The Haditha Massacre...

We are only becoming aware of what happened last November when 24 Iraqi civilians, including young children, were murdered by the Marines in an act of revenge. Today's Washington Post has this story providing some of the details.

It is likely that the Haditha massacre would not have come to light if it had not been for the fact that one of the survivors was able to provide photographic evidence.

As Maureen Dowd points out in this morning's New York Times (Times Select), one of the reasons for going into Iraq was to stop Saddam from killing innocent people. And now this accusation against the U.S. military.

I have lots of different feelings about this terrible tragedy but the predominant one is of sadness. I feel sadness for the innocent victims. But I also feel some empathy for the young men and women that we train to fight war...and then put them in dreadful situations.

Any thoughts that would make sense out of this incident?

Update:

Some interesting comments over at Steve Gilliard's blog.