during the dialogue would Mr. Murtha acknowledge the impending exoneration of my son. I pressed him to use the word exoneration but the best I could get was “things seem to have gone well in your son’s Article 32. The General is a fair man and I believe he will do the right thing.” I replied, “ Lt. Col Paul Ware presented a strong recommendation for exoneration and we are anticipating Lt. Gen James Mattis following this recommendation.”

Mr. Murtha asked me if I had served in the military. He recalled his visits with injured Marines, soldiers and sailors. He said he supports our troops and it is the war he does not condone. Mr Murtha believes combat operations in Iraq have put an enormous strain on our Armed Forces. The stress of combat situations has led our troops to kill innocent civilians. I pointed out to Mr. Murtha, “ Our Haditha Marines are innocent until proven guilty.” It seems he is again denying our Marines their Constitutional rights of due process and the presumption of innocence. Mr. Murtha replied that we have a Marine(Mendoza) testifying that innocent women and children were killed in Haditha. I retorted that he is again believing the reports of the media and Mendoza was granted immunity for his lies. Mendoza has changed his testimony at least two times. NCIS may have threatened him with deportation and denial of US citizenship. This time I scolded him, “ I witnessed their(NCIS) conduct first hand in my son’s Article 32.”

I questioned Congressman Murtha as to his statements of 17 May 2006. On national television, in front of millions of Americans, he stated “ Marines killed innocent civilians in cold blood.” I asked him why he denied these Marines their Constitutional rights of due process and the presumption of innocence. Again the Congressman used his experience to side step the answer. Mr. Murtha stated his intentions were to point out the stress our military was under in Iraq. He replied we would not win the hearts of the Iraqi people by killing women and children. I again snapped, “ Our Haditha Marines have not been convicted of killing innocents and are innocent until proven guilty.”

I believe this conversation was the first step in obtaining justice for Our Haditha Marines. I did not expect Mr. Murtha to admit to or apologize for any wrongdoing in his role to railroad my son and his Marine comrades. The American people now know that his unfounded and untruthful allegations were used to further his political agenda. It is my intention to ask the Congress of the United States to censure Representative John Murtha and hold hearings to explain his conduct in respect to the Haditha incident. I will ask the American people to question his blatant disregard for the Constitutional rights of Our Haditha Marines. I will campaign to the voters of Pa Congressional District 12 to oust Representative Murtha from his elected office. The American people deserve better, we must demand better representation from our elected officials.

Darryl Sharratt

Proud American, Proud father of L/Cpl Justin L. Sharratt

Can you believe this blowhard?  Because some innocent people were killed our Marines are now guilty of murder…listen, its very sad that they were killed but it was NOT the fault of our troops.  The terrorists had so obviously used them as shields for their attack on our troops.  If your gonna blame someone you blame the enemy for putting them there in the first place.

But not Murtha:

• "It [Haditha, Marines] is as bad as Abu Ghraib, if not worse." (Murtha, May 2006)
• They [the Marines/Military] knew the day after this happened that it was not as they portrayed it. They knew that they (Marines) went into the rooms, they killed the people in the taxi. There was no firing at all. And this comes from the highest authority in the Marine Corps, so there’s no question in my mind," (Murtha, May 2006)
• "… they [Marine] killed innocent civilians in cold blood." (Murtha, May 17, 2006 at news conference)
• "They actually went into the houses and killed women and children. And there was about twice as many as originally reported by Times." (Murtha, Reuters, May 19, 2006)
• "It’s [Haditha, Marines] much worse than reported in Time magazine." (Murtha, News.com…AU, May 18, 2006)

Mr. Sharratt did a great job staying cool, not sure if I could of if I was in his situation but hopefully he and his son see some redemption soon.  Every day that goes by makes the coward Murtha look more and more like a fool.

The Haditha case unravels even more:

A former Marine from Kilo Company wounded at Haditha, Iraq on the day of the alleged massacre told Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigators he saw Kalashnikov assault rifles propped against a white taxicab next to the bodies of five Iraqi men killed when the fighting started. His report contradicts prosecution contentions that the Iraqis were innocent civilians.

