The Questionable Sources For Time’s Haditha Scoop

Sweetness & Light ^ | June 5, 2006 | N/A

[mo]

IMHO, this will continue until some tort attorney with a set of stones, takes on those repsonsible for perpetrating and propagating journalistic malpractice with consequent pain and suffering to the victims and their families....

[VRWCtaz]

"Still, Thabet says his thoughts are mostly with the 24 who died. "Nobody cares about what happens to ordinary Iraqis," he says. They do now."

I thought only 15 of the 24 were "ordinary Iraqis" and that the other nine were confirmed terrorist. But I guess that depends on this Thabet's point of view.

[Valin]

Begs the question, why the terrorists allow Taher Thabet to live in Haditha.

[Valin]

We don't know much about this....yet, but I've got a feeling that you're correct.

[Peach]

I find it almost impossible to believe that Marine commanders were in the field in the months following the shootings and didn't hear anything from neighbors. This smells like a set up to me.

[Marine_Uncle]

"Must read."
Thanks. All we obvioulsy can do is wait for the outcome and hope these Marines are all vindicated in the end.
This article just adds more suspicious stuff we had read in a few earlier articles posted at FR.

[Marine_Uncle]

I should have added. My nephew in both his tours basically had the same thing to say. They simply could not trust almost every Iraqi they came into contact with. Only in his second tour did he indicate they where then working with some pretty good Iraqi soldiers. Of course at that point some Iraqi army units where actually working side by side with our guys.
He actually paid compliment to one Iraqi lietentant, said the guy was very good. Sadly this guy left for leave and got shot by the goons while visiting his family on leave.
But majority of Iraqi people they had to come into contact, simply where not to be trusted. Things probably are changing at this point in the SASO in some areas as we read various articles quoting army and Marines.

[pissant]

It does not matter that the "witnesses" are lying terror-sympathizers. All that matters to Time is that they fit their agenda. That is exactly what occurred.

[Velveeta]

>>>>Why didn't the "budding journalist" Taher Thabet and "human rights watcher" wait until the next day to videotape this alleged atrocity? One that happened on his very doorstep?<<<<

Bears repeating.

[kcvl]

Tim McGirk, who shepherded the original story which broke in January, moved last month to be Jerusalem's bureau chief, while the other principal architect of the story, Bobby Ghosh, is now the Baghdad bureau chief.


This week, veteran Time reporter in Iraq, Michael Ware, who spent more than three years in the war-torn country, said he is jumping to CNN as a TV correspondent in Baghdad.


(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...



(Tim McGirk is the South Asia correspondent for The Independent, London.)

Back in the days of Genghis Khan (he's still referred to respectfully as "Mr Genghis" in Mazar-e-Sharif), buzkashi was played with prisoners of war instead of a dead animal.

http://tinyurl.com/gvplh

[MizSterious]

Do you by any chance have the timeline on this? I vaguely recall a Freeper posting the dates--the event itself, the arrival of the US investigators, and so on down the line.

The reason I ask is, on Fox last Saturday, the two lefties on the show claimed that if Time had not broken this story, that there would have been no investigation. I've heard that theory repeated several times over the weekend on several talking head shows. The time line I saw indicated that this incident had been under investigation almost from the beginning--but then, maybe I'm remembering it wrong.

[MizSterious]

Michelle Malkin suggests that might be at least part of what happened here. She has pictures on her website that should call this whole story into question. So far, they haven't.

[MizSterious]

Because Fox is MSM. Except for Brit Hume, there's little difference between FNC and CNN.

