Jessie Macbeth and all that...

The wingnut-o-sphere recently had a field day with the revelation that a US soldier who claimed to have witnessed atrocities in Iraq was in fact a fraud. Hahaha, there goes another left-wing poster boy. Or not, as the case may be. Because for all of Charles Johnson and Co's crowing about 'Jessie Macbeth', the fact of the matter is hardly anyone picked up on the video and claimed it as proof of US war crimes. And why should they? There's much better evidence coming from the horse's mouth, aka United States command:

The American military has opened a criminal investigation into allegations that marines killed an Iraqi civilian west of Baghdad last month, the United States command announced Wednesday.

Iraqi civilians made the allegation on May 1, five days after the reported incident, the command's statement said.

A preliminary inquiry found enough information to recommend an investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, the statement added.

The statement did not say how many marines were involved but said they included "several service members" from the Third Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, in the Falluja area, 40 miles west of Baghdad.

All of the suspects have been returned to the United States.

The announcement comes after news that the military is investigating a dozen marines from another battalion that may have killed at least 15 civilians, including women and children, during an incident last November in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad.

The military initially described the Haditha encounter as an ambush during a patrol that involved a roadside bombing in which a marine died, followed by a firefight. But witnesses said only American forces were shooting after the explosion.

On May 17, Representative John Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania and a decorated former marine, said that the toll in Haditha was far worse than reported and that the incident showed how American forces were "overstretched and overstressed."

Last August, the Marine Corps announced a criminal investigation into the death of the cousin of Iraq's ambassador to Washington, Samir al-Sumaidaie. The cousin was shot and killed during a search of his home in Haditha on June 25. No announcement has been made about the findings of the investigation.

Further allegations surfaced on Wednesday, when Iraqi civilians in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, said American troops had killed several civilians, including a young girl, in a raid on Monday.

The American military said Tuesday that it had killed a number of insurgents during a joint operation with Iraqi soldiers in Samarra. It added that "a young girl, a daughter of one of the terrorists, was inadvertently killed" during the raid. (link)

Should be interesting to see how LGF plays this one.