Things that make you go HMMMMMMM!!!!!!! Aint THIS interesting????????

[busybody..]

You mostly are useless and clueless and I dont expect you to read this shit

BUT YOU SHOULD


Haditha Reporter Was Jailed By US, Shares Name With Source
June 1st, 2006

Given all the extensive coverage (actually repetition of the same few facts) from our one party media about the civilian deaths in Haditha,, I am surprised that we have heard nothing about the curious background of one of the first journalists to report the story.

It turns out he might not have felt the kindest intentions towards the US, having just been imprisoned for five months just weeks before his Haditha scoop.

And, in fact, he has since been detained by the US again, for two weeks. Being only released by Reuters today:



Reuters journalist freed in Iraq

By Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi journalist working for Reuters was released from U.S. military custody at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad on Thursday after 12 days in detention.

Ali al-Mashhadani, 37, was arrested by U.S. Marines in his home town of Ramadi on May 20 when he went to a U.S. base to retrieve Reuters telephones taken from him earlier that week.

He spent five months in U.S. custody last year before being released without charge in January.

Though again no specific allegation or charge was leveled against him, U.S. officials said last week he was held as a security threat. Marines interrogated him intensively about his work as a journalist in the restive Sunni province of Anbar.

The Marines did not contact Reuters at any stage and neither his employer, his family or lawyer had any access to Mashhadani.

Senior U.S. commanders in Baghdad were, however, in contact with Reuters and once he was transferred to their direct control two days ago, Mashhadani was released under a fast-track procedure for reviewing the detention of journalists.

That system was put in place by the military after it held Mashhadani and two other Reuters journalists last year.

Reuters’ Managing Editor David Schlesinger said the London-based news agency welcomed the cooperation of military officials in Baghdad but was concerned at the journalist’s initial arrest and lengthy interrogation in Ramadi:

"We are hoping for an explanation from the Marines of why our journalist was again subjected to this treatment for over a week when his integrity and professionalism had already been amply demonstrated to them during his previous internment."

Under U.S. rules, local commanders can hold people for 14 days before releasing them or sending them to Abu Ghraib.

EXPEDITED RELEASE

"We appreciate the critical role objective journalists play in covering events in Iraq and recognize that the execution of their responsibilities may put them at various locations on the battlefield. We clearly do not want to generate the perception that we are discouraging their presence," said Lieutenant Colonel Keir-Kevin Curry, spokesman for detainee operations.

"In cases where the individual was performing a legitimate function and not determined to be an imperative security threat an expedited release would be appropriate."

As many as seven journalists for international media groups were held by the U.S. military in Iraq at one stage last year. One such journalist, from Ramadi, is currently being held.

Mashhadani, who reports and provides video and pictures, is one of a small number of journalists providing news from Anbar province, where U.S. Marines and Sunni Arab insurgents, including al Qaeda militants, are locked in a fierce conflict.

Killings of journalists by all sides in Iraq have made it the deadliest war for the profession and reporters in Anbar, like Mashhadani, work under permanent threat from militant groups hostile to the international media.

Among Mashhadani’s recent stories was reporting from the town of Haditha in March. Following Time magazine’s revelation of accusations that U.S. Marines shot dead 24 civilians there in November, he filmed fresh interviews with local officials and residents that were widely used by international media.

A U.S. military investigation is nearing a conclusion and U.S. officials say charges, including murder, may result.

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM


So after five months in prison at the hands of the US, and being released in Janauary, Mr. al-Mashhadani stumbles upon the story of Haditha in March.

Here’s his article for Reuters:

Iraqi residents say bodies in video from U.S. raid

By Ali al-Mashhadani

Tue 21 Mar 2006

HADITHA, Iraq (Reuters) - A video of civilians who may have been killed by U.S. Marines in an Iraqi town in November showed residents describing a rampage by U.S. soldiers that left a trail of bullet-riddled bodies and destruction.

A copy of the video, given to Reuters by Iraq’s Hammurabi Organisation for Monitoring Human Rights and Democracy, showed corpses lined up at the Haditha morgue. The chief doctor at Haditha’s hospital, Waleed al-Obaidi, said the victims had bullet wounds in the head and chest.

Most residents interviewed by Reuters in Haditha on Tuesday echoed accusations by residents in the video that U.S. Marines attacked houses after their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb.

They said the Marines opened fire on houses. "I saw a soldier standing outside a house and he opened fire on the house," said one resident, who did not want to be identified.

Time magazine published allegations on Monday that U.S. Marines killed civilians in Haditha after one of their comrades was killed by a roadside bomb. It published detailed accounts by people in the town, west of Baghdad.

A criminal inquiry into those deaths was launched last week. Time said the main question facing the probe was whether the "Marines killing of 15 non-combatants was an act of legitimate self-defence or negligent homicide."