[kcvl]

Tim McGirk
Humanitarian IssuesWhen Bad Information Kills People
Tim McGirk | Time Magazine | March 3, 2002
"At 10:30 p.m., the first bombs struck the party; the assault lasted six hours. The next day, a team of special forces arrived in Qila-Niazi to inspect what was thought to have been a triumphant blow against Osama bin Laden's network. Instead it found the remains of [a] party. Out of 112 people, two women had survived." [more]


AfghanistanWhy Doesn't the CIA Want to Talk to a Top Ex-Taliban?
Tim McGirk | Time Magazine | February 15, 2002
"Mullah Abdulsamata Khaksar has been waiting months for the CIA to talk to him. The former deputy Interior Minister of the Taliban says he has a lot of information to give up, perhaps even some that will lead to Mullah Omar, the fugitive leader of Afghanistan's fallen regime and chief ally of Osama bin Laden. But, until Time alerted U.S. military officials in Kabul in late January of his willingness to talk, no American officials had debriefed Khaksar." [more]


John Sifton of Human Rights Watch told TIME's Tim McGirk,

Time learned about the Haditha action in January, when it obtained a copy of Thabet’s videotape from an Iraqi human-rights group. But a Marine spokesman brushed off any inquiries. “To be honest,” Marine Captain Jeff Pool e-mailed McGirk, “I cannot believe you’re buying any of this. This falls into the same category of aqi (al-Qaeda in Iraq) propaganda.”

Time correspondent Tim McGirk, who broke the Haditha story, said that in the weeks before publication, he had lobbied editors to use the word “massacre” in the March 27 story.

“That was a battle I lost,” Mr. McGirk said by phone May 30 from Jerusalem, where he is currently based. “I think the editors felt ‘massacre’ was too heavy of a word. They didn’t want to use it; they felt there was some justification for what had happened.”

“I think it was definitely a massacre,” Mr. McGirk said.

http://tinyurl.com/mmmue


Tim McGirk. “Nothing can bring back all that was taken from 9-year-old Eman Waleed on that fateful day last November. She still does not comprehend how, when her father went in to pray with the Koran for the family's safety, his prayers were not answered, as they had been so many times in the past. ‘He always prayed before, and the Americans left us alone,’ she says. Leaving, she grabs a handful of candy. ‘It's for my little brother,’ she says.” Her brother, very terrorized, very traumatized.

[MizSterious]

"Instead it found the remains of [a] party."

So this was one of the reporters trying to push the "wedding party" story? No wonder the Haditha story stinks to holy high heaven. This guy has always had an agenda.

[Sam Hill]

>>>>Why didn't the "budding journalist" Taher Thabet and "human rights watcher" wait until the next day to videotape this alleged atrocity? One that happened on his very doorstep?<<<<

Bears repeating.

+++++

Also, from what I have seen of the videotape, Thabet didn't bother to tape much.

Just that one room, then the morgue.

Why not get more shots? There were supposed to be at least two houses involved, plus the taxi-cab on the street.

Why just the one room and the morgue?

[jazusamo]

Thanks for the post and ping.

Our judicial system seems to be skeptical of the truthfulness and validity of testimony from prejudiced witnesses. It's a shame that our MSM and people like Murtha don't realize there is a very good reason for that skepticism.

[Sam Hill]

"Begs the question, why the terrorists allow Taher Thabet to live in Haditha."

You're right, of course. Not a sparrow falls in that town without the the terrorists who control Haditha deciding whether it can or not.

I linked it in the article, but it really is worth emphasizing this story from the UK's (leftist) Guardian:

The Haditha Our Media Won’t Tell You About | Sweetness & Light
http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/the-haditha-our-media-won

[Velveeta]

In addition, isn't it ironic that this "novice journalist" happens to start a human rights organization and an "atrocity" occurs right out his front window?

Also, fyi...Newsweek confirmed what we had suspected.

Little Iman had said: "EMAN WALID (through translator): I was planning to go to school. I was about to get out of bed. I knew the bomb would explode, so I covered my ears."
http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=haditha26206.htm


As confirmed by even Newsweek.....there was NO school that day - Saturday.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13126262/site/newsweek/

[Sam Hill]

Do you think this is a news-worthy article? Or that it might have a bearing on activism?

Or should it be hidden away in the bloggers and personal section.

Every assertion made in the piece is substantiated.

I can't for the life of me see why this is not news and stories like this:

Hell's Once in a Lifetime Party! 6-6-6
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1643692/posts

Are in the news section.

I thought FR had a purpose.