Whatever happened in Haditha, and given the identity of the witnesses that is becoming murkier as time passes, let's remember two things:

1. who the opposition is;

2. how the opposition is treated in the press.

This is from an AP story today carried online in the Wall Street Journal in an article about the Iraqi parliament postponing its vote for the security offices.  These two paragraphs are buried in a story in the sense of 'and in other news from Iraq today....'  The title of this article is 'Iraq Postpones Cabinet Appointments' and the following paragraph is the 10th(!) paragraph in the story, under the subheading 'Gunman attack buses, killing 21':

In northeast Baghdad on Sunday, gunmen killed 21 people including many high school students and wounded one on Sunday after dragging passengers off buses northeast of Baghdad, officials said. Four Sunni Arabs on board were spared and the dead were all either Shiites or Kurds.

Serwan Shokir, the mayor Qara Tappah, said the incident occurred in the early morning after three mini buses left his town headed for Baqouba . He said the gunmen dragged 26 people from the buses, separated four Sunni Arabs who were in the group, and shot all the rest. Mr. Shokir said 12 of the dead were high school student and of those killed, 19 Shiite Turkomen and two were Kurds. The students were headed to another town to take exams.

Got that?  These animals stopped minibuses that were taking teenage kids to exams, pulled them off the buses and shot them.  Not even an IED, no mistakes, no heat of battle — this was their plan. 

Yes, it is reported, which is how it is included here.  But in the 10th paragraph of a story on another subject.

Let's remember who we are dealing with here, who is keeping these wolves from the door and the point—of—view of those who are giving us the reports. 

Greg Richards   6 4 06

Update: