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

[busybody..]

So by now it seems OBVIOUS that there are major doubts that what the MEDIA says happened

actually happened

Even if the investigation will show NOTHING happened

The US will have to sacrifice young Marines

Because the MEDIA and the US hating world wont accept the results

They will scream WHITEWASH and COVERUP

Damn shame a President and the military will have to sacrifice its own kids on the ALTER of the PRESS

 

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The Haditha Stratagem
June 7th, 2006



We face an Islamist enemy for which no deception, no cruelty, no inhumanity is too low in battling the infidel. I have previously argued that the Jihadis (among others) were fabricating incidents pointing to American involvement in massacres of Iraqi civilians. With the Haditha story, the subject has exploded across the media in a far more disturbing fashion than anyone could have wished. But there is one element that has been all but ignored: clear evidence that the insurgency has gone one step further, to actually contriving massacres involving U.S. troops.

Haditha is one of a flurry of mass-murder accusations leveled against American forces in recent months. Another serious instance occurred in Ishaqi, sixty miles north of Baghdad. On March 16, U.S. troops allegedly attacked the home of a local schoolteacher, killing eleven people, including women and children, before blowing up the house to conceal the crime. A video was released showing the victims being dug out, and the story was verified by local police.

The soldier’s version was more prosaic: coming under fire from the house in question, they called in an AC-130 gunship to level the place. While plucking an injured Al-Qaeda gunman from the wreckage, the troops found four other bodies, including two women and a child. (A similar case in which U.S. soldiers were accused of murdering a family of three in Duluiya, a nearby village, had scarcely begun circulating before it was proven to have actually involved seven grenade-wielding terrorists.)

Ten days later, yet another such “massacre” was revealed in Baghdad itself. Iraqi and U.S. troops raided an office complex held by militiamen, killing sixteen, capturing another eighteen, and rescuing a kidnapping victim. But by the next morning, the offices had been transformed into a mosque, the number of dead had multiplied, and the operation had become an all-American effort.

Initial media interest faded after the kidnap victim denied the mosque claim and revealed the torture scars he’d suffered at the militia’s hands (he refused, probably wisely, to identify which militia it was). By this time, the Ishaqi story had also fallen apart, over conflicting accounts of the incident and the victim’s identities, ages, and relationships to each other—which didn’t prevent a new video from popping up in the wake of the Haditha revelations. (Even as the video made the rounds, the Pentagon announced that the Marines involved had been cleared of all charges.)

What’s striking about the Ishaqi report is its surface similarity to the Haditha incident. Both feature ambushes of U.S. troops, carried out from occupied homes, by a single gunman acting alone.

It’s that last element that raises questions. A single shooter amid a group of unarmed civilians – that’s a strange setup for an ambush. A one-man ambush is a contradiction in terms. A guerilla unit conducting such an operation would use all the men available, to concentrate fire and cause as much damage as possible. A single man may take a pot-shot or two and then break contact. But from a houseful of people, who will inevitably come under fire in return? There’s no reason for that. Not unless it wasn’t an ambush at all. Not unless a completely different effect was intended.

The war in Iraq is a low-level insurrection slowly – all too slowly – grinding to a halt. The insurgents have attempted to take and hold ground in cities like Tal Afar and Fallujah, and have failed. They have attempted to stop the electoral process through intimidation, and have failed. They have attempted to split the country through civil war, and have failed. Few tactics remain to them, one of which is to take a page from the Vietnam playbook and work the media, hoping that upheaval in the U.S. itself will win their war for them. And that requires a My Lai.

So they’ve been trying to arrange one. To create the conditions for a massacre. Ambushing Coalition troops from houses full of helpless, unarmed civilians, hoping that the soldiers would respond with all the firepower at their command, and exposing the resulting carnage to the full glare of the international media. That was the plan at Ishaqi, and it might have worked if the shooter hadn’t survived. That was also the plan at Haditha—and somebody walked right into it. Some young men angered beyond rationality at seeing a friend blown in half by an IED, driven by impulses we will never know, stormed the nearest homes to kill not only the lone terrorist (according to the account in Time, there were two AK-47s but only one gunman), but everyone else as well—man, woman, and child.

