Digby: War Crime

The New York Times is verifying that the Pentagon now acknowledges that a massacre took place at Haditha. In fact, they are briefing members of congress on it to try to keep the story from blowing up into a huge scandal on the level of Abu Ghraib.

Considering the explosion of outrage on the right against John Murtha for discussing it earlier, this concerns me:

The first official report from the military, issued on Nov. 20, said that "a U.S. marine and 15 Iraqi civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb" and that "immediately following the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire."

Military investigators have since uncovered a far different set of facts from what was first reported, partly aided by marines who are cooperating with the inquiry and partly guided by reports filed by a separate unit that arrived to gather intelligence and document the attack; those reports contradicted the original version of the marines, Pentagon officials said.