Let’s study this sequence of events.

November 20, 2005 — U.S. Marines in Haditha, Iraq, report that on Nov. 19, fifteen civilians and one Marine were killed by a roadside explosion and eight insurgents were killed in subsequent combat. According to Time magazine (Tim McGirk, “One Morning in Haditha,” March 27 issue),

A day after the incident, a Haditha journalism student videotaped the scene at the local morgue and at the homes where the killings had occurred. The video was obtained by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with the internationally respected Human Rights Watch, and has been shared with TIME. …

… Soon after the killings, the mayor of Haditha, Emad Jawad Hamza, led an angry delegation of elders up to the Marine camp beside a dam on the Euphrates River. Hamza says, “The captain admitted that his men had made a mistake. He said that his men thought there were terrorists near the houses, and he didn’t give any other reason.”

But the military stood by its initial contention —that the Iraqis had been killed by an insurgent bomb— until January when TIME gave a copy of the video and witnesses’ testimony to Colonel Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

January 2006 — Time magazine told military officials in Baghdad — that Iraqis said the fifteen civilians were not killed by a bomb but were deliberately killed by Marines. According to Time, military officials began to investigate what happened in Haditha in January.

According to Reuters, in January 2006 —

Journalism student Taher Thabet, via an Iraqi human rights group, passes video of bodies and homes where they died to Time magazine. Time says [Captain Jeffrey] Pool dismisses it as al-Qaeda propaganda. But Baghdad military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson recommends investigation into possible foul play.

February 10, 2006 — According to the Associated Press, on this date a Time magazine reporter alerted military coalition authorities that the November 19 incident may have involved Marines deliberately killing civilians. The Navy Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) began an investigation.

February 14, 2006: The New York Times reports that “the first official investigation” of the Haditha killings began on this date. The investigation, Col. Gregory Watt, would be concluded three weeks later (see more below).

February 15, 2006: According to Reuters, “Lieutenant-General Peter Chiarelli, the No. 2 US commander in Iraq, initiates a preliminary investigation” on this date.

March 9, 2006 — Colonel Watt described the findings of his investigation to Lt. Gen. Chiarelli. Chiarelli directs the (NCIS) to investigate further, according to Reuters.

March 19, 2006 — Matthew Schofield of Knight Ridder reported that “Navy investigators announced last week that they were looking into whether Marines intentionally killed 15 Iraqi civilians – four of them women and five of them children – during fighting last November.” Time magazine posts a web exclusive by Tim McGirk:

In January, after Time presented military officials in Baghdad with the Iraqis’ accounts of the Marines’ actions, the U.S. opened its own investigation, interviewing 28 people, including the Marines, the families of the victims and local doctors. According to military officials, the inquiry acknowledged that, contrary to the military’s initial report, the 15 civilians killed on Nov. 19 died at the hands of the Marines, not the insurgents. The military announced last week that the matter has been handed over to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (ncis), which will conduct a criminal investigation to determine whether the troops broke the laws of war by deliberately targeting civilians. Lieut. Colonel Michelle Martin-Hing, spokeswoman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq, told Time the involvement of the ncis does not mean that a crime occurred. And she says the fault for the civilian deaths lies squarely with the insurgents, who “placed noncombatants in the line of fire as the Marines responded to defend themselves.”

April 8, 2006: Nancy A. Youssef of Knight Ridder reported that “the Marines relieved of duty three leaders of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, which had responsibility for Haditha when the shooting occurred.”

May 17, 2006: Rep. John Murtha appears on MSNBC’s Hardball. Murtha said stress on our troops and failure by the Bush Administration to meet the needs of troops were the root causes of the atrocity.

May 18, 2006: Right blogosphere goes ballistic on Murtha, calling him “dishonorable,” a “traitor,” and advocating he be censured.

May 27, 2006: Pentagon announces Marines could face murder charges.

May 30, 2006: Iraqi Ambassador to the U.S., Samir Sumaidaie, tells CNN that he heard about the killings at Haditha …

… very soon after the event in November from some relatives. And as it happened, my own security detail [man] comes from that neighborhood. And his home is hardly a hundred yards from the home which was hit.

