Posted on 06/11/2006 3:44:50 AM PDT by Lando Lincoln
This explanation makes more sense than any I have heard so far.
Amazingly, it’s appears in the DNC’s house organ, the Washington Post:
US Marines raid a house during a night raid in the Iraqi town of Haditha, west of Baghdad, in 2005.
Marine Says Rules Were Followed
Sergeant Describes Hunt for Insurgents in Haditha, Denies Coverup
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 11, 2006
(Excerpt) Read more at sweetness-light.com ...
Indeed it is..couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
At what point does a woman supporting her jihadist husband become innocent. If innocent she was obligated to take her kids and flee. In her reluctance to do so she shed her claim for innocence and became a combatant.
Or technically ununiformed military support personel!
Or the short version.
Scum!!!
I'm sorry, the left will have an absolute field day with this!
They'll try. Most people, however, will mock them and ask, "WTF kind of hazards do you have in your job, aside from menacing paper cuts?"
I don't want to hear anything about Woodruff, Dozier, and Bloom. The insurgency doesn't specifically target reporters. In fact, they need them to spread their propaganda. Our forces can't just call a timeout and retreat to a Baghdad hotel when thing things get tough.
Thanks for posting that bookmark
Remember getting my butt kicked during grenade familiarization at ITR Camp Geiger (NC). I threw the grenade like a baseball instead of lobbing it ... it landed and exploded in the target area ... but apparently my throwing style didn't meet with the instructors idea of good form. Just two weeks later a training instructor, not mine, was killed when a 'student' Marine dropped a live grenade.
We had friends over for a swim and bbq yesterday and they had just met a Marine back from a year in Iraq. He gave details about how much the average Iraqi absolutely adores us and thanks the military for being there. Something else Murtha could never acknowledge.
I'm sorry, the left will have an absolute field day with this!
Yeah...they had a hold on our belts ready to yank us into a small trench in case someone got butter fingers. It made it a little tough to throw when you're being administered an atomic wedgie, but somehow, I managed.
WaPo seems to be one of the few "smart ones" that don't want to look like complete idiots when the story falls apart. They will print articles like this one, unlike the NYSlimes that will keep insisting the story is "phony but accurate".
It sure looks like this story is starting to unravel, along with very questionable reporting from Time Magazine, who initially broke the story (http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5566).
Here is the big money quote for me:
As Wuterich began briefing the platoon leader, Puckett said, AK-47 shots rang out from residences on the south side of the road, and the Marines ducked.
A corporal with the unit leaned over to Wuterich and said he saw the shots coming from a specific house, and after a discussion with the platoon leader, they decided to clear the house, according to Wuterich’s account.
"There’s a threat, and they went to eliminate the threat," Puckett said.
So, the Marines were being shot at from a specific house. Then they discussed the situation and a course of action. That is the bottom line question here: Was it a wanton 'murder' and 'massacre' of civilians, as the Drive-By Media, Jack Murtha, and Iraqi 'witnesses' claim, or did the Marines follow Rules Of Engagement? And furthermore, did the Marines try to cover-up the incident?
Based on this story, the answer is no. We have Marines following procedure, and unfortunately killing civilians as collateral damage...
"When I was in Iraq," Morgenstein said, "the Anbar-wide ROEs [rules of engagement] did not say we had the authority to knock down any door, throw in a hand grenade and kill everyone." Still, he said, if someone in a house in Haditha was shooting at them, the Marines' response may have been within procedure. "If they felt they took fire from that house, then that may be authorized."
A Marine who served near Haditha in November said it was not unusual for Marines to respond to attacks "running and gunning" and that it was standard practice to spray rooms with gunfire when threatened. "It may be a bad tactic, but it works," he said. "It keeps you alive."
Did they try to cover-up the incident?
McConnell, the company commander, "knew the number was high" and reported it to the battalion executive officer, a major, according to McDermott, his lawyer. McConnell also said that a Marine intelligence team investigated the civilian deaths and reported their findings to senior Marine commanders, the lawyer said.
Wuterich told his attorney that he never reported that the civilians in the houses were killed by the bomb blast and maintains that he never tried to obscure the fact that civilians had been killed in the raids. Whether Wuterich gave false information to his superiors is the focus of one of the military investigations. He said the platoon leader, who was on the scene, never expressed concern about the unit's actions and never tried to hide them.
