Five days after the killings, Kilo Company celebrated Thanksgiving with a turkey dinner, including stuffing and potatoes. The occasion was recorded on video. Before the meal McConnell led the men in prayer. He said, “Father, we thank you for this food which you have prepared for us. Please bless this food with your great grace, and please let us take the sustenance that you provide for us, and go forth and do great things in your name. We are very grateful here in Kilo Company for many things. We thank you for the mission that you have provided for us, to leave America and go into foreign lands and try to do good things for the world and for our country. It’s our greatest honor, and we thank you for that. We thank you for our families, who support us back in the States, and the brotherhood that we have here. It is our greatest strength, and we thank you for that as well. We also want to thank you for the veterans and those who have gone before us, because without them there would be no Marine Corps legacy, and there wouldn’t be that great standard to uphold. So we thank you for that because it guides us, it keeps us on the right track, and it’s that steering factor that helps us go forth and do great things. We thank you for the memory and the life of Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas, who did great things in his life, did great things for all of us, was a great friend and a great Marine. We just ask that you help us take this food that you’ve provided us here today, help it maintain, sustain our bodies so we can uphold that legacy that our fallen comrades have provided for us. We say all these things in your great name. Amen.”

The men answered with Marine Corps Hoo-rahs and Amens.

McConnell said, “Hey, please enjoy the meal. Make sure you pat the cooks on the back. They work hard. And if you see someone from the Four shop here in the near future that you know, pat them on the back, because they get all that stuff out here, and it’s not the most safest place to be pushing food around But I appreciate you all being here, and first and foremost Happy Thanksgiving. Go forth and do great things. Hoo-rah!”

Hoo-rah. Iraqis live in an honor-bound society, built of tight family ties. When noncombatants are killed, it matters little to the survivors whether the American rules allowed it, or what the U.S. military courts decide. The survivors go to war in return, which provokes more of the same in a circular dive that spirals beyond recovery. Haditha is just a small example. By now, nearly one year later, hatred of the American forces in the city has turned so fierce that military investigators for the trials at Pendleton have given up on going there. That hatred is blood hatred. It is the kind of hatred people are willing to die for, with no expectation but revenge. This was immediately apparent on a video that was taken the day after the killings by an Iraqi from the neighborhood—the same video that was later passed along to Time. The Marine Corps was wrong to dismiss the video as propaganda and fiction. It is an authentic Iraqi artifact. It should be shown to the grunts in training. It should be shown to the generals in command. The scenes it depicts are raw. People move among the hideous corpses, wailing their grief and vowing vengeance before God. “This is my brother! My brother! My brother!” In one of the killing rooms, a hard-looking boy insists that the camera show the body of his father. Sobbing angrily, he shouts, “I want to say this is my father! God will punish you Americans! Show me on the camera! This is my father! He just bought a car showroom! He did not pay all the money to the owner yet, and he got killed!”

A man cries, “This is an act denied by God. What did he do? To be executed in the closet? Those bastards! Even the Jews would not do such an act! Why? Why did they kill him this way? Look, this is his brain on the ground!”

The boy continues to sob over the corpse on the floor. He shouts, “Father! I want my father!”

Another man cries, “This is democracy?”

Well yeah, well no, well actually this is Haditha. For the United States, it is what defeat looks like in this war.

Also on VF.com: Q&A with William Langewiesche

William Langewiesche is Vanity Fair’s international correspondent. His next book, Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear-Armed Poor, will be published next year by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Before joining V.F. earlier this year, he spent 15 years covering the Middle East and much of the rest of the world for The Atlantic. He has been working in Iraq since 2003.