The Haditha Smear Continues

Michelle Malkin notes that the Chicago Sun Times ran a cartoon by Jack Higgins utilizing the discredited and mischaracterized photo run in the Times Online that ostensibly attributes a scene of dead civilians to US Marines, when they were, in fact, lined up by insurgents and murdered at a sports stadium as another photo with a wider view of the scene indicates. Head over to Michelle and see the cartoon and the image from which he lifted his idea.

No matter how quickly the photo was removed from the Times Online story and a correction placed at the top of the story, the fact remains that there are those who quickly latched onto the image regardless of its provenance and are utilizing it in an ongoing smear campaign against the Marines and the US efforts in Iraq. Here's what the Times Online included at the heading of the story:

[Note: This story originally appeared with a picture of slain Iraqis whose caption erroneously described the scene as being related to the alleged incidents in al-Haditha. The image was in fact from a separate incident in the area in which Iraqi insurgents are believed to have massacred local fishermen. We apologise for the mistake.]

The apology within the story was insufficient as we are seeing. That's why I felt that the retraction and apology needed to be on the front page. It's because a simple note will not do. The apology still needs to be made to the US Marines as Higgins' cartoon shows. The damage is ongoing.

Malkin goes on to say:

Did he or his editors take any steps to ensure the accuracy of the image Higgins simulated to indict the Marines? Or will Higgins somehow argue that he is not implying that the Marines were the perpetrators of the atrocities in the stadium scene he copied from the AP photo?

Ask them:

E-mail letters@suntimes.com
Editorial page editor Steve Huntley: shuntley@suntimes.com
Publisher John Cruickshank: jcruickshank@suntimes.com
Jack Higgins: jhiggins@suntimes.com

My prior coverage can be found here and here.

UPDATE:
The Chicago Sun Times has issued a correction and apology. The apology can be accessed from the Sun Times commentary page:

An apology
A cartoon by Jack Higgins in Tuesday's Chicago Sun-Times incorporated inaccurate imagery to make a statement about the allegations that U.S. Marines killed Iraqi civilians in Haditha.
Jack Higgins and the Sun-Times deeply regret the mistake and apologize to the U.S. servicemen, especially those in the Marine Corps, and to our readers who were understandably offended by the cartoon. Higgins, in doing Web research on the Haditha story, searched the Internet for images. A Yahoo search engine displayed a number of photos, one of which was labeled "IraqBodi...rd.jpg." Clicking on that image took Higgins to the MSNBC/Newsweek site. On his screen then was the original Yahoo search preview image and under it a Newsweek page with a small image of the magazine's current cover with the headline "The Haditha Question."

Higgins made the erroneous assumption that the image in the photo preview was a photograph of victims of the killings that unproven allegations say were committed by U.S. Marines. Further scrolling down the page would have produced another image of this photo with a caption that clearly identities the dead as victims of Iraqi insurgents. The caption reads, "Insurgents in Haditha executed 19 Shiite fishermen and National Guardsmen in a sports stadium."

Again, Higgins and the editors of the Sun-Times apologize for this egregious error.