White House Press Secretary Tony "Snowjob" Snow said today that Mr. Bush first learned of killing of two dozen Iraqi civilians at Haditha from the press"when a Time reporter first made the call." "Snowjob" resisted answering directly when asked what Bush's "personal involvement" has been, saying "I'm not going to get into his personal involvement." Excuse me? A mass murder by US military personnel may have occurred, and your "values" guide you to duck and dodge questions without so much as "Let me look into it and follow-up?"

So some of the questions are: Why wasn't Bush briefed by the military? Why was he kept in the dark? Where did the reporting responsibility for Haditha stop, and why?

The Marine assault on Iraqi civilians, including seven women, and three children, all unarmed except for one, occurred November 19, 2005, and was first reported by Time more than four months later on March 27, 2006. Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment has since rotated back to California, and the battalion commander and two company commanders were relieved of duty.

The assault followed the death of a Marine Lance Corporal killed when his humvee was hit by an IED. If true, the event is the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by US service members since the war began, according to human rights activists.

Time reports that the military stood by its original contention that the Iraqi civilians were killed by an insurgent bomb until January, 2006, when Time delivered a video of the aftermath and witness statements to Colonel Barry Johnson, a US military spokesman in Baghdad. He passed the evidence up the command, recommending a "a full and formal investigation." In February, an infantry colonel determined after a week long investigation that the civilians had been killed by Marines, citing the deaths as "collateral damage" not malicious intent by the Marines, according to investigators. The US government has already paid relatives of the victims $2,500 for each of the dead civilians, and lesser amounts to the injured.

Two sets of photos have surfaced. One set was taken by someone in Kilo Company, and one Marine emailed a photo taken of the Haditha aftermath back to the states. A Marine intelligence team apparently deleted photos of the scene because they had no intelligence information of value. It is expected that at least some members of Kilo Company will be charged, quite possibly including for murder, which carries the death penalty under the military's legal system, the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Two weeks ago, Marine officials briefed members of Congress. Sunday, decorated Marine officer and Pennsylvania congressman John Murtha, the ranking Democrat on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House, told George Stephanopoulous of ABC's This Week that if the allegations against Kilo Company Marines are true, Haditha is "worse than Abu Ghraib," calling their actions war crimes committed "in cold blood." "These kind of things have to be brought out immediately," he told "because if the Marines got away with it, other Marines might think it's okay."

Ironically, Congressman Murtha submitted HR 73, a resolution to remove forces from Iraq, two weeks after the Haditha massacre but while he was unaware of it.

Murtha enlisted in the Marines to serve in the Korean War. He rose through the ranks, becoming first a drill instructor at Parris Island, and then was selected for Officer Candidate School. After discharge from active duty, he remained in the reserves, then volunteered for service in Vietnam in 1966-67 and was assigned as a battalion intelligence officer.

The following year, 1968, the My Lai massacre occurred when between 347 and 504 civilians were murdered by US forces. As a result, the Medina standard was established. It holds that a commanding officer, being aware of a human rights violation or a war crime, will be held criminally liable when he does not take action.

Which brings us back to why the Commander in Chief was informed of the military's assault on Haditha civilians by the media instead of the military chain of command.

Who is in charge here?