or Newsweek's koran hoax for that matter.
“a budding journalism student”
Rush discussed this right near the end of his 3 hour program today ...
Rush's page apparently contains a link to American Thinker without an accompanying transcript. :(
Posted on 06/09/2006 1:01:57 PM PDT by Babu
Evidence accumulates of a hoax in Haditha. The weblog Sweetness & Light has done an estimable service gathering together the articles which cast substantial doubt on the charge of a massacre of civilians at Haditha . Because the blog is too busy gathering and fisking the news, I offered and the publisher accepted my offer to put what he has uncovered in a narrative form.
Having done so, I can tell you that the story has a whiff of yet another mediagenic scandal like the TANG memos or the Plame “outing.” While the Marines quite correctly will not comment on the case pending the outcome of their investigation, I am not bound by those rules, and I will sum up the story for you.
(a) On November 20, 2005, Reuters reported that on the previous day an IED killed a US Marine and 15 civilians in Haditha, a town known to be a center of the insurgency, a town as hostile to our forces as the better known Fallujah was. Reuters reported that “immediately after the blast, gunmen opened fire on the convoy” and US and Iraqi forces returned fire, killing 8 insurgents and wounding another in the fight. The paper further reported that “A cameraman working for Reuters in Haditha says bodies had been left lying in the street for hours after the attack.” Reuters never named this cameraman but he was almost undoubtedly Ali al-Mashhadani.
(b) Ali al-Mashhadani had been imprisoned for five months before his report because of his ties to insurgents. He was subsequently placed under another 12 days in detention for being a security threat.
(c) Tim McGirk of Time wrote about the incident at Haditha for the March 27 issue of the magazine. He unsuccessfully lobbied his editors to use the term “massacre” in the story. McGirk seems hardly a neutral reporter. He spent the first Thanksgiving after 9/11 in Afghanistan dining with the Taliban and concluding of this celebratory meal:
Our missing colleagues finally arrive, and I leave thinking that maybe this evening wasn’t very different from the original Thanksgiving: people from two warring cultures sharing a meal together and realizing, briefly, that we’re not so different after all.
Right, Tim. We all want to enslave women, bend the world to Sharia law, behead nonbelievers and otherwise carry on the honored traditions of the Taliban.
A key source for McGirk’s report that US Marines in Haditha had deliberately attacked civilians was Thaer al-Hadithi. whom McGirk inexplicably described as “a budding journalism student”. He is a middle-aged man, and was subsequently described by the AP as an “Iraqi investigator.”
McGirk also failed to note that Hadithi is “a member and spokesman for the Hammurabi.” The chairman of Hammurabi Organization and Hadithi’s partner in publicizing the “massacre” is Abdul–Rahman al-Mashhadani. It is unknown if he is related to Ali al-Mashhadani but their names suggest a possible relationship, and it beggars belief that as Sweetness& Light notes,
“Abdel Rahman al-Mashhadani just happened to be given a video by and unnamed local. And that he then turned it over to Ali al-Mashhadani who just happens to make videos for Reuters.”
Hadithi’s story is that was staying near to one of the two houses where the massacre occurred and saw it with his own eyes. According to his version of events he waited one day to videotape what had occurred, though apparently nothing prevented his doing so from the very window he “watched” it from as it took place. More troubling is why he waited months to turn the tape over to anyone.
The actions of his partner al-Mashhadani are equally puzzling. On December 15, 2005 Mashhadani was interviewed by the Institute for War and Peace which described him as “an election monitor.” In that interview he expressed great satisfaction with the election turnout (which in fact was terribly low in Haditha). Why did he not mention to this apparently sympathetic group one word about the supposed “atrocity” which he claimed had occurred three months earlier?
Hammurabi apparently did share the video in March with the largely Soros-funded Human Rights Watch which in turn provided it to Time.
(d) The videotape. On March 21, 2006 Reuters reported that Hadithi and Mashhadani’s organization, the Hammurabi Organization, had provided the organization was a copy of a videotape showing corpses lined up in the Haditha morgue, claiming these were the bodies of civilians deliberately killed by the Marines. Aside from the suspiciously-timed release of the video and the fact that chairman al-Mashhadani had never mentioned the incident or the tape in December when he was interviewed, the video shows people removing bodies from a home, a report at odds with the Reuters report the day after the incident which spoke of bodies lying in the street.
(e) The witnesses to the “massacre”
(1) The Doctor.
In the March 27 report, McGirk quotes the local doctor:
Dr. Wahid, director of the local hospital in Haditha, who asked that his family name be withheld because, he says, he fears reprisals by U.S. troops, says the Marines brought 24 bodies to his hospital around midnight on Nov. 19. Wahid says the Marines claimed the victims had been killed by shrapnel from the roadside bomb. “But it was obvious to us that there were no organs slashed by shrapnel,” Wahid says. “The bullet wounds were very apparent. Most of the victims were shot in the chest and the head–from close range.”
