Attacks by insurgents and al Qaeda upon local and U.S. forces in and around Haditha, Iraq, during 2005 were the daily norm. Constant patrolling and repeated large scale operations attempted to wrest control of Haditha and the surrounding Anbar province from the enemy. An online search using ‘Haditha’ and ‘2005’ as the keywords reveals literally hundreds of reports of the combat actions that took place there. I will cite but a few. In April, 20 Iraqi soldiers in civilian cloths were abducted from a vehicle and taken to the Haditha soccer stadium and shot. In August, six Marines were killed near Haditha by enemy small-arms fire while conducting dismounted operations. Again in August, fourteen Marines were killed when their troop carrier was blown up by a huge roadside bomb in the western town of Haditha. In October, CNN reported forces found, “a sizable weapons cache hidden in a shrine and yard adjacent to a mosque in east-central Haditha, close to the Euphrates River, and continued to uncover deadly buried roadside bombs. The city itself is almost literally an improvised explosive device (IED) field.”

Then in the fall of 2005 came ‘Kilo’ Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, of the 2nd Marine Division, to Haditha. Among those ranks were Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas, Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum, and Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt.

On November 17, 2005, Congressman John P. Murtha (D-PA) first called for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from Iraq.

Two days later, in Haditha, Iraq, an IED attack took the life of LCpl Miguel Terrazas and wounded two other Marines. In the immediate aftermath, while attempting to locate and engage the enemy in nearby houses, the squad led by SSgt Wuterich came under some level of small arms fire, a white car with five men inside drove up near them, and they were confronted by at least two armed locals dressed in civilian attire. When it was over, the five men from the white car and eighteen additional civilian men, women, and children inside the darkened interiors of four nearby houses were dead. One armed man was shot after he ran from a house the Marines had just cleared.

The Marines took the bodies of the twenty-four to an Iraqi hospital. Primarily to gather intelligence, a Marine exploitation team searched and filmed the area of the attack, to include the interiors and exteriors of the four houses, and the bodies of the dead civilians.

On May 17, 2006, the 6-month anniversary of his calling for a complete withdrawal from Iraq, Congressman Murtha held a news conference about the war. There, before the preliminary investigation of the incident was completed, he used the occasion to state the Marines in Haditha had, “killed innocent civilians in cold blood,” denying them the presumption of innocence.

Three weeks latter, in an article entitled ‘The Ghosts Of Haditha,’ Time magazine writers Tim McGirk, Michael Duffy, and Aparism Ghosh breathlessly wrote, “Once again, the Bush Administration finds itself on the defensive about a war that is now entering its 40th unrelenting month. What happened in Haditha has the makings of one of those turning points in a military operation.” That sounded like wishful thinking by them to me.

Earlier, on March 19, 2006, Tim McGirk filed a report entitled ‘Collateral Damage or Civilian Massacre in Haditha?’ where he largely cited the accusations of cold blooded murder made by local civilians. Within his report, McGirk relied heavily upon a video:

A day after the incident, a Haditha journalism student videotaped the scene at the local morgue and at the homes where the killings had occurred. The video was obtained by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, and has been shared with TIME. The tape makes for grisly viewing. It shows that many of the victims, especially the women and children, were still in their nightclothes when they died. The scenes from inside the houses show that the walls and ceilings are pockmarked with shrapnel and bullet holes as well as the telltale spray of blood. But the video does not reveal the presence of any bullet holes on the outside of the houses, which may cast doubt on the Marines’ contention that after the IED exploded, the Marines and the insurgents engaged in a fierce gunfight.

In an Investor’s Business Daily editorial yesterday, the editors wrote:

The charges against Sharratt and his Haditha comrades were spawned by a fallacious and dishonest March 27, 2006, Time magazine story that said they were guilty of “massacring innocent civilians.” The story was based on false evidence provided by a known insurgent propagandist.

Time Magazine reporter Tim McGirk had written about how a “budding journalism student” who gave him a video taken after the Marines’ alleged rampage.

Except the student was 43-year-old Taher Thabet al-Hadithi, head of a human rights organization whose only other member was Ali Omar Abrahem el-Mashhadani. The U.S. had watched both for some time, along with other Sunni insurgent sympathizers known to be living in Haditha. Intercepts of their cell phone calls alerted Marines to a possible Haditha ambush.

The facts as revealed clearly demonstrate that the incident was part of a planned ambush by insurgents that used civilians as human shields, and that despite the claims of Rep. Murtha and his media allies, this was not murder but the tragic result of a firefight in which U.S. Marines were honorably defending themselves.

On August 9, 2007, all charges against Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt were dismissed. The investigating officer found that an independent forensic analysis supported Sharratt’s contention that he shot three men, in a darkened room, when he came face to face with one of them holding an AK-47 assault rifle. In addition, the officer found that the forensic evidence available as far back as February 2006 supported the sworn statement made by Sharratt to Naval Criminal Investigators that very same month. The truth is Justin Sharratt is innocent and always was.

Charges against SSgt Wuterich and LCpl Tatum are still pending and all three have incurred huge legal fees. You can read a detailed history of this case and contribute to their defense, if you’d like, by visiting the War Chronical.

Sharratt’s parents, Darryl and Theresa, live in the Congressional district John Murtha represents. Darryl Sharratt called Congressman Murtha’s office 53 times over the course of 14 months before finally the latter returned his call and still he did not apologize.

While last year Congressman Murtha eagerly denied United States Marines the presumption of innocence to further his political goals, he now refuses to comment as the “investigation is ongoing.”

As the Investor’s Business Daily said yesterday, “Now, the truth also is undergoing a surge.”

John Murtha can cut and run but he cannot hide from the truth forever.