Joshua Cash Karlen, 23, from Westminster, Colorado, said Monday that he is positive he saw the weapons while he was being evacuated from the battlefield. The following spring Karlen says he reported his observations to NCIS investigators while being interrogated by two special agents.

“They grilled me over why I was there, why I was driving through the cordon and what I saw,” Karlen said. “I was in there for about four hours.”

Karlen says he repeatedly told the two agents what he witnessed at the ambush site.

“The area was cordoned off when we drove by,” Karlen said in a telephone interview from his home. “I was hit by a grenade and had a severe concussion so I had to be evacuated out. I was on the south side of Chestnut (code name for the road running on the south side of the ambush site) being driven through the cordon. We were going real slow so I could see a white car, a pile of bodies, and weapons piled against the car. There were three or four AKs stacked leaning against a white car and some Marines were standing around. ”

Despite a lengthy interview Karlen’s statement was never included in the evidence obtained by the defense, according to defense attorney Brian Rooney.  The former Marine Corps Staff Judge Advocate represents Lt. Col Jeffrey Chessani. Chessani is the former commander of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines. Chessani is currently waiting to discover if he will stand general courts-martial over his role in Kilo’s alleged murder rampage.

“This is the first I have ever heard of this!” Rooney exclaimed.

Rooney said the NCIS failure to provide Karlen’s eyewitness account to Marine Corps prosecutors was a “very serious omission” that undoubtedly harmed his client’s case.

Wow!  Testimony that puts AK-47’s near that white car with the dead Iraqi’s is quite damaging to the prosecution and the fact that it was never given to the defense speaks volumes. 

Karlen also describes how harrowing the gunfight was:

He was on guard duty on top of a building when he heard a loud boom. He didn’t know what had happened except it came from the direction Wuterich’s four-HUMVEE patrol had just taken. The IED explosion was followed by a strong exchange of gunshots, he said.

“It was blatantly obvious somebody was getting hit,” Karlen said. “Corporal Haman was the senior Marine NCO on the C.O.P. so he could hear the radios, know what all was happening. I didn’t know anything except there was a firefight going on and we were going out.”

Then it grew relatively quiet for a few minutes. The talk later on was the ambushed Marines had to regroup, Karlen said.

“They had to figure out where the fire was coming from and collect their wounded. Wuterich came out of the School of Infantry. He was a good Marine. He was an instructor. They teach other guys so he had to be a good Marine. The guys who were with him said he did exactly right. All the time there were gunshots going off all over the place. I couldn’t distinguish what kind of weapons were firing. I was gearing up so I wasn’t paying that much attention. Gunfire is always going off in Iraq.”

About 30 minutes later they were told to proceed to some houses down the road that were reportedly occupied by insurgents, Karlen said. After a two minute run their 12-man squad stopped in front of some houses where headquarters thought the insurgents were hiding. Without hearing the radio traffic Karlen didn’t know they were from the same group that ambushed Wuterich’s patrol. He wouldn’t learn anything about that for several months, he said.

At the time he thought his patrol was part of a larger operation because there were groups of insurgents running all over the place, he said. There was gunfire erupting everywhere, he said. All he knew for sure about Wuterich’s patrol was that somebody’s “kill number” had been put out over the radio so he knew a Marine was dead, he explained.

After the squad cleared the first house they came to with grenades, Karlen split up from Haman’s team and went on the other side of the building with Lt. Zall, Sgt. Raphael, the Navy corpsmen and several other Marines. He was standing about 15 feet from Lt Zall and the corpsmen a few minutes later when Iraqi insurgents hiding on the roof of the adjacent building attacked them with a grenade barrage. The attack erupted when a grenade dropped from the roof and exploded about five feet from Lt. Zall and the corpsman. Karlen sustained a serious concussion in the blast, he said.

“I saw the lieutenant and corpsman get hit so we ran out and pulled them into the house under cover. Lt. Zall was hit in both his legs and the corpsman was hurt pretty bad as well. They both had broken legs, Karlen said.