Another report however, indicates the doctor bore considerable animus to the US troops.
(2)The Iraqi eye-witnesses.
In “Haditha: Reasonable Doubt,” Andrew Walden describes how a similar case against British soldiers fell apart , describing the Arabic “blood money” tradition which hardly is as exotic as it sounds. Ask the American Trial Lawyers Association.
Reports of the eyewitnesses are conflicting and incredible. Al-Haditha was the source of a report by the AP on the death of a man whom the Washington Post quoted 10 times as an eyewitness on May 27,six months after his reported death, and the young girl “survivor” has given between two and four utterly inconsistent versions of the events.
(3) The American eye witnesses.
There are two American witnesses who have spoken out. Despite the press spin, neither has a first hand account of the events.
Lance Cpl. James Crossnan is the source of some very selective quotes on the incident. He, however, was wounded in the IED explosion which killed the US Marine Martin Terrazas. He was evacuated from the scene and saw none of the after-action.
And then there is Lance Cpl. Ryan Briones. He helped evacuate Crossnan and took bodies to the morgue. He was not an eyewitness. He claims he took pictures of the bodies at the morgue and has made various statements about what happened to the pictures and his camera. Aside from the fact that he is not an eyewitness, and his claims about his photographs seem unlikely, his story remained unuttered until he was arrested for stealing a truck, driving under the influence and crashing the stolen vehicle into a house. It was then for the first time that he claimed post traumatic distress and pointed to Haditha as the source of that stress. (His report of taking the bodies to the morgue, moreover, seems inconsistent with the first Reuters report that there were 15 bodies left lying in the street the day after the incident.)
The sum and substance of this thumbnail sketch on the Haditha claims is that it follows so closely the template for the TANG and Plame stories. Take a reporter with an anti-Administration agenda, an interested group (think of the Mashhadanis as the VIPS in the Plame case or Burkett and Lucy Ramirez in the TANG case) and a story too good to be checked and circumstances where the people attacked are limited in what they can quickly respond to and you get a story which smells to me like it will soon be unraveled.
This time, I’m betting the consequences to the press which rushed to judgment will be more disastrous than it was to Dan Rather. I surely hope so.
Neither, do I! I totally agree with you!
"Things about this story have smelled a little funny from the get go. But, unfortunately, the sources within the military establishment seem to keep making statements that more or less confirm that something bad went down. Maybe these guys are just trying to impress reporters with how "in the know" they are and with how willing they are to do a mea culpa at some Marine's expense. But it's hard to get too enthusiastic about the "frame up" stories when the military itself seems to discredit them. At this point, even if it was a frame job, it's going to be a hard to announce such a conclusion after all the statements suggesting the contrary."
Your thinking is similar to mine. The way I look at the situation is: we have a bunch of information indicating a massacre. None of the information comes from reliable sources---under the broadest and most lenient imaginable definition of the word "reliable"
However, we have created a situation, and there would appear to be no doubt that the military is playing a role in this, where these Marines are prejudged to be guilty. That means, in a sense, to go free, they must prove their innocence.
However, that would seem to be impossible. There is simply no real evidence in this case one way or the other. In fact, they may have committed a massacre or they may not have. The only evidence we will ultimately have about what happened is the Marines' own public statements about the events---which may not occur until after the trial is over.
In these kind of circumstances, I feel compelled to push for their freedom.
I disagree since a Reuters cameraman was present and his report on November 20, 2005 never mentioned a massacre.
"In fact, they may have committed a massacre or they may not have.
I disagree since a Reuters cameraman was present and his report on November 20, 2005 never mentioned a massacre."
I'm not sure if this single fact is enough to clinch the whole thing. For one thing, it would be helpful to get ahold of this person and have him interviewed.
or Newsweek's koran hoax for that matter.
“a budding journalism student”
Rush discussed this right near the end of his 3 hour program today ...
Rush's page apparently contains a link to American Thinker without an accompanying transcript. :(
Yeah you're right. A Reuters employee would lie and coverup a massacre by American troops.
Too bad the "Iraqi witnesses" can't keep their stories straight.
Time’s “Corrections” About Haditha
Why Did "Rights Group" Delay Revealing Haditha "Massacre"?
How innocent are the 'innocents' at haditha ?(the cover-up by the MSM lynch mob )
Thanks, I contributed in May and will do again in June as my cut off date on my credit card rolls around.
Remember in the early days when our warriors entered Baghdad, and the bs artists of the MSM tried to say they had robbed the museum of great treasures.
That was a lie and as usual we had some of so called real conservatives throwing stones at our warriors without any trial.
It is really simple. Never believe anything that is negative about our WOT from President GW to Rummy to our warriors when it spews from the MSM. The lunatic left MSM maggots are not capable of telling the truth when it comes to the WOT or GW or his people.
