Just looking at the pictures (will save the article for later) I can't help but think this is either makes them poster boys for alQaeda or if I turn it around my optimistic nature tells me it says, "Come and git some!"
I'll say this much with certainty:
I ddoubledogtripledog dare Kerry and Rangel to say what they've said face-to-face. Hey, I'll extend an open-ended invitation for them to come to my house and say it to me.
This excerpt is very selective and the author is not as completely supportive of the Marines as this may make it sound. In any event, it's more information (even if it's slanted toward a theme of defeat in Iraq) in one place than I've seen. Here we go...
The boom of the land mine exploding was heard throughout Haditha.... It was still barely 7:15 in the morning, the Humvee boiled with black smoke, and the possibility existed that its destruction marked the start of an ambush that would now expand into overlapping attacks with automatic fire and rocket-propelled grenades.....For the moment, the houses on both sides of the street showed no sign of activity, though certainly they contained people lying low....Among these very houses was one where the Marines had discovered a bomb factory just a few days before....
....For [Sgt.] Wuterich's squad the silence of the neighborhood was therefore less reassuring than ominous. It was the quiet before the storm, the prelude to an attack....
...[A] white Opel sedan came driving up the street....Later [the Marines] said they believed the men were associated with the land-mine explosion, and were perhaps the spotters who had pushed the button, or were following up now with a car-bomb attack....
blah, blah, blah...The car was filled with Iraqi "college students" who ended up dead...Oh, the humanity...
Within minutes the force from Sparta Base arrived. It was a squad of about the same size as Wuterich's, led by the only officer present on Route Chestnut the entire morning, a young lieutenant named William Kallop. Like other lieutenants in Kilo Company, Kallop was junior in all but rank to the senior enlisted men, to whom he naturally deferred....When the allegations against Kilo Company surfaced in the spring of 2006, his parents vigorously reacted. They hired a New York public-relations firm that specializes in legal cases, and then engaged a defense attorney who is a former Marine general and was once one of the top lawyers in the Corps. The implicit warning may have had some effect. While [Capt.] McConnell and [Lt. Col.] Chessani were humiliated and relieved of their commands, and Wuterich was fingered in public, Kallop was left untouched, though technically upon his arrival at Route Chestnut on November 19 he had become the commander on the scene....
Apparently his command didn't amount to much. For the most part he remained on the street by the Humvees with the rest of his squad and allowed Wuterich and his men to work their way through the four houses....[T]he military courts will probably have a very difficult time deciding if war crimes were committed inside the houses. The difficulty will not be due to a Marine Corps agenda. Indeed, the expedient solution for the entire U.S. military would be to treat Wuterich and his men as criminals, and to destroy McConnell and Chessani as well, thereby avoiding the alternative conclusion, that the debacle in Haditha is related to normal operations in the war. But it just does not seem plausible, as John Murtha and others have claimed, that these particular Marines, who had enjoyed a relatively low-key tour, went so berserk... that...they proceeded without specific reason or provocation to enter people's houses and execute [peaceful Iraqis]....
Wuterich may have explained it best, because he has insisted that his Marines came under AK-47 attack, and defended themselves as they had been trained to do, by returning fire and surging forward to suppress the aggressors....
Dishonorable scum = Kerry/Rangel