Haditha, 200 km (125 miles) northwest of Baghdad, is in Anbar province, an area that has seen much activity by Sunni Arab insurgents whose campaign to topple the Iraqi government has killed thousands of U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians.

On November 20, U.S. Marines spokesman Captain Jeffrey Pool issued a statement saying that, on the previous day, a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians and a Marine. In a later gunbattle, U.S. and Iraqi troops had killed eight insurgents, he added.

U.S. military officials have since confirmed to Reuters that that version of the events of November 19 was wrong and that the 15 civilians were not killed by the blast but were shot dead.

TRUCK PILED WITH CORPSES

Time magazine said this week the video of the corpses it provided to the military in January had prompted the revision.

Accusations that American soldiers often kill innocent people have fuelled anger at the occupation among Iraqis over the past three years.

The video given to Reuters shows bodies piled in the back of a white pickup truck outside the morgue. Among them was a girl who appeared to be about three years old.

One man wept and leaned against a wall as he identified a relative and other residents inspected bodies in the morgue. One man’s face had been torn apart by bullets, while a blackened corpse was missing legs and forearms.

The video also showed houses with bullet holes in the walls, pieces of human flesh, pools of blood and clothes and pots scattered across floors.

In one home, a young boy wept as he sat beside a corpse and said: "My father. My father."

Some residents blamed U.S. President George W. Bush, former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and President Jalal Talabani. "Is this the democracy Allawi, Talabani and Bush are talking about?" one resident asked.

Abdel Rahman al-Mashhadani, head of Hammurabi, said U.S. Marines had killed 15 people in Haditha after the roadside bomb attack. The group’s Haditha branch said it got the video from a local man.

Mashhadani said he had brought the case to the attention of the United Nations office in Baghdad. "These violations of human rights happen every day in Iraq," he told Reuters.


On Tuesday, residents of Haditha had similar accounts to those on the video.

"This room had a family of eight inside, children and their father and mother," one man said of his relatives who were killed in their home. Another resident confirmed his account, saying one of the children was three years old.

"They are all gone," he said.

This account is pretty much the same account that is still being parroted throughout our one party media worldwide now two months later. There are several particulars which are just stated as fact, such as:

U.S. military officials have since confirmed to Reuters that that version of the events of November 19 was wrong and that the 15 civilians were not killed by the blast but were shot dead.


Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm


This assertion has been repeated in almost every subsequent account. But I have never seen any confirmation of this from the US military or any named officials.

And what is the relationship if any between this news-making journalist Ali al-Mashhadani, and Abdel Rahman al-Mashhadani of Iraq’s Hammurabi Organisation for Monitoring Human Rights and Democracy?

The latter al-Mashhanis is the person who brought these "human rights violations" to public attention.

Perhaps al-Mashhadani is a very common name around those parts. But what are the odds?

And how odd it it that Abdel Rahman al-Mashhadani just happened to be given a video by an unnamed local. And that he then turned it over to Ali al-Mashhadani who just happens to make videos for Reuters.

And, again, did Ali al-Mashhadani have an axe to grind against the US after having just been released after being held for five months by the Americans?

HMmmmmmmmmmmmmm

 

[skeaky]

for gods sake your post was too long....we have short atention spans...could you learn some better communicaion skills and draw us in slowly? Fuck

 

[busybody..]

I could

But then I would draw lame brains like YOU

so I wont

GO AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[LadyG]

I could

But then I would draw lame brains like YOU

ummm...pot...kettle...you get the drift.

 

[busybody..]

No, I dont

You can go away and suck a MooseLimbs dick after he fucks your ass!

 

[LadyG]

No, I dont

You can go away and suck a MooseLimbs dick after he fucks your ass!

I heard that was YOUR fetish

 

[skeaky]

No...I don't need to go anywhere...YOU need to learn to communicate your point so people who have intellect can respond. Sex board...we're here for fun..I will indulge yourpropoganda if you don't bore the fuck out of me while you blabber.

 

[busybody..]

Dont indulge me

Get on your boat

Go far in the ocean

get a leak!

 

[skeaky]

Dont indulge me

Get on your boat

Go far in the ocean

get a leak!

Obviously you've decided your point is to ignorant to debate...I figured that out when I saw how long you had o ramble about it.

 

[busybody..]

Ignorant. A word used when YOU TYPE of "people" cant refute an argument

Listen up asshole.

PUT ME ON IGGY!

You wont understand!

 

[skeaky]

Ignorant. A word used when YOU TYPE of "people" cant refute an argument

Listen up asshole.

PUT ME ON IGGY!

You wont understand!

You put me on ignore and prove how weak minded you are to yourself.....the rest of us all ready know

 

[Peregrinator]

Well, I read it. Time will tell, I guess. Do you think the people who have already been relieved are just scapegoats, then?

