One of my regular readers is the driving force behind Spirit Builders, a blog dedicated to looking at the Haditha incident and untangling the contradictory accounts and hype and media hysteria. I have only followed the story periodically - and accounts of what happened in Haditha only seem to come out in dribs and drabs - but I'm leaning toward the same conclusion that she is:

Some think the whole thing is a hoax. Personally, I don't think so. I also don't think it was a result of uncontrolled Marines gone wild in a rage over the loss of Lance Cpl. Terrazas. I think the truth is somewhere in between. In any event, the military is completing a thorough investigation and if it is found that Marines acted improperly, military justice will be served.

Riehl World View and Charles Bird at Red State are also good sources of trying to separate the facts from the speculation.

A lot of folks on the other side of the ideological spectrum are inclined to reflexively believe the worst about our guys in uniform; we wouldn't be doing any favors by reflexively refusing to believe allegations like this. Let's let the investigation continue. I tend to doubt the usefulness of congressional hearings for anything beyond posturing and preening for the cameras. (Thank you, 9/11 Commission, for teaching us all that even the most serious of issues can be turned into a partisan circus.)

Perhaps whether or not you instinctively believe the Haditha allegations comes down, at least partially, to whether or not you personally know men and women in uniform (and perhaps whether or not you personally know Marines). If you do, you tend to get a sense of their character. Driven, dedicated, approaching tasks large and small with extraordinary discipline. Do they have flaws? Sure. When they're off duty, can they raise hell in a bar? Sure. But they're not butchers, they're not monsters, and their training conditions them to be extraordinarily focused on the task at hand, not prone to wild, uncontrollable rages.

Maybe the Haditha allegations are true. But my experience with Marines doubts the out-of-control charicature that some have painted, and leads me to think that the circumstances in Haditha may be more complicated than we have been told.