Time’s McGirk Wanted To Call Haditha “A Massacre”

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

[Sam Hill]

This is a brief excerpt from the (it's so left it's pink) New York Observer:

Reporter Tim McGirk in the Mazlak Camp in Afghanistan.

The Devil Goes Gaga

By Gabriel Sherman

Neither “Haditha” nor “Massacre” appeared on the cover of the March 27 Time, which broke the news of the slayings of civilians. That scoop, which led the way for investigations by The New York Times and other major outlets, was flagged with a milder “Was Iraq Worth It?” on the front. The bigger question on the cover was “Are Kids Too Wired for Their Own Good?”, accompanying a soft-news photo illustration of a boy with three cell phones, a Treo and an iPod orbiting his head.

“At the time, I knew if the allegations turned out to be true, then it was clear this would be a story of significance,” Mr. Kelly said. “We put [Haditha] in the context of Iraq three years later, and we knew what we could talk about at the time was not a 10-page story …. If you’re going to do it as a cover, you need that kind of weight. We gave it the space it deserved at the time.”

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.

Has the Haditha story helped push Time back toward hard news, after swinging toward soft stories and trend pieces?

“I never took that charge seriously,” Mr. Kelly said. “Ever since 9/11, I put out a magazine that tried to make people understand better the world that was created by 9/11.”

“It was nonsense, that lifestyle tag,” Mr. Kelly said. “If this is a lifestyle magazine, I don’t know whose lifestyle it is.”

You see Tim McGirk knew it was a massacre.

He has a videotape and emails from his unbiased sources to prove it.

[kcvl]

Will Pakistan be jilted by America again? You bet

BY APARISIM GHOSH
Wednesday, November 14, 2001




http://tinyurl.com/nn52p

[theFIRMbss]

>The Abominations of War From My Lai to Haditha By Cindy Sheehan

In a way, it's good
Sheehan wrote this because now
everyone will link

the Haditha crap
with nuts like Sheehan no one
believes anyway.

[Sam Hill]

You are amazing.

"We launched an investigation of our own with the help of a human rights group," said Aparisim Ghosh, a writer for Time."

By this Ghosh means "budding Iraqi journalist and human-rights activist. Taher Thabet, 43" who is the founder and sole member of the "Hammurabi Organization for Human Rights and Democracy Monitoring" group.

And the guy who claims to have made the video.

But Time does everything it can to make it sound like there are more people involved.

Why?

[Sam Hill]

Great get.

He looks like he sounds.

[MizSterious]

One other article that KCVL quoted on the other thread had some similarities to this case--the infamous "wedding party" which ultimately did turn out to be what we said it was.

[gunnyg]

Lotta stuff going around....

A Time For Mutiny...

http://www.network54.com/Forum/135069/message/1149538120/A+TIME+FOR+MUTINY-

[kcvl]

The day after the massacre, Iraqi journalism student Taher Thabet videotaped the bodies at the local morgue and the homes where the shootings occurred. “You could tell [the soldiers] were enraged,” Thabet recently told Time. “They not only killed people, they smashed furniture, tore down wall hangings, and when they took prisoners, they treated them very roughly.”


http://tinyurl.com/qnllj

[kcvl]

Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with Human Rights Watch


A stranger would not know anything special had happened there,” says Taher Thabet, a local journalism student and human-rights worker


When Thabet gave him a business card, which says he works for Hamurabi Human Rights, which produced the incriminating videotape, the Marine grew apologetic. “He told me that the men who killed my neighbors were not typical Marines,” Thabet recalls. “Even among the Marines, they are known as the 'Dirty Force.' Then he said, 'For myself, I don't think killing 15 Iraqis is a fair response for the death of one Marine.'”


******

Time magazine acquired the tape through the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with Human Rights Watch. The magazine reported that the tape shows victims still in their pajamas and bullet-pocked walls spattered with blood.

http://tinyurl.com/nwzcp

Talal al-Zuhairi, who heads the Baghdad Center for Human Rights, said his organization feared that even if the military’s investigation implicated the Marines, they would not be punished severely enough, according to a March 22 report by the Associated Press.

According to the report, “this incident shows that the forces are committing, every now and then, operations that harm civilians,” al-Zuhairi said.

[kcvl]

Video shot by a Haditha journalism student corroborates residents’ accounts. The footage was turned over to the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which in turn provided it to Reuters.



"On the new tape shot by an Iraqi journalism student and given to ABC News by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group in Iraq, Younis, soft-spoken, with rounded cheeks and a headscarf, begins by calmly telling the interviewer, "My name is Safa Younis. I'm 12 years old."

The interviewer asks, "What did the American soldiers do when they broke into the house?"


http://tinyurl.com/m9utk

[kcvl]

Also, the original video's now supposed to have come from the Hammurabi Human Rights Association ... not the "student" journalist from Haditha ... ?http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2006/s1598457.htm (about halfway down the article)

[Sam Hill]

They are one and the same. They are both that guy Taher Thabet, a 43 year old student.

Thabet IS the Hammurabi Human Rights Association.

Also note:

"BOBBY GHOSH, TIME CORRESPONDENT: This was a rare example where we were able to nail down some of the facts by speaking to the witnesses, the survivors, by speaking to the local authorities."

By "speaking" he means emailing.

And by "local authorities" he means the "insurgent"-loving doctor, mayor and lawyer.

[Velveeta]

It's a new era.
You're now innocent until proven guilty by leftist journalists.

[Velveeta]

Unfortunately, too many nuts following Cindy Sheehadi's musings.