Tim McGirk on Haditha

Time magazine's veteran foreign correspondent Tim McGirk has reported from postings such as Islamabad, Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Mexico City, Baghdad and New Delhi, and is currently in the process of moving to Jerusalem to become the magazine's bureau chief there. This past March, while in Baghdad, he was the first reporter to break the story of the alleged slaughter of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines in the town of Haditha in November 2005.

Paul McLeary: In March, Time magazine broke the story of the alleged massacre of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines in Haditha. How did you find the story, and how did you go about reporting it?

Tim McGirk: Well, we wanted to do a story that looked at civilian casualties, because in December, President Bush mentioned for the first time that there were around 30,000 civilian casualties. So we contacted the Hammurabi human rights monitoring group, since we did stuff with them before, and we knew that they had very good contacts in the Sunni triangle and could get places that we couldn't get to. So, they came one day and they brought this horrendous video, and they didn't know that much about it, they just knew that it came from Haditha, and there were two segments of it. The first showed relatives claiming the bodies in a morgue in Haditha, and the second showed interiors of a house where something awful had happened.

Then they said, "the Marines did this," and I found it very hard to believe, you know? But what piqued my curiosity was that I went back and I saw that [in November, at the time the Iraqis claimed the massacre happened] there had been a communiqué that had been put out by camp Blue Diamond, [an American base near Ramadi] that said that one Marine had been killed and two wounded and 15 Iraqis were killed in the same roadside bombing, and it said that eight insurgents were killed in an ensuing gunfight. Then I looked at the video again, and thought "well, these bodies are women and children, and some were wearing their pajamas," and you just wouldn't find Iraqi women going out in the streets at 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning in their pajamas. The second thing is that all the damage was on the inside of the houses, so it was obvious that something had happened inside the houses. There were a few exterior shots of the houses, and there was nothing on the exterior. If it was a roadside bomb that killed these people, you know, the outside of the building would have been pockmarked, and it wouldn't have accounted for the bullet holes on the inside of these rooms, too.

PM: How did you follow up with it, did you send Iraqi stringers out to investigate?

TM: We did it through the Hammurabi group, we got the local journalist who had shot the video and he came from Haditha, and through him...Well, first of all, we couldn't send our stringers out there because even our stringers who had really good contacts with the insurgents, who wanted to go, were told by the insurgents, "Don't even try it, because the guys out there are all crazy foreign fighters, and they'll kill you as a CIA spy." So the only way we could really get information was by making contact with people in Haditha, and getting them to come to Baghdad.

The thing that convinced me that I had to do the story was when we got this 8 year-old girl who came and just told this absolutely horrifying story, and what convinced me about her story was that she only talked about what she knew. She wasn't being coached to talk about things she hadn't seen or witnessed directly. She only talked about what she saw, and she saw two Marines in the doorway of the living room, who opened fire first on her 78 year-old grandfather - shot him twice, once in the chest, once in the head. They shot the grandmother, then opened fire at the group [of Iraqis] who were huddled at the far end of the room, and she was one of them, along with her younger brother, who also survived.

PM: And how long did it take you to put the story together after you saw the video and spoke with the townspeople?

TM We saw the video around the third week of January, and then we knew that there were other witnesses, a 13 year-old girl from a different house, the 8 year-old's aunt who went out the back door with a baby, and her husband tried to follow her and he was shot and lay bleeding for six hours in the garden before he died. In the meantime, we also made contact with the mayor, we made contact with a lawyer in Haditha who was a go-between representing the families when the Americans came and gave them compensation, which was another strange thing, because the Americans never give compensation to civilians who are killed by insurgent activity. They only do it if they're directly involved, and this was a case where they were paying off families.

