Posted on 04/03/2008 3:35:14 AM PDT by RedRover
You'd hardly know it if you relied on the mainstream media, but the government's case against the Haditha Marines took another body blow last Friday that may be the beginning of the end for this whole sorry attempt to severely punish eight heroic United States Marines for doing what they are trained to do.
In a surprise development on the day Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum's court martial was scheduled to begin, all charges against him were dropped without explanation.
Tatum, facing charges of reckless endangerment and aggravated assault that could have sent him to prison for 18 years, was the fifth Marine -- and the second of three enlisted men -- to be exonerated, leaving only one enlisted Marine still facing court martial.
Tatum's exoneration should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the real facts in the case. During an ambush by insurgent forces in Haditha, 15 civilians and nine insurgents were killed by Marines of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines. The incident began when an IED explosion killed a Marine and wounded two others. In the wake of that explosion, a squad of Marines came under insurgent gunfire.
The 15 civilian deaths, which came during house-clearing operations, were the result of a time-honored insurgent tactic of hiding themselves among civilians when ambushing U.S. forces, hoping to score a propaganda coup when the civilian shields are killed in the ensuing crossfire.
Full details of the incident on November 19, 2005 were supplied in great detail to the entire command structure the very night of the engagement, and the incident was regarded for what it was -- a tragic result of an enemy ambush. No further action was required or taken.
Months later, however, Time magazine published a story reporting that the Marines had gone on a rampage, wantonly killing innocent civilians to avenge the death of their fellow Marine killed in the IED explosion.
Using Time magazine's fallacious account of the civilian deaths, Pennsylvania's Democratic Rep. John Murtha went on a rampage of his own, telling every media outlet that would listen that the Marines had committed "cold-blooded murder." He first claimed that his information came from a briefing from the Marine Corps Commandant, but when that claim was disproved he admitted that his source was Time magazine.
Murtha's charges were broadcast far and wide, and before any investigation of the incident could get underway, the media joined Murtha in finding the Marines guilty of a massacre.
In the ensuing media firestorm that broke out, many news reports here and abroad compared the Haditha deaths to the infamous My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War.
Neither Murtha nor the mainstream media bothered to check Time's sources -- two known insurgent propagandists and insurgent-friendly Haditha residents living under the guns of insurgent killers who were the only authority in town.
It wasn't because the real facts were not available to any reporter willing to investigate the Haditha case, yet only one news source bothered to look into the case.
As early as May 31, 2006, NewsMax.com had begun to poke holes in the case, and from that time down to the present, NewsMax continued to report the truth about Haditha and defend the Marines who were innocent of the charges eventually leveled against them.
Yet all this time, the media and Rep. Murtha continued to peddle the insurgent lie that a massacre had taken place in Haditha, even though all murder charges had long ago been dropped in favor of lesser charges.
There was a crime, but it was the media and Rep. Murtha who committed it against heroic Marines whose careers have been destroyed and some of whose families were bought to the edge of bankruptcy defending their sons.
Thanks to NewsMax readers, who contributed over $500,000 for their defense, some of that burden was lifted.
And thanks to John Murtha and the liberal media, these Marines can now join my Dad's wrongly accused Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan in asking where they go to get their reputations back.
>A judge did order Murtha’s deposition as part of the SSgt. Wuterich defamation case. The Bush DOJ is backing Murtha and has appeled the decision. So that’s where the matter rests. The family has limited resources to fight Murtha in dourt and he is using that to his advantage.
In separate motions before a military judge, defense attorneys have requested depositions of Murtha and Gen. Hagee. Those requests have been denied.<
Why am I not surprised? The government is now extremely well insulated from it’s constituency.
As I understand it, Lt Grayson was in a Marine counterintelligence unit (2nd CI HUMINT Co) and not under LtCol Chessani's direct command. I'm sure you know more about the relationship between attached specialized companies and regiments than I do.
I wouldn’t not be surprised that the Marine’s have a different system than does the Army. If an S-2 were assigned to a fighting unit from the intel battalion, in the Army they would still be rated and senior rated in the working battalion. The “intel group” assigning them would be in intermediate rater capacity.
In fact, that’s exactly how other special staff works in the Army.
freema had posted a link to a copy of the censures @92 here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1993980/posts?page=98#92
(which, interestingly, isn't opening for me any more), and I commented on it @98
Damages could be a little, could be a lot. It’s the jury’s call. Defamation per se, however, requires no proof of damages.
I didn’t mean the link to the thread didn’t work, the link to the of the actual censure letters that freema posted @92 isn’t working anymore - http://tiny.cc/OzXs1
The contents of those letters were secret until they were obtained by Defend Our Marines .
Yes, we do. But haven’t posted them because they have all kinds of warnings against doing so in scary, big, red, type.
I do have a question, though, if you feel free to answer it. Was Winters mention of 24 civilians only a reference to the Time magazine article, or was he making that claim regardless of what Time said. Freepmail me if need to.
Thanks Red. :)
oops...
I think I’ll kick that one over to Nat. I’ll Freepmail you his e-mail and you can ask him. He’s usually very good at getting back to people.
They were both railroaded by the mainstream media and a bunch of liberal politicians.
Absolutely disgusting.
Great comparison. Spot on.
Yeah I know about “bank” juries, but even if such damages were awarded by a jury, there would be appeals that would invalidate them, right? The Pennzoil judgment against Texaco was eventually reduced from $11 billion to $3 billion-—still a heckuva lot, but down by two-thirds.
You could have just said, 'stay tuned'.
Well, that’s the last damn time I use that tiny url thingy.
Those with their hands in the USMC Cookie Jar underestimate the power of the statement below. President Bush did not invent this theology.
Marines did.
“Americans have never retreated in the face of thugs and assassins, and we will not begin now.”
President Bush, March 21, 2006, Cleveland, Ohio
If the assigned NCIS agents would have done a full professional job, none of this crap would have gotten any legs to begin with. Is Admiral Winters considering how the NCIS will be improved upon. Probably not. I never got any feedback from a email I directed to him way back when.
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