If more proof is needed, consider the May 30 USA Today story in which Marine Captain Andrew Del Gaudio described coming under machine-gun fire this past April after an IED killed four of his men. As he was about to engage, he saw that the enemy had placed a line of children in front of the gun, with two video cameras ready to film them as they were shot down. Del Gaudio held his fire, and was injured by the next rounds. His troops flanked the machine-gun nest before attacking, and the children survived. (Further testimony along the same lines in offered in the Wall Street Journal’s June 6 “Best of the Web Today” by a unnamed officer under the heading “Letter from Iraq”.)

Clearly, there is no conceivable way to exaggerate the sheer viciousness of the fanatic Islamist.

None of this excuses the alleged actions of the troops at Haditha. Nothing could excuse that. If guilty, they will be tried and punished as they deserve. But if they were goaded into attacking, if it was a setup, if the terrorists are deliberately working to create such atrocities, then it’s a development we ignore at our peril. The My Lai paradigm must not be allowed to blind us to the possibility. This tactic (if that’s the term I’m groping for) must be investigated, verified, and exposed. Otherwise Haditha, and the media firestorm surrounding it, will simply open the door to a never-ending series of such tragedies. To more lines of children, and more houses full of innocents.

J.R. Dunn is a frequent contributor.

 

[busybody..]

Time’s “Corrections” About Haditha
June 9th, 2006

This is a now all too familiar pattern with our one party media.

The following "corrections" have been added to the very bottom of Time’s two blockbuster exclusives on Haditha in their current online versions:



Collateral Damage or Civilian Massacre in Haditha?

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

By TIM MCGIRK / BAGHDAD

Sunday, Mar. 19, 2006

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." In fact, Human Rights Watch has no ties or association with the Hammurabi Human Rights Group. TIME regrets the error.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1174649-1,00.html

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?

By TIM MCGIRK/ BAGHDAD

Mar. 27, 2006

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." In fact, Human Rights Watch has no ties or association with the Hammurabi Human Rights Group. TIME regrets the error.

http://time-proxy.yaga.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1174682, 00.html

In fact, Time had originally reported that it was Human Rights Watch who had provided the tape. They then retracted that and claimed that it came from Hammurabi which works with Human Rights Watch. And now they have backed off even that.

Note that even now Time still does not correct the intentionally false portrayal of the source of the videotape that they gave in all of their original stories and interviews.

Time’s source, Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi, is not a "young man." He is not a "budding journalism student."

And al-Haditha is not separate and apart from the Hammurabi Human Rights Group. Nor is he a man who wanted to remain anonymous because he feared for his safety.



Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi

Al-Haditha is 43 years old. He "created" Hammurabi 16 months ago. (Before that he worked directly under the head of Haditha’s hospital, Dr. Walid al-Obeidi, who pronounced that all the victims had been shot at close range.)

In fact, al-Haditha is one of Hammurabi’s only two members. He serves as its "Secretary General" while the only other member, Abdul-Rahman al-Mashhadani, performs as its "Chairman.")

Al-Haditha is the one and only person behind this tape. He made it. And he sat on it for four months before turning it over to Time magazine.

But it looks like Time did not consider these mundane facts about the maker of this tape compelling enough. So they made up additional romantic details and invented the involvement of the "internationally respected Human Rights Watch" to burnish the video’s provenance.

It’s something Time does on a regular basis.

Here is another "correction" that is now buried at the bottom of another Time Haditha story from last month. It is by Matthew Cooper of Plame/Rove notoriety.