 

[bptalt]

I would like to see all the evidences before I make a judgement.

 

[MisterEdMe]

Honestly, the thing(s) that make me go HMMMMMMM!!!!!!!Aint THIS interesting??????? Are the wonderful people at Literotica.com.

 

[busybody..]

I would like to see all the evidences before I make a judgement.

Give the Marines MEDALS and a PROMOTION!

and have them shoot all those assholes screaming!

 

[busybody..]

Haditha Doctor Was Arrested, Hates US
June 1st, 2006

You have probably heard by now that the doctor who examined the bodies of the civilians in Haditha after the alleged Marine rampage said they were shot in the chest and head and from close range.

You have probably also heard it reported that the death certificates of the deceased record that all the victims were shot.

Here is the article which first broke this story, from Time Magazine:


An image taken from footage shot on November 19, 2005 shows bodies in a morgue after an incident in Haditha.

One Morning in Haditha

U.S. Marines killed 15 Iraqi civilians in their homes last November. Was it self-defense, an accident or cold-blooded revenge?

A TIME exclusive

By TIM MCGIRK/ BAGHDAD

Mar. 27, 2006

The incident seemed like so many others from this war, the kind of tragedy that has become numbingly routine amid the daily reports of violence in Iraq. On the morning of Nov. 19, 2005, a roadside bomb struck a humvee carrying Marines from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, on a road near Haditha, a restive town in western Iraq. The bomb killed Lance Corporal Miguel (T.J.) Terrazas, 20, from El Paso, Texas. The next day a Marine communiqué from Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi reported that Terrazas and 15 Iraqi civilians were killed by the blast and that "gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire," prompting the Marines to return fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding one other…

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."

This quote has now become an essential element in most of the articles on Haditha.

Being the highest ranking doctor on the scene, Wahid (Walid) is probably the person who filled out the death certificates, or he ordered them filled out.

What we haven’t been told by our one party media is some of the background on the good doctor.

And it is an article from a writer for the terrorist supporting BRussells Tribunal:

Haditha: River Gate… to Hell

Sabah Ali (06/11/2005)

…Haditha is now no more than 15 minutes away.

The situation here was different than it was in Al Qaim. The American and Iraqi soldiers were everywhere in the streets. There was no more car searching, only checking the IDs. Traces of the last attack could be seen everywhere on the buildings, the faces, and the suspicious eyes.

We heard the same scenario. Water, electricity, phones, roads were all cut off. The city was besieged before the bombing began on October 5, 2005 and went on for 18 days. Many houses were demolished, many families left to the refugee camps, many people were arrested, including the Moslem Scholars Association secretary in Haditha and his son. The general hospital was occupied for 10 days; the hospital director and one of the doctors were brutally beaten and locked up for a week inside the hospital. Many schools and offices were still occupied. All houses were raided, some twice a day. All weapons were confiscated including the personal. There is no government, no offices, no schools, no work, no markets…nothing. “Haditha is a fallen city” was sarcastically repeated.

Dr. Walid Al-Obeidi, the director of Haditha General Hospital and Dr. Jamil Abdul Jabbar, the only surgeon in the Haditha area, were arrested for a week, very badly beaten and threatened to face the same treatment in the future by the American troops.

Dr.Walid said “they arrested me in my house in front of my family, covered my eyes, and tied my hands to the back on Oct 5 2005 morning, during the last attack on Haditha (360 kilometers west of Baghdad). They occupied the hospital for 8 days and made it their office. The first day they beat me on my eyes, nose, back, hands, legs… My face was covered with blood. I could not wash my face because bleeding would start again. When they removed the tie I could not see. They investigated me until the afternoon. I realized later that I was arrested in the hospital store. Then they tied my hands to the front, and left me for two days. I was moved then to the pharmacy department. They accused me of treating terrorists, and asked for their names.

I told them that I treat patients regardless of their identity or their political position, according to my oath as a doctor; if they were national guards (which they actually were) or American soldiers. And anyway, if I do not want to treat the insurgents, I have no choice, because they were armed and masked. I would do anything they tell to do. Few days later, one of the soldiers came in the room, did not say anything, kicked me again on my face and left”

Dr. Jamil, a surgeon for 20 years, was also arrested and very brutally beaten. When we met him, 22 days later, his face was still bluish. His nose was broken, and a big opening in his head: “They beat me on my eyes and nose, kicked me with boots under my chin. One of them threatened me if I didn’t talk after he counts to three, he would shoot me. He began counting, after three he turned the gun upside down and hit me on the back of my head with the gun. For days I could not move or see. They threatened us of abused our families. For some reason they took my picture while I was bleeding, I could hear the camera click”

Both doctors were threatened if they didn’t talk, they would receive the same treatment in the future. They were warned not to pass any information of the arrest to the media. They were asked who wrote the hostile slogans against the American on the opposite wall of the hospital (there were different slogans on that wall from opposite sides, the American soldiers –the F word- and the insurgents). What are the names of the insurgents they treated? And what are the bodies’ pictures in the hospital computer?