Here's my idea..Innocent until proven guilty. Certainly the Marines are entitled to no less.
Islamists are superb propagandists..
Especially when they get so much help from the uncritical MSM -- who are either a.) incapable of discerning fact from fiction or b.) serving as active supporters of the terrorists.
Which is to say, if the weren't being aided and abetted by the media, the Islamists would NOT be such "superb propagandists".
"Too bad the "Iraqi witnesses" can't keep their stories straight."
Yes it is. The fact is the people of Haditha are as pro- American as the Viet Cong population in the Iron Triangle in Vietnam.
Our government doesn't want to say this, because they want to "boost" the relations between Americans and Iraqis. I hate to say it, but throwing these Marines in jail for 20 years or executing them would be convenient for the American government. The story of Haditha will never change in the mainstream media of the world---just like the story of "Saddam had no weapons of mass distruction" will never change regardless of the evidence piling up every day.
We need a Republican president who would get in front of the American people and read the results of these translated documents that prove Saddam had weapons of mass distruction. Yes, it would be embarrassing at this point to change the story for the second time---but so what, it needs to be done! The fact is, it always seemed to me personally that Saddam had weapons of mass distraction.
In Ion Pacepa's book, Red Horizons, published in the 1980s (Ion Pacepa was the head of the Romanian KGB, defected to the U. S. in 1978)---he describes special drills the Soviets used to set up and run in their client countries to clean the whole country of weapons of mass destruction in two weeks. Having read this book, and realizing that Saddam was essentially a Soviet client who was trained by them, I assumed this was what happened from the start.
So anyway, you read our with proof that Saddam had weapons of mass distraction, the MSM ignores it, Bush is embarrassed to push it, and most of the world, make no mistake about it, has never heard about this evidence, and sincerely believes "Bush lied and people died."
This is the world we live in. The worldwide organized hard left controls the mainstream media. It results in intimidation of Republican presidents and legislators.
Under pressure, our government wants to serve these Marines up as a sacrifice to the world. We have to win this fight somehow. One way we could win would be if Cheney decided it was worth expending a very large amount of political capital. Cheney has been deeply involved with the US military at least since the first Gulf War and I'm sure much longer.
According to Roger Corman's book, John Boyd, the Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (2005 or so), Cheney huddled with John Boyd, one of the truly great strategists, just before the first Gulf War for two or three days, about 18 hours a day as I recall. Coram believes that the "right hook" strategy for the first Gulf War came from those meetings. Of course, both Cheney and Boyd always kept the subject of the meetings secret. But one of the Boyd's major followers (called acolytes), the guy who created the A-10 aircraft (Spivey?), called Boyd up on the phone just around that time and suggested the right hook strategy to him. Boyd told him to shut up and to never mention that to anyone again.
I believe Cheney was the head of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee at that time. My rambling point is, Cheney goes back a long way with the US military and he has more or less devoted his life to them. If someone convinced him that if we do the wrong thing with this Haditha incident we will weaken the US military severely (something I happen to believe), Cheney might well be compelled to strap on the old armor, climb on the old charger, and fight one more battle for our soldiers, as he has done so many before. One thing is for sure, I do not think Bush understands what is at stake here.
Thanks for all that. I would hope that FR can make a difference, as it has before. But we need to make a LOT of noise, as we have before. The problem is, there are Freepers yawning over this and saying, "Well. Maybe it really happened" when evidence and common sense screams "Set up!". Even on FR, there are those who can't help themselves believe MSM spin. Sad.
BTTT
"Thanks for all that. I would hope that FR can make a difference, as it has before. But we need to make a LOT of noise, as we have before. The problem is, there are Freepers yawning over this and saying, "Well. Maybe it really happened" when evidence and common sense screams "Set up!". Even on FR, there are those who can't help themselves believe MSM spin. Sad."
Well it's unfortunate, certainly. To be fair to the freepers however, this debate has been more confusing than most.
One confusing element is that there is a component of freepers who thinks it would be okay if the Marines killed everybody in those two houses---if there was a likelihood that the bomb was tripped off from one of them. One account, the interview of 112-year-old girl, implies that she knew about the blast before it happened, strongly indicating the possibility that someone in her house set the blast off. So really, it all gets pretty confusing.
Article from al-Reuters jihad-journalist Ali al-Mashhadani on March 21, 2006 (same week as TIME article) - obviously McGirk was feeding from the same trough as Ali al-Mashhadani.... or is it that Ali al-Mashhadani IS THE PIGS' TROUGH? The info and photos refer only to bodies at the morgue (which means nothing about how and where they died):
http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=6566618&cKey=1142967919000
Yeah, his background is explored here;
Haditha Reporter Was Jailed By US, Shares Name With Source | Sweetness & Light
http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/reporter-jailed-by-us-broke-haditha-has-familiar-name
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
