This just in:
WASHINGTON, March 19, 2006 -- A bloody videotape shot by a local Iraqi journalism student has prompted the Pentagon to launch a criminal investigation into an incident that left at least 15 Iraqi civilians dead in the city of Haditha.
More below the flip:
As if the news wasn't bad enough, we're now seeing more results of the pressure-cooker that Bush and co have thrown our troops into in Iraq. Young people with no practical experience or expectations on the horrors of war are being thrown into a kill or be killed situation where events move fast, and so do the atrocities.
It all started when a roadside bomb hit a convoy of 12 Marines in Haditha, killing 20-year-old Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas.
The official press release said simply: "A U.S. Marine and 15 Iraqi civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb."
Military officials now acknowledge the Iraqis were not killed by the bomb -- but, they now say, by crossfire as U.S. Marines stormed the surrounding homes.
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"They came and started shooting all of a sudden," one local said. "They didn't even knock on the door. They killed them wholesale."
The article is sketchy, but it seems as if the scene went like this: Marines are hit with an IED, and the ones left standing storm into surrounding homes looking for someone, anyone, to blame. And people got caught in the mele.
The video shows the bodies of some of the dead, including one of three children killed.
"These are children," one man on the tape says. "Are you telling me these are terrorists?"
And will it end anytime soon? Don't bet on it:
According to a military spokesman, the Marines involved still are deployed in Iraq.
Please, bring these people home so this will stop!