Dr.Walid said he did not know who wrote on the wall outside the hospital, what the names of the insurgents were, because they were masked. He explained that the dead bodies’ pictures were of unknown people whose bodies were found after the fighting. “We can not keep these bodies forever; we do not have enough cold boxes. So, after two months, we take their pictures and bury them, so that whenever someone from their families comes to ask we show the pictures of the dead bodies”.

The UN, the international HR organizations, WHO, Doctors sans frontiers…and all who it may concern are called upon to do something to help these, and other Iraqi doctors, and to prevent similar treatment in the future. Dr.Walid and Dr. Jamil believe that they may face the arrest and beating in the future. They demand that the American troops stop occupying the hospital and destroying it every time they attack Haditha. They also believe that the Iraqi authorities are incapable of protecting them.

The hospital became a center of almost everything after the attack. Relief distribution, electricity and water pipes repairing, fuel…etc. Dr.Walid had to arrange for these details and send workers in the ambulance. An officer asked dr.Walid what he thinks of the Americans, and he replied “you are occupation troops, I wish that you were friends, but this way, things do not work.”

“Is it not better that we are here?” he asked again.

“No” dr. Walid replied “look at you, heavily armed in your military clothes, you frighten children. You create tension”. Dr. Walid was offered $30 as an apology compensation for beating and humiliating him. “I did not know what to do, I did not want to reject them and create more problems, and I could not accept them, so I gave them to the cleaning workers”. One of the American soldiers whispered to Dr. Walid, that the compensation they should pay if such an aggression happens in the US, would buy the whole city of Haditha…

Is it possible Dr. Walid (Wahid) has an anti-American prejudice?

Update!


Given that Dr. Walid Al Obeidi seems to have first spoken in detail with the group BRussells Tribunal in the article above, and the many permutations of his name (Wahid, Waheed), it seems highly possible that he is one and the same as Abdul Wahab Al Obeidi or perhaps a close relative.

Abdul Wahab Al Obeidi is an advisory board member of the BRussells Tribunal, which is an ultra radical terrorist-supporting organization. Wahab Al Obeidi is also often described as a representative of Haditha.

Here is an example of one of his screeds, from the Baathist site Uruknet:

CALL FOR HELP TO STOP CRIMES AND GENOCIDES

Abdul Wahab Al Obeidi, BRussells Tribunal

December 11, 2005

A group of people representing the people of Hadeetha are calling all humanitarian NGOs to put an end to genocides and crimes practiced against them by the occupation forces and government-backed forces.

Joining forces with the good people of Iraq, we, Freedom Voice, call on all NGOs and Human Rights committees - had there been such a thing as HUMAN RIGHTS in this volatile world – to see for themselves the military offensives which have been waged by the US forces in collaboration with Al-Ja’fari government against the Iraqi town of Hadeetha. Claiming that civilian houses were used to shelter foreign fighters, arbitrary bombardments were underway. Let alone the fact that they forcibly have taken families out of their own homes, which are located in the main streets, and executed more than three families including children, elderly men, and women, alleging that landmines were planted next door.

The situation in Hadeetha is highly critical, and people are overwhelmed with anger, to them it feels like the occupation has just started. The so-called “NATIONAL GUARDS” called on people through loudspeakers announcing “once a landmine is detonated near or 500 meters away from anyone’s house, his house will be demolished with the families inside, and they will be executing people in public.

Details of Hadeetha massacre:

1. After a landmine went off near a US patrol Before sunrise, the US forces perpetrated a horrible massacre before sunrise on Saturday, November 19, 2005; they raided the houses near the place where they came under attack and executed 16 people of two related families including a disabled elderly man and an infant.

2. Also, the US forces, stopped a car full of university students on their way to college in Ramadi. Despite the fact that they searched the passengers and made sure that they were unarmed students, a marine lost his temper and brutally executed them all including the driver.

3. They executed four brothers who went out of their nearby house to watch the disastrous accident.

4. The latter incident was witnessed by thousands of the population of Hadeetha, who took part in the burial and funeral ceremonies. The victims were very good men, one of whom was Waleed Hameed Alhasan, the Muezzin of the main mosque of Hadeetha “Haj Abdirraheem Mosque”.

5. Updating on the issue of the town of Heet, we received a letter from someone living in that area on December 1, 2005 in which he said, “Heet has been besieged since yesterday night, even pedestrians or bikers were not allowed to go out (until further notice, as they put it). The next day, they bombed the other side of the river and forced families to leave to the opposite riverbank. They arrested all youngsters (15 years of age upwards), and arrested 500 people until this very moment, detentions are underway”.

