Congressman John Kline, a Republican from Minnesota, was in the forefront of legislators this spring who expressed outrage at the incident in Haditha, Iraq, where 24 civilians were allegedly killed by U.S. Marines in November 2005. "This was a small number of Marines who fired directly on civilians and killed them," said Kline, after being briefed by Marine Corps officials. "This going to be an ugly story." But this week Kline backed off considerably from his earlier comments. Prompted by the threat of a civil lawsuit against him by Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, the Marine who is a focus of...
