Yes, that's a telling thing for McGirk to say. But he seems to be hopelessly naive (to be too find):
Haditha Reporters Thanksgiving With The Taliban | Sweetness & Light
http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/times-haditha-reporter-had-thanksgiving-2001-with-taliban
But the real elephant in the room is that McGirk keeps changing the story on who made the videotape.
This one videotape is the primary "document" driving this story.
And now McGirk says that it was not shot by Taher Thabet.
So if Taher Thabet lied about shooting the video, maybe he lied about everything else?
This is an OUTRAGEOUS thing for McGirk not to know or to lie about.
On another point, McGirk said, "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."
This is a gross mischaracterization. McGirk knows the payments are not an admission of guilt and that they have been paid out over the course of the War if the casualties occured around Coalition actions whether the coalition was directly responsible or not.