Meanwhile Karlen’s team lost contact with Haman and his fire team. All he knew was that some of the Marines he was with went on the roof of the first house to get a better position to counterattack the Iraqi grenadiers. He was worried about his friend Haman and the other Marines in the squad.

“It isn’t good to get in a cross-fire between friendlies,” he said.

Immediately the fight grew in intensity. It rapidly escalated turned into a “grenade free-for-all,” Karlen said.

“Grenades were going off all over the place. I don’t know how many grenades were thrown. Almost everybody got wounded. Then we used flares to get back in contact. It was just a vicious firefight,” Karlen said

Then the ORF (Quick Reaction Force) showed up, Karlen added. His team eventually ran across the road and joined up with Haman’s group and the reinforcements. By then almost all the Marines were wounded to some degree, Karlen said. After they regrouped he joined other Kilo Marines who went on the roof on still another house to engage the Iraqi insurgents. Karlen stayed there firing on the insurgents until he was ordered to the rear to receive medical attention.

“We overpowered them with our medium machine guns. The QRF was lighting up the buildings with the two-forties (M-240G 7.62 mm medium machine gun),” Karlen said. “They didn’t have nothing to stand up to our firepower.

And then as he was driven away from the field of battle to get medical treatment he saw the AK’s leaning against that car. 

Seems to me that this case is falling apart at the seams and where is the MSM?  This was front page news when the coward Murtha first opened his trap and accused these Marines of murder but now that the case is disintegrating the MSM is nowhere to be found.

How surprising.

Good news for the Marines serving our country, and news that will make the coward Murtha quite sad…one of those those Marines whom he proclaimed was guilty of murder looks close to having the charges dropped:

The military officer overseeing the case against a U.S. Marine charged with murder in the November 2005 killings of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha has recommended that the charges be dropped.

Lt. Col. Paul Ware, who heard evidence against Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt during a five-day hearing in June, made the recommendation in an 18-page report to Lt. Gen. James Mattis released late on Tuesday.

Mattis, the top commander of the Marines fighting in Iraq, will decide whether or not Sharratt must proceed to court-martial, the military version of a trial.

"Whether this was a brave act of combat against the enemy or tragedy of misperception born out of conducting combat with an enemy that hides among innocents, Lance Cpl. Sharratt’s actions were in accord with the rules of engagement and use of force," Ware said in the recommendation.

Sharratt, 22, is one of seven Marines charged in the Haditha killings. He was part of a squad traveling through the town when it was hit by a roadside bomb that killed a well-liked Marine and injured two others.

Sharratt was charged with the murder of three Iraqi brothers. He testified that he shot them during a confrontation inside one house where two of them had AK-47 rifles.

Three Marines and four officers were charged in the killings. Sharratt and two others face murder charges, while four officers were charged with dereliction of duty and filing false reports of the incident.

Meanwhile at Murtha Must Go Gary Gross called Murtha’s office and asked for a statement:

I asked the woman that answered the phone "if Congressman Murtha had a statement following a news story regarding Lt. Col. Paul Ware’s report stating that "The government’s theory that Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt had executed the three men was "incredible" and relied on contradictory statements by Iraqis."

Instead of answering that question, she asked "So the trial is over?" I told her that it wasn’t, that the recommendation was nonbinding. Then she asked "So it isn’t over?" I confirmed that it wasn’t. I asked if Congressman Murtha would "like to make a statement considering his accusations made over a year ago on ‘This Week With George Stephanopoulos’"? Here’s her response: "Congressman Murtha doesn’t have a statement because the investigation is still ongoing."

Undeterred, I read her the quote from Cpl. Sharratt’s mother:

"This is a huge result, that report is a declaration of Justin’s innocence," she said. "This is very, very good news."

I said, "In light of Cpl. Sharratt’s mother’s quote, isn’t it appropriate to make a statement?" Murtha’s spokeswoman repeated "Congressman Murtha doesn’t have a statement because the investigation is still ongoing."

I asked a third time only to get the same response.

So NOW Murtha doesn’t want to get involved because there is a investigation going.  Where was this kind of attitude when the investigation was really going on (investigation is over you see, they are in the prosecution phase) and pronounced the Marines guilty of Murder. 