TM: Yeah, we did. In the beginning after we saw the video and heard accounts from the military and the girls, we approached the military and said, "This is what we've got," and the Marines' first reaction was "Well, we think this is all al Qeada propaganda." We told them that we'd like to go up and see the place for ourselves, but it was too dangerous for us to go up there alone, can [they] arrange an embed? So, they did, but the problem was that the ABC anchor [Bob Woodruff] had just been wounded the day before we were supposed to go out, and [Time managing editor] Jim Kelly, I think wisely, said that it probably wasn't a good idea for us to go out to Haditha, and put our safety in the hands of the men that we were then going to turn around and accuse of having gone on a rampage and killed civilians.

PM: During your stint in country, how often did Time reporters go out on embeds?

TM: [Michael] Ware went out a lot. I think when I was there, I went out on three different embeds around Baghdad.

PM: And how would you compare last summer to your most recent trip this past winter?

TM: It was much worse this past time. When I came back in January there were entire sections of the city where we had been able to go six months before, and suddenly they were just too dangerous. Also the strains on the staff were much, much greater because we had a mix of Sunni and Shia, and all the reverberations of what was happening outside of the office were naturally affecting the people inside, too.

PM: How would you respond to the criticism coming from some on the Right [that] the press is trying to push the Haditha story because it makes the military look bad, and hurts the war effort?

TM: I just know in my case that we deliberately got all of our facts together, and then and only then did we go to the military. We gave what we had to the military and they said that they would launch an investigation into it. We held off on reporting it until we could get their side of the story. So, I don't think we were in any great rush to accuse them of a massacre

Fisking. My comments in parentheses.

Paul McLeary: In March, Time magazine broke the story (not report, or ‘news’ but story, as in Storyland, or as in a bed time story) of the alleged massacre of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines in Haditha. How did you find the story, and how did you go about reporting it? (I didn’t find out, the terrorist brought their story to me, knowing I wouldn’t look where they didn’t want me to look. Besides they had some pictures of me in a Cabana with a pool boy…)

Tim McGirk: Well, we wanted to do a story that (showed what white trash and black dropouts under the lies of Bush, killing, raping…) looked at (innocent, passive agrarian, low impact farming, noble non capitalistic) civilian casualties, because in December, President Bush mentioned for the first time that there were around 30,000 civilian casualties. So we contacted the Hammurabi human rights monitoring group, since we did stuff (stuff, like junk, like stuff left in a car trunk, or attic. Nice psychological insight to the quality of their ‘relationship’) with them before, and we knew that they had very good contacts in the Sunni triangle (with the terrorists since they are the propaganda arm) and could get places that we couldn't get to (and never go since it is 50 feet from the Green Zone pool). So, they came one day (when I was by the pool in my Speedo) and they brought this horrendous (bad) video, and they didn't know that much about it (yeah, right), they just knew that it came from Haditha, and there were two segments of it. The first showed relatives claiming the bodies in a morgue in Haditha, and the second showed interiors of a house where something awful had happened. (And after that I swallowed the whole load and got off my knees and wiped my chin)

Then they said, "the Marines did this," and I found it very hard to believe, you know (since I know they are terrorist propagandist, and I want to set a little room here for my eventual backtrack and not get caught like Peter Arnet) But what piqued my curiosity was that I went back and I saw that [in November, at the time the Iraqis claimed the massacre happened] there had been a communiqué that had been put out by camp Blue Diamond, [an American base near Ramadi] that said that one Marine had been killed and two wounded and 15 Iraqis were killed in the same roadside bombing, and it said that eight insurgents were killed in an ensuing gunfight. Then I looked at the video again, and thought "well, these bodies are women and children, and some were wearing their pajamas," and you just wouldn't find Iraqi women going out in the streets at 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning in their pajamas. The second thing is that all the damage was on the inside of the houses, so it was obvious that something had happened inside the houses. There were a few exterior shots of the houses, and there was nothing on the exterior. If it was a roadside bomb that killed these people, you know, the outside of the building would have been pockmarked, and it wouldn't have accounted for the bullet holes on the inside of these rooms, too.

PM: How did you follow up with it, did you send Iraqi stringers out to investigate?

