Instead, critics of the war alleged it was common and that a conspiracy right up to the top existed to cover up this crime.
Recent events have shown that there was no conspiracy, that there was more of a battle than a massacre, and that the enemy fights among civilians to try to provoke civilian deaths.
However, defenders of the war should not be so quick to exonerate all the Americans there:
The 27-year-old listened intently as Lance Corporal Humberto Mendoza recounted how Marines had responded after a roadside bomb attack on their convoy in Haditha on November 19, 2005 left one comrade dead.
Mendoza said Marines under Wuterich's command began clearing nearby houses suspected of containing insurgents responsible for the bombing.
At one house Wuterich gave an order to shoot on sight as Marines waited for a response after knocking on the door, said Mendoza.
"He said 'Just wait till they open the door, then shoot,'" Mendoza said. Mendoza then said he himself shot and killed an adult male who appeared in a doorway.
During a subsequent search of the house, Mendoza said he received an order from another Marine, Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum, to shoot seven women and children he had found in a rear bedroom.
"When I opened the door there was just women and kids, two adults were lying down on the bed and there were three children on the bed ... two more were behind the bed," Mendoza said.
"I looked at them for a few seconds. Just enough to know they were not presenting a threat ... they looked scared."
After leaving the room Mendoza told Tatum what he had found.
"I told him there were women and kids inside there. He said 'Well, shoot them,'" Mendoza told prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Sean Sullivan.
"And what did you say to him?" Sullivan asked.
"I said 'But they're just women and children.' He didn't say nothing."
Mendoza said he returned to a position at the front of the house and heard a door open behind him followed by a loud noise. Returning later that afternoon to retrieve bodies, Mendoza said he found a room full of corpses.
I hoped that the emerging battle at Haditha would prove to be a purely enemy propaganda effort. There may be questions of who did the shooting so the testimony may be suspect, but the question of whether a crime by Americans--a localized crime--took place is still an open question.
We who support the war and our troops are right to condemn those in the anti-war side who are quick to believe all enemy claims of "our crimes" and who generalize such claims to indict all our military personnel.
But we must also not fail to admit that some of our people are capable of crimes.
Our strength and moral superiority results from the rarity of such actions and the steps we take to punish those caught violating their training and our laws.