Typical behavior of a coward.  Run when you know you can’t win, don’t even attempt to fight, to show any backbone.  The only time you show backbone is when you think there is no way your gonna lose.

Coward.

Meanwhile another Libby situation is coming down the pipes with this Haditha thing.  Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, leader of the battalion that engaged the enemy in Haditha on that day, may very well go on trial for not investigating what is turning out to be something he had no duty to investigate since there was no crime.

The leader of a battalion involved in the killing of 24 Iraqis in Haditha should face a court-martial for dereliction of duty, the investigating officer recommended in a report obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, 43, was charged in December with dereliction of duty and violation of a lawful order for failing to report and investigate the deaths of the men, women and children in the biggest U.S. criminal case involving civilian deaths to come out of the Iraq war.

I’m telling ya, the world is getting stranger and stranger by the day.

Other’s Blogging:

• Redstate
• Combs Spouts Off
• Ace of Spades HQ
• Opinipundit
• The Jawa Report
• Powerline
• Gay Patriot
• Macsmind
• Democracy Project
• Sister Toldjah
• Blogs For Bush
• Woman Honor Thyself

The government’s case against the Haditha Marines continue to fall apart….

The officer in charge of a military hearing expressed serious doubts Friday about the government’s prosecution of Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, one of three Marines charged in the November 2005 shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians in the city of Haditha.

Lt. Col. Paul Ware, who will recommend whether to send Sharratt to trial, challenged the prosecution, saying the government’s theory of the case does not warrant the three counts of unpremeditated murder filed against Sharratt in December.

"The account you want me to believe does not support unpremeditated murder," Ware told the lead prosecutor, Maj. Daren Erickson. "Your theories don’t match the reason you say we should go to trial."

Ware’s comments came as the government and defense presented him with summations of the case on the fifth and final day of a hearing that will determine if the 22-year-old rifleman from Camp Pendleton’s 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment will be ordered to stand trial.

Sharratt is accused of the civilian equivalent of second-degree murder for shooting three Iraqi brothers inside a home. A fourth man was shot by Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, who also faces murder charges.

Ware also suggested he is inclined to believe Sharratt, who maintains the first two men he shot were pointing AK-47 rifles at him, and that the killings were carried out in self-defense.

"To me it seems the most important issue is whether the Marines perceived a hostile threat," Ware said. "It comes down to credibility to determine if this case should go to trial."

Prosecutors filed charges against Sharratt based on interviews with relatives of the slain men, who contended they did not have any weapons and were herded into the room and shot in rapid succession.

In a statement he read to Ware on Thursday, Sharratt said that story is false and that the killings stemmed from his belief his life was in danger.

"I would not change any of the decisions I made that afternoon," Sharratt said.

Prosecutors agreed Friday that the case centers solely on the competing version of events. The discrepancy among accounts is enough to warrant the case going to trial, Erickson told Ware.

"The seminal issue in this case is did the Iraqis have AK-47s?" Erickson said. "The issues in this case are best resolved before a trier of fact."

Ware seemed disinclined to order a trial, however, questioning whether any Iraqis would be willing to come to the U.S. to testify at trial if one is ordered.

Even so, Ware said forensic evidence presented by agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service who found multiple bullet holes in the walls and curtains of the room does not suggest execution-style killings.

"What the evidence points to is that the version of the Iraqis isn’t really supported," Ware said.

Here is a picture of LCpl Sharratt taken a few years ago:

But remember Murtha’s proclamation of "cold blooded murder"?

Justin, along with the rest of the Marines, were accused on evidence provided by incompetent and agenda driven investigators who allowed a solo Marine to perjure himself to get out of a bind.  They gathered evidence from the enemy and believed the enemy before our Marines.  Oh, and don’t forget the "honorable" congressman who pronounced them all guilty more then a year ago.

Many of us who have followed the Haditha case from the beginning will not be surprised to hear that there were insurgents inside the houses the Marines cleared, as well as inside the vehicle:

Eight of the 24 people whom Marines are accused of killing in Haditha, Iraq, were described yesterday as insurgents by a defense attorney and a Marine liaison officer during a pretrial hearing.