The Haditha Scandal’s Other Casualty

With the Pentagon completing its probe into whether U.S. forces massacred civilians one November morning in Western Iraq, the damage to America’s image abroad could take a further hit
By MATTHEW COOPER/WASHINGTON

Posted Friday, May. 26, 2006

In the original version of this story, TIME reported that "one of the most damning pieces of evidence investigators have in their possession, John Sifton of Human Rights Watch told Time’s Tim McGirk, is a photo, taken by a Marine with his cell phone that shows Iraqis kneeling — and thus posing no threat — before they were shot." While Sifton did tell TIME that there was photographic evidence, taken by Marines, he had only heard about the specific content of the photos from reports done by NBC, and had no firsthand knowledge. TIME regrets the error.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1198843,00.html

Never mind that now "one of the most damning pieces of evidence" has already taken on the mantle of historical fact. Time regrets the error.

So much so that they once again buried the correction at the bottom of its online archive of the story which few will revisit.

Clearly Time thinks very highly of the Soros-funded (and viscerally anti-American) Human Rights Watch. They use every opportunity to cite HRW to bolster their claims, even if they have to make things up.

Apparently Time believes invoking "the internationally respected Human Rights Watch" gives their questionably sourced facts credibility

And so what it if they aren’t involved?

Time can always sneak in a retraction later when nobody is looking, once the story has "gotten legs."

 

[busybody..]

U.S. father visiting Haditha saw no sign of massacre
By Adam Tanner

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A Presbyterian minister who was an embedded reporter with his son's U.S. Marine company, which is accused of killing 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, said soldiers in private moments gave no indication anything horrible happened in the town.

Rather, the young men in Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment talked about earlier intense fighting in Falluja and other wartime ordeals.

"I would think that if it was as bad as everybody is making it out to be, I'd have heard something about it when I was there," said the Rev. Ben Mathes, 53, whose son, 1st Lt. Adam Mathes, is Kilo company's executive officer.

The military is investigating whether some soldiers from Kilo company went on a deadly rampage in November after an explosive device killed one of the most popular members of the unit, Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas.

The father spent 12 days with the unit in January in Haditha as a reporter with the Sacramento, California-based K-Love Christian Radio Network. He also ministered to the troops.

"It was freezing cold and everybody gathered around this kind of metal fireplace where we chopped up wooden pallets and burnt them and we'd sit there and talk about home and family and the deepest things with these kids," he said in an interview on Thursday. "Not once did anything come up that something horrible had happened."

"They talked about the first battle of Falluja and things that haunt them. They'd talk about they had mortars land right beside them that were duds and three landed right beside them and a third one went off and it injured the buddy next to them and they didn't get hit."

He said he also did not feel animosity from Iraqis he encountered while on patrol with Kilo company in Haditha.

"You would think that if something horrible had happened they would just disappear or just have nothing to do with these folks," Mathes said. "They came out on the streets and brought us bread and tea and invited us into their homes. The businessmen would have them come into their shops."

Christopher Price, a Georgia-based Presbyterian minister who travelled with Mathes to Iraq, also reported he saw no signs of bad feelings between Iraqis and Kilo company.

The elder Mathes, the president of a Christian ministry that focuses on areas along remote foreign rivers, said his son was overseeing the company's base during the November killings and was not facing any charges.

Adam Mathes, replying to a request for an interview, said, "Once the dark clouds clear, I may be available for contact -- I have plenty of good things to say about our latest deployment to Iraq, but I cannot say at this time.

HURTING MORALE

With the U.S. Senate planning hearings into the Haditha incident, which has further soured global perceptions of the U.S. intervention in Iraq, the elder Mathes said the Marines were being unfairly maligned.

"We have leaders who are hired by our country to lead us, who sent my kid to war and then they are back here bad-mouthing him and saying things they have no idea if it's true or not to get a little (TV) face time," he said.

Such criticism hurt the morale of soldiers already under great pressure, especially those now in Iraq, Mathes said.

"How do you think it makes these kids feel, to come in exhausted, scared sometimes, maybe wounded, maybe having been in some type of combat exchange and turn on the TV set and be told they are just full of crap and they snapped and are just not worth a damn?" he said. "Why in the world would any young person want to continue to defend our county if that is what they are hearing?"

(c) Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

 

[busybody..]

