I'd Rather Have Been Wrong...

Here, yesterday, in discussing why the media was disappointed by Operation Swarmer:

MNF-I issues press releases all the time; soldiers discover weapons cache, Marines conduct cordon-and-search operation with Iraqi troops, VBIED found on roadside, hospital refurbished, school reopened, etc, etc. If ever considered otherwise, this is now seen as the unglorious yeoman's work of Operation Iraqi Freedom - the nuts and bolts of rebuilding a nation. The press wants something headline worthy - a mosque bombing, US troops accidentally shooting an elderly grandmother, or a report that someone in an Iraqi police uniform dragged somebody else off to nowhere in the middle of the night.

But this time something in that press release caught somebody's eye: "...largest air assault operation since Operation Iraqi Freedom I."

...they read "large air assault" and they expect corpse photos, pain and suffering, death and destruction, and all those things that merit a Pulitzer Prize.
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But on day two the first reporters are brought in. Perhaps some with visions of dead babies, crying grandmothers, leveled houses, and white phosphorous raining from the sky.
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Instead they find...

Well, I'll be damned - Iraqi and American soldiers conducting the unglorious yeoman's work of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

And that just pisses them off.

The story:

An Iraqi police document accuses U.S. troops of executing 11 people, including a 75-year-old woman and a 6-month-old infant, after a raid Wednesday on a house about 60 miles north of Baghdad.
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The case involves a U.S. raid conducted, according to the official U.S. account, in response to a tip that a member of al-Qaeda in Iraq was at the house.

Neighbors who were interviewed agreed that the al-Qaeda in Iraq member was at the house. They said he was visiting the home's owner, a relative. The neighbors said the homeowner was a schoolteacher.

According to police, military and eyewitness accounts, U.S. forces approached the house at around 2:30 a.m. and a firefight ensued. By all accounts, in addition to exchanging gunfire with someone inside the house, U.S. troops were supported by helicopter gunships that fired on the house.

But the accounts differ on what took place after the firefight.

According to the U.S. account, the house collapsed because of the heavy fire. When U.S. forces searched the rubble they found one man, the al-Qaeda suspect, alive. He was arrested. They also found a dead man they believed to be connected to al-Qaeda, two dead women and a dead child.

The report filed by the Joint Coordination Center, which was based on a report filed by local police, said U.S. forces entered the house while it was still standing.

"The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 persons, including five children, four women and two men," the report said. "Then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles, and killed their animals."
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A local police commander, Lt. Col. Farooq Hussain, who was interviewed in Ishaqi, said autopsies at the hospital in Tikrit "revealed that all the victims had bullet shots in the head and all bodies were handcuffed."

Wish I could predict NCAA brackets that well. Some days it really sucks to be right.