TM: We did it through the Hammurabi (terrorist) group, we got the local journalist (you know, for the local PennySaver they print every Wednesday, a place free at the weapons markets) who had shot the video and he came from Haditha, and through him...Well, first of all, we couldn't send our stringers out there because even our stringers who had really good (terrorist) contacts with the insurgents, who wanted to go, were told by (their relatives the) insurgents, "Don't even try it, because the guys out there are all crazy foreign fighters, and they'll kill you as a CIA spy." So the only way we could really get information was by making contact with (terrorist) people in Haditha, and getting them to come to Baghdad. (So, I’m still by the pool and I am swallowing four or five guys a day, and I am thinking I haven’t cooked up anything for a story in a month that anyone else by the pool hasn’t done, so I better fluff these guys, coach them as to what would look great, you know kind of Queer for the Terrorist type situation.)

The thing that convinced me that I had to do the story was when we got this 8 year-old girl who came and just told this absolutely horrifying story, and what convinced me about her story was that she only talked about what she knew. She wasn't being coached (yeah, right) to talk about things she hadn't seen or witnessed directly. She only talked about what she saw, and she saw two Marines in the doorway of the living room, who opened fire first on her 78 year-old grandfather - shot him twice, once in the chest, once in the head. They shot the grandmother, then opened fire at the group [of Iraqis] who were huddled at the far end of the room, and she was one of them, along with her younger brother, who also survived.

PM: And how long did it take you to put the story together after you saw the video and spoke with the townspeople? (He doesn’t answer the question)

TM We saw the video around the third week of January, and then we knew that there were other witnesses, a 13 year-old girl from a different house, (x-ray eyes ) the 8 year-old's aunt who went out the back door with a baby, and her husband tried to follow her and he was shot and lay bleeding for six hours in the garden before he died. In the meantime, we also made contact with the mayor, we made contact with a (profiting terrorist) lawyer (who knew the money shakedown drill better than a LA trip and fall law firm) in Haditha who was a go-between representing the families when the Americans came and gave them compensation, which was another strange thing, because the Americans never give compensation to civilians who are killed by insurgent activity. They only do it if they're directly involved, and this was a case where they were paying off (compensating) families.

PM: And had you heard anything from the military by this point?

TM: Yeah, we did. In the beginning after we saw the video and heard accounts from the military and the girls, we approached the military and said, "This is what we've got," and the Marines' first reaction was "Well, we think this is all al Qeada propaganda." We told them that we'd like to go up and see the place for ourselves, but it was too dangerous for us to go up there alone, can [they] arrange an embed? So, they did, but the problem was that the ABC anchor [Bob Woodruff] had just been wounded the day before we were supposed to go out, and [Time managing editor] Jim Kelly, I think wisely, said that it probably wasn't a good idea for us to go out to Haditha, and put our safety in the hands of the (American Marines and Soldiers) men that we were then going to turn around and accuse of having gone on a rampage and killed civilians (cause we still didn’t have any first hand facts, but we had our template, and were sticking to it. Besides if the facts on the ground, at the site, didn’t fit, then we could be proved to be biased, fabricators. Besides, the pool is nice).

PM: During your stint in country, how often did Time reporters go out on embeds?

TM: [Michael] Ware went out a lot. I think when I was there, I went out on three (3 times away from the pool. He’s an expert) different embeds around Baghdad.

PM: How long were you in Iraq?

TM: Five weeks, but I was also there last summer, in June and July. (5 weeks, out three times. Once every 12 days)

PM: And how would you compare last summer to your most recent trip this past winter? (Not as much chlorine in the pool. Drinks come faster. Drink boys dress better now.)

TM: It was much worse this past time. When I came back in January there were entire sections of the city where we had been able to go six months before, and suddenly (Like as if war is dynamic) they were just too dangerous. Also the strains on the staff were much, much greater because we had a mix of Sunni and Shia, and all the reverberations of what was happening outside of the office were naturally affecting the people inside, too. (Lots of hair pulling, cat fights, who’s Ahmeds the copier boy sugar daddy, I broke a nail, stuff like that.)