A conspiracy has been plotted against this peaceful town. With this offensive, Hadeetha shares the same problem of criminal acts and massacres against humanity with other Iraqi towns such as Mosul and its outskirts, Diyala and nearby towns, Anbar and all its towns, and Baghdad particularly At-Tajee and Tarmiyya.

It is worth noting that such military offensives have become more brutal than before. Iraqi towns, particularly those populated by Sunni Arabs have been besieged, no one is allowed in or out of these towns. Electricity and drinking water were deliberately cut, let alone provisions of food and medical care.

Abdul Wahab Al Obeidi
(Member of the BRussells Tribunal Committee)

Perhaps this is not our doctor or even a relative of his.

But what are the odds that someone with such a similar name would know and be writing about the Haditha incident back in December?

 

[busybody..]

The Questionable Sources For Time’s Haditha Scoop
June 5th, 2006

Time Magazine reveals its "painstaking" efforts to get the facts of the Haditha story:


How Haditha Came to Light

By JEFFREY KLUGER

Sunday, Jun 4, 2006

The Haditha killings occurred last November, but it wasn’t until January that TIME first heard whispers about them. The initial account of the incident was published in March in the magazine and on TIME.com The manner in which TIME got the story and the painstaking way the facts revealed themselves illustrate the challenges of trying to cover a dangerous, deadly conflict where the truth isn’t always what it appears to be.

If the Marines are indeed guilty of an atrocity, they had the ill fortune to have committed their crime in the worst possible place: outside the front door of a budding Iraqi journalist and human-rights activist. Taher Thabet, 43, was at home in Haditha on the morning of Nov. 19 when around 7:15 he heard the detonation of the roadside bomb that struck a Marine humvee, killing the driver, Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas, 20. The blast shattered Thabet’s windows. He ran outside in time to see Marines from three other humvees springing from their vehicles and heading for four homes on either side of the road. "They went into one house. I heard gunfire, explosions and screams," he told TIME in an interview in Baghdad last month. "Then they came out and went into another. I could only stand and watch."

The next morning, Thabet–who last year co-founded a small outfit called the Hammurabi Organization for Human Rights and Democracy Monitoring–went into the houses where the killings had taken place and videotaped what he saw, as well as the wrenching scenes later at the local morgue, where friends and family collected the bodies of the victims. "I didn’t know what I was recording," he says. "I just felt I had to record everything I could see."

Thabet shared the VCD with the other members of the Hammurabi group, but for a time, news of the killings did not go further than that. Then, in mid-December, President George W. Bush announced the military’s estimate that 30,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the start of the war. TIME’s Tim McGirk, posted in Baghdad, began to investigate cases in which Iraqi civilians had been killed by U.S. troops. In the course of his reporting, he obtained a copy of Thabet’s VCD. There was plenty in the grisly images to raise suspicions, including the U.S.-issued body bags into which the victims were zipped and the scattering of shells that appeared to have come from Marine rifles.

McGirk contacted Marine headquarters in Ramadi to inquire about the incident. The Marines sent back an e-mail saying there were 15 civilian deaths in Haditha on Nov. 19 but that the victims were killed by the roadside bomb and by a firefight that erupted when insurgents fired on the Marines. But the videotape showed that many of the dead were pajama-clad women and children. The bodies had wounds from bullets, not shrapnel, and the scene suggested that they had been murdered inside their homes.

In the ensuing weeks, McGirk and TIME’s Baghdad staff members interviewed more than a dozen Haditha locals by e-mail (travel between Baghdad and Haditha is exceedingly dangerous for Iraqis, let alone foreign journalists), including the mayor, the morgue doctor and a local lawyer who negotiated a settlement between the Marines and the families under which the military agreed to pay $2,500 compensation apiece for some of the victims–mostly the women and children. Several survivors visited TIME’s Baghdad bureau, including a man in his 20s whose four brothers were killed and an orphaned girl who is now the sole caretaker of her 8-year-old brother. The bureau was also pursuing leads that a 12-year-old girl had survived the attack by playing dead. In interviews, Thabet filled in details about what he witnessed before he began shooting his VCD.

In early February, McGirk presented this evidence to, and asked for comment from, Lieut. Colonel Barry Johnson, U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad. Johnson viewed the VCD, listened to the accounts and responded straightforwardly, "I think there’s enough here for a full and formal investigation." Army Colonel Gregory Watt was dispatched to Haditha to conduct a three-week probe in which he interviewed Marines, survivors and doctors at the morgue.

