It's been three days since charges were announced against eight officers and soldiers over the killing of Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Iraq, over a year ago. Time magazine did a great job investigating and breaking the story originally. Tim McGirk recalls the investigation here.

During the months after the Haditha story broke, I became the target of bloggers, self proclaimed patriots, for supposedly dragging the fine reputation of the Marines through the mud. Nothing about this story made me feel good save for one thing: until TIME's investigation, one of the Marines — the squad leader, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich — was in line to receive a medal for heroism for what he did that terrible day. According to press reports, the recommendation says that Wuterich, 26, displayed "calm and confident decisiveness that day and doubtlessly prevented further injury or death to fellow Marines and innocent civilians." Today, Wuterich faces 13 counts of unpremeditated murder. None of his victims were armed; most were the elderly, women and children.

I'm glad Wuterich didn't get his medal for "heroism." It would have been a grotesque travesty of justice, and against everything my father taught me was clean and honorable about the Marine Corps.

Hot Air has a good roundup and asks where this leaves the sergeant's defamation case against Senator John Murtha.

Anyway, news of the charges has been greeted with deafening silence by some who previously appeared intensly interested in the case. Adolf suggested it was a hoax:

Again and again and again, the treasonous Antique media rush into print with hugely damaging stories without so much as even a gesture toward checking facts. Swathes of anti-Bush, anti-military editorial follow, all enormously helpful to the enemy. The moral fibre of the populace is successfully eroded.

Adolf will not be surprised if within six months, like the Berlin Wall, the so called insurgency in Iraq is over and then ordinary people in the west will ask "How come it happened so quickly? The media told us all was lost."

That was written slightly over six months ago.