Marine says rules followed at Haditha: Report Sun Jun 11, 12:53 AM ET



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A sergeant who led a squad of U.S. Marines accused of killing 24 Iraqi civilians at Haditha told his lawyer the unit did not intentionally target civilians, followed rules of engagement and did not try to cover up the incident, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.

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The newspaper said Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, 26, told his lawyer several civilians were killed in the November incident, when the squad went after insurgents firing on them from a house. But Wuterich said there was no vengeful massacre and described a house-to-house hunt that went awry in a chaotic battlefield, his lawyer said.

"It will forever be his position that everything they did that day was following their rules of engagement and to protect the lives of Marines," said Neal Puckett, who represents Wuterich in the ongoing investigation of the incident.

"He's really upset that people believe that he and his Marines are even capable of intentionally killing innocent civilians," he said.

The Post said Wuterich's account was the first public version of what happened in Haditha from a Marine who was on the ground when the shooting occurred.

A criminal investigation is under way into whether some Marines deliberately killed civilians. Separate investigations are looking into whether there was a cover up and whether commanders were negligent in probing the deaths.

As leader of 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, Wuterich was in a platoon of Humvees hit by a roadside bomb. He entered a house where Marines thought fire was originating and made the initial radio reports to company headquarters on the incident, Puckett said.

Wuterich told his lawyer the shootings were the result of a sweep for enemies in a firefight, the Post reported. He was a member of a four-man team of Marines who entered the house, kicked in the door to a room and tossed a fragmentation grenade inside. One Marine fired clearing shots into the room, killing several people, Wuterich told his lawyer.

They found men, women and children, most likely civilians, inside, but believed the insurgents had escaped to another house. They went to that house and used a grenade and gunfire to clear another room, killing more people, the Post account said.

Wuterich called for a stop and went back to the platoon leader to reassess the situation. Puckett said his client knew a number of civilians had been killed and never tried to obscure the fact, immediately reporting 12 to 15 civilians had been killed.

 

[busybody..]

The Iraqi FM says it all

He respects our troops MORE then most Americans

Anyone who disagrees with this outa be SHOT

Starting with ALL the media members

Iraqi Foreign Minister: Terrorists Targeting Civilians, Not U.S.
By Andrew Cochran

In an interview with the Khaleej Times, Hoshyar Zebari, Iraqi Foreign Minister, said this about the targeting of civilians in Iraq:

‘The US forces do not kill civilians. Yes, civilians got killed in Haditha and other places but it is the terrorists who target civilians in Iraq. More than 40 to 50 Iraqis are killed daily at markets, places of worship and gatherings due to suicidal terrorist bombings. This is the solid truth which journalists cannot beat us on."

The terrorists don't face prosecution or questioning by the press for their massacres. This morning in Baghdad, another roadside bomb killed four innocent Iraqis at a market and wounded 27. The day of Zarqawi's death, five car bombs in and around Baghdad killed over 40 and wounded dozens.

Whatever happened at Haditha at the hands of U.S. soldiers doesn't begin to compare to the beheading of civilians, the market bombings, the kidnappings of students on buses, and other slaughters conducted by the terrorists in Iraq, whether they're foreign fighters or Iraqi Sunni or Shiite gangsters. Elements of the Arab press will emphasize the Haditha killings and don't report the scope of the terrorists' brutality. The rest of the world press has a professional responsibility to put Haditha in perspective.

 

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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; A01

A sergeant who led a squad of Marines during the incident in Haditha, Iraq, that left as many as 24 civilians dead said his unit did not intentionally target any civilians, followed military rules of engagement and never tried to cover up the shootings, his attorney said.

Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, 26, told his attorney that several civilians were killed Nov. 19 when his squad went after insurgents who were firing at them from inside a house. The Marine said there was no vengeful massacre, but he described a house-to-house hunt that went tragically awry in the middle of a chaotic battlefield.

"It will forever be his position that everything they did that day was following their rules of engagement and to protect the lives of Marines," said Neal A. Puckett, who represents Wuterich in the ongoing investigations into the incident. "He’s really upset that people believe that he and his Marines are even capable of intentionally killing innocent civilians."

