Be ready for a continuous assault on the truth and on the character of Rep. Jack Murtha.

If you haven't read about the incident at Haditha, and why this is just a little bit more than the "contretemps" as the administration would have you believe, please read the detailed accounts:

"American troops immediately cordoned off the area and raided two nearby houses, shooting at everyone inside," said Rsayef, who did not witness the events but whose 15-year-old niece says she did. "It was a massacre in every sense of the word."

Rsayef and another resident, former city councilman Imad Jawad Hamza, who spoke with hospital officials and residents, said the first house to be stormed was that of Abdul-Hamid Hassan Ali, which was near the scene of the bombing.

Ali, 76, whose left leg was amputated years ago because of diabetes, died after being shot in the stomach and chest. His wife, Khamisa, 66, was shot in the back. Ali's son, Jahid, 43, was hit in the head and chest. Son Walid, 37, was burned to death after a grenade was thrown into his room, and a third son, 28-year-old Rashid, died after he was shot in the head and chest, Rsayef and Hamza said.

Also among the dead were son Walid's wife, Asma, 32, who was shot in the head, and their son Abdullah, 4, who was shot in the chest, Rsayef and Hamza said.

Walid's 8-year-old daughter, Iman, and his 6-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman, were wounded and U.S. troops took them to Baghdad for treatment. The only person who escaped unharmed was Walid's 5-month-old daughter, Asia. The three children now live with their maternal grandparents, Rsayef and Hamza said.

Rsayef said those killed in the second house were his brother Younis, 43, who was shot in the stomach and chest, the brother's wife Aida, 40, who was shot in the neck and chest while still in bed where she was recuperating from bladder surgery. Their 8-year-old son Mohammed bled to death after being shot in the right arm, Rsayef said.

Also killed were Younis's daughters, Nour, 14, who was shot in the head; Seba, 10, who was hit in the chest; Zeinab, 5, shot in the chest and stomach; and Aisha, 3, who was shot in the chest. Hoda Yassin, a visiting relative, was also killed, Rsayef and Hamza said.

The only survivor from Younis's family was his 15-year-old daughter Safa, who pretended she was dead. She is living with her grandparents, Rsayef said.

Tip of the hat to Editor and Publisher for publishing details of the atrocities.

My god. A septugenarian amputee. A mother recovering from bladder surgery. Three, four and five year old children shot.

We've gone from the "few bad apples" at Abu Ghraib to "a few good men" letting loose on civilians with grenades and automatic rifles?

And we're supposed to believe that these animals "just snapped" when they started shooting at children? At invalids? At the convalescent?

I am not a soldier, nor do I support this war. There are many things in this universe which I fail to understand, even though there are often myriad explanations which tend to dismiss or excuse this sort of barbarism. I don't pretend otherwise. But I do know that there are those who will proclaim that this incident -- that these actions -- rise to the level of heroism, and that people like Abdul-Hamid Hassan Ali are just unfortunate "collateral damage."

Despite all of my passionate opposition to this war, though? I would like to believe that we train our Marines to be better than this. Yet our administration and our media and the 101st Fighting Keyboard Brigade will deny, obfuscate and offer pathetic, middling excuses for butchery.

This is not the path to democracy. This is not the path to winning hearts and minds.

Don't tell me that this was a piffling lack of restraint. We are supposed to be engaged in a war against terror. How does this serve our interests? Or anyone's?

The horror, indeed.

UPDATE: The military is expected to release a report confirming that, indeed, Marines killed Iraqi civilians.

Excerpt:

A military investigation into the deaths of two dozen Iraqis last November is expected to find that a small number of marines in western Iraq carried out extensive, unprovoked killings of civilians, Congressional, military and Pentagon officials said Thursday.

An image from videotape taken shortly after a fatal raid in Haditha, Iraq. Residents there said several marines carried out unprovoked killings.

Two lawyers involved in discussions about individual marines’ defenses said they thought the investigation could result in charges of murder, a capital offense. That possibility and the emerging details of the killings have raised fears that the incident could be the gravest case involving misconduct by American ground forces in Iraq.

Officials briefed on preliminary results of the inquiry said the civilians killed at Haditha, a lawless, insurgent-plagued city deep in Sunni-dominated Anbar Province, did not die from a makeshift bomb, as the military first reported, or in cross-fire between marines and attackers, as was later announced. A separate inquiry has begun to find whether the events were deliberately covered up.

Evidence indicates that the civilians were killed during a sustained sweep by a small group of marines that lasted three to five hours and included shootings of five men standing near a taxi at a checkpoint, and killings inside at least two homes that included women and children, officials said.

A three to five hour killing spree which targeted women and children.

Indefensible.