At that point, TIME’s Aparisim Ghosh joined the efforts in Baghdad, asking the U.S. military for more information even as the preliminary investigation was continuing. Lacking any official U.S. response to the allegations, TIME chose not to publish an article on the episode in Haditha based solely on the eyewitnesses’ accounts. On March 14, a U.S. military official in Baghdad familiar with the Watt probe finally responded to Ghosh. According to the official, the probe concluded that the civilians were in fact killed by Marines and not by an insurgent’s bomb–but that the deaths appeared to be the result of "collateral damage" rather than malicious intent. Nevertheless, the official told Ghosh, the matter had been handed over to a criminal investigation. Over the next five days, the reporting by McGirk and Ghosh continued to be reviewed by TIME editors and Pentagon correspondent Sally B. Donnelly. TIME’s story "One Morning in Haditha" was published on March 19 on TIME.com and appeared the next day in the print magazine (which carried a March 27 cover date). The Haditha episode began to receive wider coverage last month, when members of Congress revealed that Pentagon and military officials had disclosed that Marines may be charged in connection with the alleged massacre and that a cover-up might have taken place.

If there is any beneficiary at all of the tragedy, it is Hammurabi, the human-rights group, which is flooded with new volunteers and free to do its work more aggressively. Still, Thabet says his thoughts are mostly with the 24 who died. "Nobody cares about what happens to ordinary Iraqis," he says. They do now.

This article, "How Haditha Came To Light," started out by promising to tell us all about how this story came to be uncovered:

The manner in which TIME got the story and the painstaking way the facts revealed themselves illustrate the challenges of trying to cover a dangerous, deadly conflict where the truth isn’t always what it appears to be.

Notice how Time tries to downplay human agency behind the story. "Haditha came to light." "The facts revealed themselves." One can see why.

Times "sources" are quite suspect. And this article raises more questions about them than it answers.

Why did this "budding journalist" Taher Thabet and "human rights watcher" wait until the next day to videotape this alleged atrocity? One that happened on his very doorstep?

Then, after going to the trouble to videotape it, why didn’t Thabet turn over this video of such an obviously newsworthy event to a media outlet or a real human rights group?

And why can’t Time even can’t tell us whether Thabet gave it to them? Or who did? Is Time afraid it would tend to discredit their story?

And note that Time doesn’t tell us anything more about Taher Thabet himself.

But you can imagine the politics of a person who set up the (probably one man) "Hammurabi Organization for Human Rights and Democracy Monitoring Organization."

If there is any beneficiary at all of the tragedy, it is [Thabet’s newly founded] Hammurabi, the human-rights group, which is flooded with new volunteers and free to do its work more aggressively. Still, Thabet says his thoughts are mostly with the 24 who died. "Nobody cares about what happens to ordinary Iraqis," he says. They do now.

Clearly Mr. Thabet has a mission. One suspects he is blindly anti-American, in view of the US blood and money spent trying to help "ordinary Iraqis."

Ironically, Time claims it was too dangerous for Tim McGirk to go to Haditha, which they neglect to point out is the citadel of the Sunni "insurgency."

And yet, this is the same Tim McGirk who celebrated Thanksgiving with the Taliban just two months after 9.11.

Still, look at the sources Mr. McGirk courageously "interviewed" by email:

In the ensuing weeks, McGirk and TIME’s Baghdad staff members interviewed more than a dozen Haditha locals by e-mail (travel between Baghdad and Haditha is exceedingly dangerous for Iraqis, let alone foreign journalists), including the mayor, the morgue doctor and a local lawyer who negotiated a settlement between the Marines and the families…

The "mayor" is the mayor of the Sunni insurgent stronghold where only 150 people out of 90,000 dared to vote in the Oct. 15 constitutional referendum. The mayor holds his job solely at the pleasure of the terrorists who are in total control of Haditha.

The "morgue doctor," Dr. Walid Abdul-Khaleq al-Obeidi, claims to have been arrested, held prisoner for a week and brutally beaten by US troops. From his remarks in interviews it is clear he hates the US. And of course he too only holds his job as the head of the Haditha hospital at the sufferance of the Sunni "insurgents."

The "local lawyer," Khaled Salem Rsayef, claims to have had several relatives murdered by the Marines. He also wants further compensation for himself and his clients. Which he will surely get if the Marines are found guilty.

These are the kind of sources Time trusted for such an important story. But for some reason they didn’t tell us about their backgrounds.

I guess we don’t need to know.

 

[Peregrinator]

Argumentum ad hominem. Res ipsa loquitor.

 

[busybody..]

WTF??????????

Speak English, this is America!

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Argumentum ad hominem. Res ipsa loquitor.

WTF?????????? Speak English, this is America!

Yeah! America! Like E Pluribus Unum, man.

 

[Peregrinator]

WTF??????????

Speak English, this is America!

Google. I'd rather teach you to fish than give you a dime.

 

[busybody..]

you ASSume I care!

 

[Sean]

Do you have a point, BB? So far all i see is the fact that people were arrested. Not charged, not convicted, arrested. I wonder what percentage of the Iraqi population has been arrested by their "liberators" and released withoutn charge?