Wuterich’s detailed version of what happened in the Haditha neighborhood is the first public account from a Marine who was on the ground when the shootings occurred. As the leader of 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, Wuterich was in the convoy of Humvees that was hit by a roadside bomb. He entered the house from which the Marines believed enemy fire was originating and made the initial radio reports to his company headquarters about what was going on, Puckett said.

The reports that Marines wantonly shot unarmed civilians in Haditha, including women and children, allege one of the most shocking, and potentially damaging, incidents of the Iraq war. A criminal investigation looking into possible charges of murder against half a dozen Marines is underway. A separate probe is examining whether Marines tried to cover up the shootings, and whether commanders were negligent in failing to investigate the deaths.

Three Marine officers have been relieved of command. In the absence of a public response from Marine Corps officials — who are declining to comment to preserve the integrity of the investigation — reports of what happened in the western Iraqi town have been leaking out piecemeal from the Haditha neighborhood and in Washington.

Wuterich’s version contradicts that of the Iraqis, who described a massacre of men, women and children after a bomb killed a Marine. Haditha residents have said that innocent civilians were executed, that some begged for their lives before being shot and that children were killed indiscriminately.

Wuterich told his attorney in initial interviews over nearly 12 hours last week that the shootings were the unfortunate result of a methodical sweep for enemies in a firefight. Two attorneys for other Marines involved in the incident said Wuterich’s account is consistent with those they had heard from their clients.

Kevin B. McDermott, who is representing Capt. Lucas M. McConnell, the Kilo Company commander, said Wuterich and other Marines informed McConnell on the day of the incident that at least 15 civilians were killed by "a mixture of small-arms fire and shrapnel as a result of grenades" after the Marines responded to an attack from a house.

McConnell was relieved of his command in April for "failure to investigate," according to McDermott. But the lawyer said McConnell told him that he reported the high number of civilian deaths to the 3rd Battalion executive officer that afternoon and that within a few days the battalion’s intelligence chief gave a PowerPoint presentation to Marine commanders.

"It wasn’t a situation that dawned on him as the captain of Kilo where it was like, ‘Okay, guys, we need to conduct a more thorough investigation,’ " McDermott said. "Everywhere up the chain, they had ample access to this thing."

Gary Myers, a civilian attorney for a Marine who was with Wuterich that day, said the Marines followed standard operating procedures when they "cleared" the houses, using fragmentation grenades and gunshots to respond to an immediate threat.

"I can confirm that that version of events is consistent with our position on this case," Myers said. "What this case comes down to is: What were the rules of engagement, and were they followed?"

The defense attorneys said the rules of engagement — which vary depending on the mission, level of danger and other factors — are likely to become a central element of their cases because those rules guide how troops can use deadly force on the battlefield. One Marine official said such rules usually require positive identification of a target before shooting but noted that the rules are often circumstantial.

"Once you go back over it, you have to determine if they applied the rules," the Marine official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the Marine Corps does not discuss rules of engagement. "Did they feel threatened? Did they perceive hostile intent or hostile action?"

On Nov. 19, Wuterich’s squad left its headquarters at Firm Base Sparta in Haditha at 7 a.m. on a daily mission to drop off Iraqi army troops at a nearby checkpoint. "It was like any other day, we just had to watch out for IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and any other activity that looked suspicious," said Marine Cpl. James Crossan, 21, in an interview from his home in North Bend, Wash. He was riding in the four-Humvee convoy as it turned left onto Chestnut Road, heading west at 7:15 a.m.

Shortly after the turn, a bomb buried in the road ripped through the last Humvee. The blast instantly killed the driver, Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20. Crossan, who was in the front passenger seat, remembered hearing someone yell, "Get some morphine." Then he passed out.

Wuterich, driving the third Humvee in the line, immediately stopped the convoy and got out, Puckett said.

Puckett said that while Wuterich was evaluating the scene, Marines noticed a white, unmarked car full of "military-aged men" lingering near the bomb site. When Marines ordered the men to stop, they ran; Puckett said it was standard procedure at the time for the Marines to shoot suspicious people fleeing a bombing, and the Marines opened fire, killing four or five men.

