Rightwing Spin That Haditha Massacre Never Occurred

The UK Times coverage of Haditha has this retraction:

This story originally appeared with a picture whose caption erroneously described the scene as of the alleged incidents in al-Haditha. The image was in fact from a separate incident involving Iraqi insurgents

Michelle Malkin alerted her readers of this error and wrote:

If you are left with the impression that the dead bodies on the ground were massacred by our Marines, that is exactly what the Times intends … This must not stand. And the Times must not be allowed to make a covert correction without a public acknowledgement. The editors must apologize for this blatant smear.

Gerard Baker combines apology with a smack down of Malkin:

I’m sorry you have jumped to the conclusion that this was a deliberate misrepresentation and the result of slanted journalism and sorrier that you have shared that view with your readers without any attempt to verify it … I’m personally offended both by the error on the Times website and by your association of me with what you call the intentional slander of US marines.

Malkin continues with her spin that the press is just making Haditha up including a link to Jeff Goldstein:

Whether the historical referent becomes My Lai or Jenin (or something in between) will depend upon the outcome of the investigation, of course; but, if the early analogies are any indication, one does get the creepy sense that many in the US media are kind of hoping for the former … Or maybe they just have a lot of unused file footage of My Lai lying around and don’t want to see it go to waste.

Jeff and Michelle are hoping we are stupid enough to believe that the press just made the whole Haditha massacre up. Pathetic!