 

[busybody..]

Haditha: Reasonable Doubt


Here’s a very interesting piece on Haditha at the Hawaii Reporter by Andrew Walden: Haditha: Reasonable Doubt. (Hat tip: Blackfive.)

Only now—two and a half months after the story broke in the March 19 issue of Time magazine— are the voices of soldiers who question the charges beginning to be heard.

Marine Captain James Kimber commanded Lima Company of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment. The troops involved in the incident were from Kilo Company. He tells interviewers that he first learned about the shootings in February when he heard that a Time magazine reporter was asking questions about civilian deaths. Notably, Kimber says he heard nothing about a civilian massacre during weekly meetings with the Haditha City Council and talks with local leaders.

“It would have been huge, there would have been no question it would have filtered down to us,” he said. “We reported no significant atmospheric change as a result of that day.”

Kimber, who has been relieved of his command and is back in Camp Pendleton, CA says, “I believe I was a political casualty as a result of the Haditha incident.”

Some media accounts indicate that some of the dead were relatives of a Haditha City Council member. The May 12, 2006 edition of Iraq Reconstruction Update carries a photo and short article about Marine officers holding weekly meetings with the Haditha City Council with no mention of the alleged shooting controversy.

 

[busybody..]

The “Student Journalist” Behind Haditha
June 7th, 2006

Finally, we have a photograph of the source Time Magazine described as a "budding journalism student" Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi:
http://images.ibsys.com/2006/0607/9336365.jpg

Secretary-General of the Hammurabi Organization for Human Rights and Democracy Monitoring, and also a Haditha resident who witnessed parts of the incident, Thaer al-Hadithi, gives a detailed account of the alleged massacre of 24 Iraqis by U.S. Marines last year, to an Associated Press reporter at the offices of the group in Baghdad, Iraq Tuesday, June 6, 2006. The US Marines allegedly stormed at least 20 homes after a deadly bombing in a security sweep that lasted up to nine hours, he said.

He is the "journalism student" who founded the self-styled human rights organization, the Hammurabi Group sometime last year.

Behold how he is portrayed (he’s suddenly an "Iraq Investigator") by the terrorist-lovers at the DNC’s Associated Press:

Iraq Investigator Tells AP About Haditha

June 7, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A small group of U.S. Marines alleged to have killed up to two dozen Iraqi civilians conducted a house-to-house hunt that stretched over three hours, while other Marines in Haditha did not intervene, according to an Iraqi human rights investigator.

The Associated Press interview of the activist is the most detailed account yet of Iraqi accusations that Marines went on a rampage after a comrade was killed by a bomb. Two separate U.S. military investigations of the incident are under way.

Thaer al-Hadithi, a member and spokesman for the Hammurabi human rights association, a Sunni Muslim group, recounted with the help of a satellite map when and where Iraqi civilians cowered and sometimes died.

The case, which came to public attention two months ago because of a video released by the Hammurabi group, is threatening to further weaken popular support for the Iraq war in the United States and has tarnished the military’s image in Iraq and around the world.

The military, after initially saying the Iraqi deaths were the result of the roadside bomb and a subsequent gunfight with insurgents, has not publicly released updated findings.

But newer accounts, including details from briefings to members of Congress, have indicated at least some of the 24 deaths were the result of deliberate gunfire by a small group of Marines seeking revenge for the bombing, and that their actions were covered up by other Marines in the area who knew or suspected what had occurred.

Iraq also has ordered its own probe of the killings, with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki using unusually strong language to condemn them.

Al-Hadithi’s account is mostly in line with other, eyewitness reports. He said he expanded his personal observations at the time with follow-up interviews of other witnesses who saw actions that he could not see from his house. He made repeated visits to the restive town to get information, he said.

Hammurabi chairman Abdul-Rahman al-Mashhadani told the AP on Tuesday that his group was investigating other violations of Iraqi civil rights by Western forces in the mainly Sunni Arab provinces of Anbar and Salaheddin to the west and north of Baghdad. He said the group also was looking into violations by Iraqi security forces, militias and tribal clans.

"We are also against terrorism," he said.

Al-Hadithi, 42, said he had been visiting his family in Haditha in western Iraq for a Muslim holiday when he was awakened on the morning of Nov. 19 by an explosion that he later learned to be a roadside bomb that hit a U.S. convoy of four Humvees, killing one Marine.

A native of the town, al-Hadithi was an administrator in the Haditha’s main hospital before he took leave to work with Hammurabi, which was set up 16 months ago.

According to U.S. lawmakers briefed by Pentagon officials, the Marines, enraged by the death of a comrade, stormed nearby homes, killing occupants as well as the driver and four passengers of a taxi.