"The first thing he thought was it could be a vehicle-borne bomb or these guys could be ready to do a drive-by shooting," Puckett said, explaining that the Marines were on alert for such coordinated, multi-stage attacks.

Iraqis in the Haditha neighborhood interviewed in recent weeks said the vehicle was a taxi carrying a group of students to their homes and that the driver tried to back away from the site, fleeing in fear. One account said that the Marines shot the men while they were still in the car.

Wuterich officially reported to his headquarters that there had been a makeshift bomb and called for a Quick Reaction Force, Puckett said. The first group encountered an unexploded bomb on another route — fueling concerns that insurgents were mounting an attack on the daily morning convoy — and a second force headed out. That group, including Marines with the 3rd Squad and the platoon’s leader, a young second lieutenant, arrived minutes later.

Wuterich told Puckett that no one was emotionally rattled by Terrazas’s death because everyone had a job to do, and everyone was concerned about further casualties. 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.

A four-man team of Marines, including Wuterich, kicked in the door and found a series of empty rooms, noticing quickly that there was one room with a closed door and people rustling behind it, Puckett said. They then kicked in that door, tossed a fragmentation grenade into the room, and one Marine fired a series of "clearing rounds" through the dust and smoke, killing several people, Puckett said.

The Marine who fired the rounds — Puckett said it was not Wuterich — had experience clearing numerous houses on a deployment in Fallujah, where Marines had aggressive rules of engagement.

Although it was almost immediately apparent to the Marines that the people dead in the room were men, women and children — most likely civilians — they also noticed a back door ajar and believed that insurgents had slipped through to a house nearby, Puckett said. The Marines stealthily moved to the second house, kicking in the door, killing one man inside and then using a frag grenade and more gunfire to clear another room full of people, he said.

Wuterich, not having found the insurgents, told the team to stop and headed back to the platoon leader to reassess the situation, Puckett said, adding that his client knew a number of civilians had just been killed.

Neighborhood residents have offered a different account, saying that the Marines went into the houses shooting and ignored pleas from the civilians to spare them.

Marine Reserve Lt. Jonathan Morgenstein, who served in Anbar province from August 2004 to March 2005, said that the account offered by Wuterich’s attorney surprised him a bit.

"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."

After clearing the second house, Puckett said, Wuterich immediately got on the radio and reported the "collateral damage." When the company radio operator asked him to estimate how many civilians had been killed, he said he thought it was about 12 to 15.

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.

After going through the houses, Wuterich moved a small group of Marines to the roof of a nearby building to watch the area, Puckett said. At one point, they saw a man in all-black clothing running from one of the houses they had searched. The Marines killed him, Puckett said.

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.

The unit stayed at the scene for hours, helping to collect bodies as photos were taken. Wuterich, who remains on duty in California, where he lives with his wife and two young daughters, told Puckett that for months no one questioned his actions.

 

[busybody..]

Setting the record straight on Haditha
Jun 12, 2006
by Mary Katharine Ham ( bio | archive | contact )

Email to a friend Print this page Text size: A A When I worked at a newspaper, my fellow reporters and I made mistakes.
Sometimes those mistakes were on the front page of the paper; sometimes tucked away on B7 between the obits and the county's largest legume. Sometimes they were mispelled names and misplaced box scores; sometimes misused facts and mishandled reputations.

But no matter the nature of the mistake-- its size or its import-- the correction always went in the same place. Second page of the A section, bottom right-hand corner. It was policy, and the policy had the unfortunate consequence of usually making the correction of a mistake less prominent than the mistake itself.

Such is the nature of news coverage on all levels, and one of the most valuable contributions the new media and blogs can make to that news coverage is to highlight corrections that would otherwise be overlooked in their little corner of A2.


A couple of weeks ago, spurred by Congressman John Murtha's assertion that Marines in Haditha had killed civilians "in cold blood," the media promptly rushed to judgement, topping every story with Murtha's cold-blooded soundbite. When word leaked from Pentagon sources that there might be murder charges in the case, the media ran with the "maybe murder" story.