Randy Stone Defense attorney Charles Gittins said the eight were identified by human and electronic intelligence. They were not mentioned by name.

The eight were among five men ordered from a car and shot to death and four men killed in a home cleared by Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, said Gittins, who is representing Capt. Randy Stone at a pretrial hearing at Camp Pendleton. Stone is charged with failing to investigate and properly report the killings.

Last week, Capt. Jeffrey Dinsmore, the intelligence officer for the battalion, testified that “it’s fairly well established through the (unmanned aerial vehicle) coverage that there were insurgents in those homes,” referring to the homes where civilians were killed.

Gittins’ comments outside court were supported by Maj. Dana Hyatt, a Marine liaison officer in Haditha, who testified yesterday under a grant of immunity that four men that Marines killed inside one of three houses that the Marines cleared were insurgents. If proved, the developments could complicate the prosecution of three Marines charged with murder in the November 2005 incident.

“Obviously this will make a difference,” said Tom Umberg, a former military defense counsel, prosecutor and judge. “It’s a fact favorable to the defense. I think it adds a new dynamic to what the Marines did. It may affect whether their actions were reasonable.”

John Hutson, former judge advocate general for the Navy and now president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., agreed that this could help the defense.

“If it is true and one-third are insurgents, it would certainly be complicated to explain how these guys should have been able to differentiate between the good guys and the bad guys,” Hutson said.

Complicated?  Yeah, just a bit.  They receive small arms fire from the houses during an obvious ambush and they are now expected to just sit there and wait until the enemy runs out of ammo?  All because they don’t know if there are human shields inside the houses?

No, you go in and go in hard. 

As Ilario Pantano wrote a few days ago, war can be messy.  To expect pinpoint accuracy as if your playing a video game is foolhardy:

Illogically high expectations about pinpoint accuracy and target discrimination in a fire-fight are the fantasy of armchair-academics and videogame players. Men on the ground know that war is sloppy and rough. Combat is not a noun or a place that you are “in,” but rather a verb, a thing that you “do” to other people. Principally, combat is imposing your will on the enemy by violence of action and the ugly truth is that the process kills all kinds of people: good ones, bad ones, and yes, even our own. When our expectations of success and precision are unrealistic it threatens not only our service men, it emboldens our enemy, and it breaks our will to stand and fight.

The Marines were ambushed and taking fire from some houses.  Even one of the survivors inside one of the houses reported knowing that the IED was going to go off.  How would she know this if the terrorists weren’t living amongst them?

A 12-year old survivor of the alleged massacre of innocent civilians by U.S. Marines patrolling Haditha has admitted she had prior knowledge of the plot to detonate an IED as their convoy was passing by her house on the morning of Nov. 19, 2005.

In a CNN interview broadcast Wednesday, Safa Younis - who says eight members of her family were killed by U.S. troops - recalled that she was getting ready for school as the Marine Humvee approached.

"I was planning to go to school. I was about to go out of bed. I knew the bomb would explode so I covered my ears," the youngster said, according to a CNN translator.

Which would suggest that the town was indeed crawling with terrorists. 

They get attacked so they do what is necessary to take out the threat.  How in the world does anyone come to the conclusion that these Marines "murdered" these people?  There was no premeditation, they didn’t drive into Haditha with some evil plan to kill a bunch of civilians. 

They were attacked and they fought back….period.

Meanwhile a Marine Intelligence Officer, Captain Dinsmore, testified that he rejected the Haditha city council’s assertions that it was cold blooded murder because the whole town was full of terrorists:

A military intelligence officer testified Friday that he dismissed complaints from the mayor of Haditha and its city council about the slaying of 24 of its townspeople in 2005 because he believed insurgents heavily influenced the local government.

Capt. Jeffrey Dinsmore said he also questioned the veracity of complaints in a pamphlet published by the council a week after the slayings, which took place at the hands of Marines from Camp Pendleton’s 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment Kilo Company.

The flier asserted that the Nov. 19 killings were a massacre by troops enraged by a roadside bombing that killed one of their own. The pamphlet called for an official investigation.

