Tonight, PBS’s Frontline visits the heart of darkness that is Haditha.

From PBS’s website for The Rules of Engagement:

FRONTLINE cuts through the fog of war to reveal the untold story of what happened in Haditha, Iraq—where twenty-four of the town’s residents were killed by U.S. forces in what many in the media branded “Iraq’s My Lai.” With accusations swirling that the Marines massacred Iraqi civilians “in cold blood,” the Haditha incident has led to one of the largest criminal cases against U.S. troops in the Iraq war. But real questions have emerged about what really happened that day, and who is responsible. Through television interviews with Iraqi survivors and Marines accused of war crimes, FRONTLINE investigates this incident and what it can tell us about the harrowing moral and legal landscape the U.S. military faces in Iraq.

Though much of public television has been infected by reactionary politics, I have continued to trust that Frontline producers still take their journalism and news reporting seriously. The story of Haditha deserves no less.

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I don’t have cable and the only thing worth watching most nights is PBS. The best thing on PBS is Frontline, which I call “Can’t pee TV” because their documentaries are so intense and compelling I can’t stop watching until the show is over.

So last night, as part of the “America at a Crossroads” series, PBS decides to “balance” an amazing Frontline documentary about training the Iraqi troops with a shameless hour-long infomercial created by and for the benefit of war profiteer and neocon ideologue Richard Perle.

Here’s the NYT on the programming decision:

As Elizabeth Jensen reported in The New York Times earlier this month, Bush administration critics were suspicious of the entire 11-part series about the world after 9/11, especially the portion turned over to Mr. Perle. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which administers federal money to public television and radio, has long been under pressure by the White House to include more conservative voices. (The corporation’s chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, was forced to resign in November 2005 after it was revealed that he had monitored the political leanings of some guests on PBS.)

The contrast was stunning.  Read more