Al-Hadithi offered new details on how that might have happened. He said the roadside bombing took place on a road about 100-150 yards from his family home.

"There was an eerie silence after the explosion," he said in Hammurabi’s Baghdad offices.

"Then, we started to hear noises, soldiers shouting, that grew louder and louder," said al-Hadithi, who spoke with a map of the town he downloaded from the Internet.

The first gunshots were heard at around 7:30 a.m., he said, when the Marines moved into the family home of Abdul-Hamid Hassan Ali, a blind and elderly man in failing health. The house is just south of the spot where the roadside bomb went off, al-Hadithi said.

Later, the Marines moved next door to the house of Younis Salem Rsayef and his family.

"There was intense gunfire and I could see a fire at the Rsayef home," said al-Hadithi, who watched from a window at his family home.

One of the 24 bodies taken to Haditha’s main hospital late on Nov. 19 was charred, according to Walid Abdul-Hameed al-Obeidi, the hospital director. That was believed to be one of Rsayef’s sons, who witnesses said was burned to death after a grenade was thrown into his room.

Ali and his wife Khamisa Toamah Ali were killed along with three of their sons, a daughter-in-law and a grandson, according to witnesses, hospital officials and human rights workers.

In the second home, eight people were killed: Rsayef, his wife, her sister and five children.

"You could tell that someone was killed by the gunfire and then the wailing and screaming of women seconds after the Americans left the house," said al-Hadithi.

He said the Marines stormed the house of Ayed Ahmed, the closest to al-Hadithi’s own home, at about 10:30 a.m. There, he said, four brothers, all of fighting age, were ordered inside a closet and shot dead. Everyone else was spared, al-Hadithi said.

At about the same time, a man who stepped out of his nearby house to see what was happening at Ayed Ahmed’s home was shot and wounded, according to al-Hadithi. Aws Fahmi, 43, was left to bleed on the street for about two hours before a female neighbor dragged him to safety, al-Hadithi told the AP.

Fahmi’s family was not able to take him to a hospital until two days later, al-Hadithi said.

Although the shooting stopped, the security sweep, he said, lasted until about 4:30 p.m. and the Marines did not leave the town.

Al-Hadithi said the Marines imposed a three-day closure on Haditha. They allowed relatives to go to the hospital the day after the killings to collect the bodies and bury them following negotiations with the Americans by the head of the local council, Imad Jawad Hamza. Only close relatives took part in the funeral, said al-Hadithi.

Al-Hadithi said 14 people were detained on the day of the killings, including a woman who was soon released. Of the remaining 13, 11 have been freed and two remain in detention.

He said five men were beaten by the Marines during their security sweep.

Al-Hadithi’s account is generally consistent with the sequence of events given to the AP last week by a lawyer for relatives of victims.

Some of the discrepancies in the accounts — like the number of Marines involved in the security sweep and estimates of how many of them went inside houses — could have been because they watched the day’s events from different homes.

Both men watched from windows at their homes. Al-Hadithi said he had a clear view of two of the houses where killings allegedly took place. Khaled Salem Rsayef, the lawyer, said he could see the site of the roadside bomb as well as the first house stormed by the Marines.

Rsayef has said he learned from conversations with relatives that the shooting was carried out by three or four Marines while about 20 more waited outside. Al-Hadithi said it was difficult to ascertain the number of those involved.

However, he pointed out that since the shootings were not simultaneous, it’s possible they were the work of one group of Marines.

About a month after the killings, al-Hadithi said, a Marine major refused a request by the victims’ families to offer a formal apology, arguing that the Iraqis were killed in the roadside bombing or caught in crossfire between the Marines and insurgents.

The officer, whose name al-Hadithi said he could not remember, also warned them that the next time a roadside bomb hits a Marine convoy in Haditha he would order an airstrike to level anything within 500 yards.

Al-Hadithi did not attend any of the meetings between victims’ families and the U.S. military, but he based his account of what the Marines officer said on briefings from Hammurabi’s Haditha representative and conversations with the families.

Al-Mashhadani, Hammurabi’s chairman, who lectures on economics at Baghdad’s al-Mustansiriyah University, said the organization was publicizing the Haditha incident to make sure it’s not repeated.

"At the same time, we want the victims’ families to receive a fair compensation," he said.

Bear in mind that this "budding journalism student" waited until the next day to videotape this alleged atrocity, which supposedly happened on his very doorstep.

This is the same "budding journalism student" and self-proclaimed human rights watcher who didn’t bother to turn over this video to a media outlet or a real human rights group from November 2005 until March 2006. That’s how eager they were to make sure such a crime is never again repeated.

Lastly, note that Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi now says 20 houses were involved. And yet his video seems to only show one wall and floor of one house. He’s not very good at documenting things, it turns out.

But since he’s saying what our one party media want said, that’s good enough for them.