And he was in touch through the Internet with his folks and neighbors. And the situation which he reported to me was that it was a cold-blooded killing. …

… I was at the United Nations, and I found it unbelievable that the Marines would go in and kill members of a family who had nothing to do with combat. But I was under pressure by my friends and relatives to raise this issue.

Without any evidence in my hand, I didn’t really want to make any claims that I could not substantiate. That was, remember, before any video came out. It was just word of mouth, people telling me what happened.

And I know the power of the rumor and the power of allegations without foundation. But in this case, it was more than that.

The Ambassador also said one of his cousins had been shot by Marines in a separate incident.

I’ve already commented on the Haditha killings here and here. Now I’m just looking at how the story emerged and how the U.S. military responded. As you can see from what I pieced together from news stories, it isn’t clear exactly when U.S. military officials in Iraq became aware of the allegations. Maybe it was January, maybe February, but maybe earlier. Nor is it clear when the military began to investigate the allegations; maybe it was two months after the incident, maybe three. The NCIS may have become involved in February, or maybe March.

Even if the top brass in Iraq were unaware of what might have happened, it sounds like the allegations were well known to the Iraqis of Haditha, and their friends and relatives. So the suggestion by some righties that talking about Haditha undermines the war effort doesn’t make much sense.

Today Eric Schmitt and David Cloud report for the New York Times,

A military investigator uncovered evidence in February and March that contradicted repeated claims by marines that Iraqi civilians killed in Haditha last November were victims of a roadside bomb, according to a senior military official in Iraq.

Among the pieces of evidence that conflicted with the marines’ story were death certificates that showed all the Iraqi victims had gunshot wounds, mostly to the head and chest, the official said. …

… The three-week inquiry was the first official investigation into an episode that was first uncovered by Time magazine in January and that American military officials now say appears to have been an unprovoked attack by the marines that killed 24 Iraqi civilians. The results of Colonel Watt’s investigation, which began on Feb. 14, have not previously been disclosed.

It is now more than six months since whatever it was that happened, happened, which is six months for word-of-mouth about what happened to spread through Iraq. I am skeptical that the investigation into what happened needed to take that long. Even if the preliminary investigation by Col. Watt concluded on March 9, that’s more than three months ago. Now we’re getting leaks from senior military officials. The charges are serious, but the facts of the case don’t seem so complex that it would take this long to either obtain indictments or put forth evidence that the allegations are false.

Schmitt and Cloud continue,

Colonel Watt also reviewed payments totaling $38,000 in cash made within weeks of the shootings to families of victims.

What does “within weeks” mean? January? February?

In an interview Tuesday, Maj. Dana Hyatt, the officer who made the payments, said he was told by superiors to compensate the relatives of 15 victims, but was told that rest of those killed had been deemed to have committed hostile acts, leaving their families ineligible for compensation.

After the initial payments were made, however, those families demanded similar payments, insisting their relatives had not attacked the marines, Major Hyatt said.

Major Hyatt said he was authorized by Colonel Chessani and more senior officers at the marines’ regimental headquarters to make the payments to relatives of 15 victims.

Colonel Chessani “was part of the chain of command that gives the approval,” Major Hyatt said.

Over on the Right, Captain Ed links to the Schmitt and Cloud New York Times story and says,

From this description, rather than the impression of official denial and cover-up, the Marine Corps took decisive action early to ensure that evidence could be retained and that investigators started working on unraveling the deaths in Haditha. By the time that Time reported this incident publicly in the March 27th issue, the US military had already determined that war crimes had potentially been committed at Haditha. Time Magazine reported as much in its story, noting that it presented the military with the information that started the investigation.

If the US military had already determined that war crimes had potentially been committed by March 27, IMO they should have been a hell of a lot more pro-active about making information public and obtaining indictments asap. Seems to me that time is of the essence. The longer the military remains silent, the worse the rumors and the suspicions become.

And, frankly, if Rep. Murtha hadn’t started talking about Haditha a couple of weeks ago, we in the U.S. probably would know even less about what happened than we’ve learned so far.

See also: “A reporter’s shock at the Haditha allegations” by Arwa Damon, CNN.

Cross posted to The American Street.