PM: How would you respond to the criticism coming from some on the Right [that] the press is trying to push the Haditha story because it makes the military look bad, and hurts the war effort? (I’m made the cover of Time. If I have to step over a thousand white trash, Bush Kool-Aid drinkers to get my Dan Rather Gunga Din vest, so be it.)

TM: I just know in my case that we (The terrorists and I) deliberately got all of our facts together (worked it smooth till it flowed in a good, ahem, story), and then and only then did we go to the military. We gave what we had to the military and they said that they would launch an investigation into it. We held off on reporting it until we could get their side of the story. So, I don't think we were in any great rush to accuse them of a massacre

http://www.dinocrat.com/archives/2006/06/10/from-jenin-to-haditha/

« The new CW: 10% of Muslims worldwide are “Islamofascist extremists”Can the MSM be put on trial for getting our men killed? »TIME’s Rathergate moment and the Haditha Snuff Film industry
Overview: Haditha looks like it has a pretty high probability of being, at least in part, a set-up. The insurgents have perhaps stumbled upon a brilliant strategy of the using gullible or willing reporters of the MSM, and the American legal system to apply a one-two punch to the superb efforts of the US military. TIME Magazine’s performance reminds us of Rathergate. The insurgents and Al Qaeda’s transformation of Haditha into Bloodywood, the Snuff Film capital of Iraq, presents yet another new low in the evil that radical Islam has brought into the world.

(1) TIME’s Rathergate moment

The more we look at the Haditha story, the more it looks like Rathergate. It even has its own versions of Bill Burkett and Mary Mapes/Dan Rather. Let’s take Burkett first:

Iraq’s Bill Burkett, Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi

Clarice Feldman in The American Thinker discussed the new Bill Burkett, the awfully fishy timelines in the Haditha matter, an unsavory cast of accusers, and a Ramirez-Burkett-Mapes-like chain of custody of the allegedly damning videotapes. Also, via Sweetness and Light, we got a sense of how bad the reporting has been to date on the new Burkett. TIME has gotten many of its facts wrong:

In the original version of this story, TIME reported that “a day after the incident, a Haditha journalism student videotaped the scene at the local morgue and at the homes where the killings had occurred. The video was obtained by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with the internationally respected Human Rights Watch, and has been shared with TIME.”

TIME has since repudiated most of the preceding sentence. In one of its most laughable errors, TIME called its source, the “Haditha journalism student,” a “young man.” Here he is:

Consider these items gleaned from the articles we’ve linked to, as opposed to the breathless TIME reporting:

(a) Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi is not a young man, he is 43 years old;
(b) he is not a “budding journalism student”;
(c) there is no such thing as the “Hammurabi Human rights Group” — it is Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi and maybe one other guy;
(d) TIME’s reporting to the contrary, the Hammurabi Human Rights Group is in no way affiliated with Human Rights Watch;
(e) Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi made the video — of whatever it actually portrays — and sat on it for four months wiothout doing anything with his so-called damning evidence;
(f) TIME has already retracted its false reporting about “one of the most damning pieces of evidence” in the case;
(g) Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi’s previous employer, Dr. Walid Al-Obeidi, who said that the Hadith victims had been shot at close range, had previously been arrested by American and Iraqis and had lodged numerous complaints against the American military;
(h) the US soldier who has provided corroboration for a “massacre” though he was not an eyewitness, Lance Cpl. Ryan Briones, never mentioned it until he was arrested for stealing a truck while drunk and crashing it into a house, at which point he claimed PTSD and offered his story;
(i) another reporter who claimed civilian deaths in Haditha, Ali al-Mashhadani, had been previously arrested and imprisoned for five months for helping insurgents, and might be the brother of Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi’s partner in the so-called Hammurabi Human Rights Group;
(j) To give you a little perspective of how brutal the Sunni insurgency stronghold of Haditha is (where terrorists rule and reportedly almost none out of 90,000 dared vote), and how plentiful are corpses to be used for any purpose whatsoever, consider this Guardian story of how children cheer for “double-bills” of public beheadings, and that DVD’s of disembowlings are distributed to kids.

Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi and his sudden discovery of his four month old video make Bill Burkett and Lucy Ramirez look good by comparison.

TIME’s Tim McGirk as Mary Mapes and Dan Rather

TIME Magazine veteran Tim McGirk, pictured above, is the one who has reported all the inaccuracies you just read about. The 1974 Berkeley grad does rather seem to have an agenda, does he not. Perhaps we can get a feel for how he views the world from his reporting of his Thanksgiving Dinner with the Taliban, in November 2001, while the US was actively at war with these men, via Theodore’s World:

“There was a genuine Thanksgiving glow about the meal. The bread is good, and more Taliban fighters come in to partake. One of them, a little man with a beard like a troll’s, says he’s Mullah Mohammed Omar’s nephew. But he hasn’t seen his uncle much lately: the Taliban supreme commander has been awfully busy since Sept. 11.”

“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.”

At one point, McGirk thought he was going to be mistaken for Osama bin Laden. Perhaps it is no wonder that that particular fantasy entered his head, given what we are now beginning to learn about his views of the world.

We don’t know what happened in Haditha any more than you do. But the many and telling inaccuracies in TIME’s reporting so far seem to point almost exclusively in one direction. Are we beginning to sense a pattern here yet, ladies and gentlemen? Is the fish beginning to stink? Is TIME Magazine about to experience its own Rathergate?

(2) The al Qaeda / insurgent Snuff Film industry: Haditha becomes Bloodywood

The more we think about it, especially in the post-Zarqawi era, perhaps the best strategy for the insurgents is an ACLU/MSM strategy. Every time there is a fire-fight, the insurgents should kill a couple of dozen women and children and blame it on the American military — the blaming is best done at least a couple of weeks or months after the incident, so that the dead will be buried and will not be disinterred, and other evidence will be gone. A little videotape of some blood and guts, a terrorist connected mayor, and a couple of “journalists” like the ones the insurgents call up to take pictures of regularly scheduled car bombs and exuctutions, and voilà, a major scandal. But it doesn’t even have to be a major scandal. All the terrorists and insurgents have to do is activate the internal legal system of the military, and within a short period of time, all major military initiatives will grind to a halt, so everyone in the US military can investigate everyone else in the military. If the insurgents can both clog up the military’s legal processes and get 24/7 MSM coverage of the scandal, that is the best of all possible worlds. And it appears that they just may have hit upon this precise strategy.

AJ Strata complements our thoughts with a discussion from the Marine Times and his reflections on Bloodywood, the Al Qaeda Snuff Film center of Haditha:

[Marines] found a video camera in the possession of three men stopped at a vehicle checkpoint northeast of Haditha…Minutes later, a similar white, four–door sedan approached the checkpoint. U.S. forces guarding the checkpoint used hand and arm gestures to signal the vehicle to stop, but the car continued to accelerate toward the checkpoint, even after warning shots were fired, according to the release. The vehicle detonated shortly after the first shots were fired, killing the driver.

When the video camera was inspected, it yielded several minutes of footage showing one of the men from the first sedan speaking to the driver of the car that detonated. The Marines said videotaping suicide car bombings is an insurgent propaganda tactic used to spread fear and intimidate Iraqi citizens. Earlier, Iraqi Security Forces discovered an insurgent propaganda center in Haditha. The site raided by Iraqi forces included “numerous prepared al–Qaida in Iraq compact discs and audio tapes, three computers, several printers, banner makers, multi–disk copiers and thousands of [blank] disks and tapes…”

[Strata:] Which is more likely: Marines go on a rampage but no one reports abouts it for months, or AQ kills people of their propaganda snuff films? Since we know AQ will bomb and behead on video, seems the track record is clear which is the more likely scenario.

The terrorists and insurgents play the MSM like a fiddle, since they know that gullible or willing MSM reporters are the weak point of the US and one of their greatest assets. Combine that with their effective exploitation of American legal processes, and they have a possible strategy to achieve impossible victory — if Americans are gullible and stupid enough.

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