Marine Corps public affairs officers reported that the civilians had been killed in the bomb blast, a report that Puckett believes was the result of a miscommunication.
So it sounds like they didn't try to cover-up anything. And we have this...
They then noticed another man in all black scurrying between two houses across the street. When they went to investigate, the Marines found a courtyard filled with women and children and asked where the man was, Puckett said.
When the civilians pointed to a third house, the Marines attempted to enter and found a man with an AK-47 inside, flanked by three other men; the first Marine to enter tried to fire his weapon, but it jammed, Puckett said. The Marines then killed those four men.
Ok, the Marines asked civilian women and children where the suspect was. They went to find him, and it sounds like this was the original shooter that started the whole scenario. At no time, as I read this, do I see Marines 'massacring' and 'murdering' civilians in the way Murtha and the Drive-By Media describe. It is all to the contrary. Their actions were orderly.
This is my favorite gem:
Wuterich [...] told Puckett that for months no one questioned his actions.
I am getting more and more confident that Murtha and his supporters in the Drive-By Media created this 'massacre' to smear our military and undermine the Iraq war. We have a Time Magazine reporter with a history of supporting our enemy; a House member with a history of smearing our troops and filled with hatred for Bush; Iraqi 'witnesses' that all have various different accounts--mostly unreliable and contradicting; photos and video of the 'massacre' from an extreme Left-wing group human rights Watch (George Soros funded group) that opposed the war and Bush.
In the end, we need the investigation to be completed. I certainly want al the facts.
But IMHO, it is looking more and more like another DBM jumping the gun before all the facts are known. Everything fits that template. I believe these two articles, the 'American Thinker' and 'Wash Post', is the beginning of the end of this trumped-up story.
These Marines did not intentionally kill innocent civilians in a vengeful massacre. I believe they will be exonerated of those charges.
I'm just a dumb civilian non-politician, so I'm hoping someone can help me.
What I don't understand -- the motives of those in the MSM and on the left. Surely the truth or something close to it will come out, and sooner rather than later. The last line of the article says that for hours afterward, pictures were taken. The civilian bodies either have bullet holes or evidence of an explosion. If it's the former, then the Marines' accounts are shaky. If it's the latter, then accounts of a massacre are proven false. There must be a well-documented trail of the follow up on this through the chain of command, so a coverup can either be confirmed or debunked. And so forth.
I'm a dumby, but I have noticed on this site, at Lucianne.com, and elsewhere, a marked shift in opinion and facts from shock and sadness at the event (perhaps 3 weeks ago) to doubts about Murtha (2 weeks ago) to utter outrage now. Even a dumby like me sees how this case is tenuous.
SO WHY DOES THE MSM KEEP PUSHING IT SO HARD AS FACT? Or ... Is this article just the first of what will be many attempts to backtrack?
I'd be curious where folks think this case is headed, because I simply don't understand what the Pelosis and H. Clintons of the world are thinking. What strategy could possibly warrant getting so far out in front of the facts of the case? I'm not persuaded by an argument saying, "They are just astonishingly stupid," even though that is the only hypothesis that I can presently reconcile with the facts.
Murtha has really stuck his neck out, put himself between a rock and a hard place, (insert hackneyed cliche here) and will regret this premature accusation
More like premature ejaculation'
"This letter announcing his intent on being majority leader is just waiting to blow up in his face, as well."
Has anyone come out to rally around this idea if his? Has Pelosi said anything?
Pelosi and Murtha are supposedly close. Dem whip Steny Hoyer's feathers were a little ruffled with the letter. He'd like that position, as well. I don't recall Pelosi saying anything specific, but others have been a little miffed, saying they need to win the house before any decisions are made.
It may be the WaPo wants to get a foot on the solid side of the story...pre-emptive liability control.
"Of course they will... they have no comprehension of what war is... how it's carried out, and how it's WON."
Not only do they have no comprehension of what WAR is, they have no comprehension of what IS is.
If running and gunning keeps you alive when you're engaged with illegal combatants, running and gunning sounds like a good tactic.
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