“My assessment was the city council was being used as a tool of insurgent propaganda,” Dinsmore said. “They would take grains of truth and add details that were false and it would end up looking like a wild allegation.”

Which makes complete sense since the only ones accusing the Marines prior to the TIME story were the terrorists:

Insurgent groups have actually made more of the massacre. Within days of TIME’s story (which was picked up by the Arab media), pamphlets appeared in Haditha, congratulating ‘those who participated in exposing the dirty deeds of the Americans’. The pamphlets were released by a group using the name ‘Islamic Resistance’ - a cover for the terrorist group Ansar al-Sunnah. TIME’s story was cited in websites and Internet bulletin boards known to be used by insurgent groups.

And finally, Reuters has got around to issuing a correction to their reporting last week.  Recall they wrote on May 10th that the five guys from the vehicle had their hands tied first and then they were shot. 

Dela Cruz also said he watched squad leader Sgt. Frank Wuterich shoot five men whose hands were tied up near a car.

Three days later they finally get around to correcting a very large error:

Corrects 5th paragraph to delete word "tied" to make clear hands were held up in the air.

Of course they would never had issued the correction if it were not for bloggers who noticed the error.  I’m sure it was just one big mistake.  Not like the writer, Marty Graham, had been sitting through the whole trial and heard the entire testimony of Dela Cruz.

Oh wait a minute, he was there throughout Dela Cruz’s testimony. 

Sigh….

If you would like to help with the civilian lawyer’s legal fees for the Haditha Marines you can do so by going to these sites.

Defend Our Marines

Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt

SSgt. Frank Wuterich

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani

Marine Defense Fund

Lots of new information is coming out on the Haditha Marines, which I have written about extensively over the last year.

First, one of the Marines has had his charges completely dropped due to some evidence, well…a ton of evidence, that has come out that may exonerate them all:

Convincing evidence that corroborates NewsMax.com…’s accounts of the Haditha insurgent ambush has compelled the prosecution to take extraordinary steps to bolster their crumbling case.

The stunning announcement that all charges are being dropped against Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz, formerly accused of murder in the Haditha incident where 24 Iraqis were killed during an insurgent ambush against the Marines, is indication that the prosecutors have a very weak case against all the defendants, lawyers for the some of the accused say.

[...]The announcement of the deal with Dela Cruz is further evidence that the cases against the Kilo Company Marines and several of their superior officers are in deep trouble. It comes on the heels of postponements of Article 32 hearings slated for Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, the battalion commander and two of the enlisted men charged with murdering civilians in Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005.

[...]In a nutshell, the case exploded when an intelligence officer dropped a bombshell on prosecutors during a pre-hearing interview when he revealed the existence of exculpatory evidence that appears to have been obtained by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and withheld from the prosecutors.

This officer, described by senior Marine Corps superiors as one of the best and most dedicated intelligence officers in the entire Marine Corps, was in possession of evidence which provided a minute-by-minute narrative of the entire day’s action — material which he had amassed while monitoring the day’s action in his capacity as the battalion’s intelligence officer. That material, he says, was also in the hands of the NCIS.

Much of that evidence remains classified, but it includes videos of the entire day’s action, including airstrikes against insurgent safe houses. Also included was all of the radio traffic describing the ongoing action between the men on the ground and battalion headquarters, and proof that the Marines were aware that the insurgents conducting the ambush of the Kilo Company troops were videotaping the action — the same video that after editing ended up in the hands of a gullible anti-war correspondent for Time magazine.

[...]Confronted by the massive mounds of evidence that Marine Corps sources tell NewsMax proves conclusively that the cases against the Haditha Marines are baseless, the prosecutors were forced to postpone the Article 31 against Lt. Col. Chessani and two of the enlisted men in an attempt to regroup.

By granting immunity to the officer on the scene of the house-clearing effort, the prosecution, lawyers say, has further weakened its case.

Newsmax then details what they have learned really happened that day:

NewsMax, however, can reveal that the facts of what happened early that November morning clearly show that the incident was part of a planned ambush by insurgent forces, that the civilians tragically killed in the were use