Because no one had yet been charged, and no one was leaking the Marines' side of the story, many became concerned that the slanted coverage might affect the fair treatment and presumption of innocence to which American servicemen are entitled. One of those people was Brig. Gen. David M. Brahms, a former Marine lawyer who the Washington Post quoted out of context in its eagerness to get an Abu Ghraib reference into the story.

This week, the media is backing off of its original tone, and it's time to highlight corrections so they don't end up being relegated to the back of the paper and the back of people's minds. So, I give you the Top 3 things to remember about Haditha that the press would like you to forget.

1. Oops, Time After Time

In the first media report on a "possible massacre" at Haditha, back in March, Time magazine 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."

Because the incident was under investigation and no one could comment on it, Time used that videotape to bolster the accusations of civilian massacre. Now, buried at the bottom of page four of that article is this correction:

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." In fact, Human Rights Watch has no ties or association with the Hammurabi Human Rights Group. TIME regrets the error.

Without the connection to "internationally respected Human Rights Watch," the origin of the video and the motives of the journalist involved become much more questionable.

But that's not the only piece of photographic evidence called into question by Time corrections.

In a subsequent Time story, we have this correction:

In the original version of this story, TIME reported that "one of the most damning pieces of evidence investigators have in their possession, John Sifton of Human Rights Watch told Time's Tim McGirk, is a photo, taken by a Marine with his cell phone that shows Iraqis kneeling — and thus posing no threat — before they were shot."

While Sifton did tell TIME that there was photographic evidence, taken by Marines, he had only heard about the specific content of the photos from reports done by NBC, and had no firsthand knowledge. TIME regrets the error.

Well, I would hope they regret that one. When a major national news magazine claims there is specific photographic evidence of American Marines killing civilians while they were praying and it ends up being wrong, that correction should be as prominent as possible, especially when those Marines have not yet been charged or faced trial.

Over at Sweetness and Light, a blogger takes a look at Time's young journalist source and finds that the journalist was not exactly the green go-getter Time had described.

Why start a human rights group if you want to remain anonymous? And why did Time pretend their source was young? Why did they pretend he had no involvement with Hammurabi? (When in fact he is its founder.)

But that is just the start of the many questionable aspects of Thabit's accounts.

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.

Note that this same "budding journalism student" and self-proclaimed human rights watcher did not bother to turn over his video to a media outlet or a real human rights group from November 2005 until March 2006. A four month delay.

That's how eager they were to make sure such a crime is never again
repeated.

2. Context Come Lately

There was more going on in Haditha that day than just the IED explosion that killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas and apparently sparked the fighting that left so many dead.

Capt. James Kimber offers his story:

But that day, at about the same time, Iraqi insurgents attacked all three Marine companies patrolling in the Haditha area--one of them commanded by Kimber. He said he could hear over his radio the shots being fired during a running gun battle in Haditha.

"They weren't just Marine weapons. You can tell from the sound," he said...

Kimber's recollections provide a valuable backdrop to the events last November, a period during which Marine units were encouraged to escalate their use of force in dealing with insurgents, according to a Marine colonel with knowledge of operations in that area.

A source I've talked to, who is involved in the potential defense cases for these Marines, said that the IED that took Terrazas' life was just the beginning of a coordinated insurgent attack on four Marine squads they knew would respond to the first IED attack. The cluster of attacks ended up hampering relief efforts and injuring about a dozen Marines.

As the situation developed, the Marines at the initial ambush site were isolated for a period of time in this hostile city and they had every right to fear for their lives. A group of about 15-20 foreign fighters were believed to be in Haditha that day, supplemented by local insurgents. Knowing that 6 Marines had been surrounded and killed in Haditha before help could reach them just three months before, the isolated Marines had to fear the worst as they responded to the first attack.

Haditha was a hotbed of insurgency in November of last year. It's important to remember the frequency and intensity of attacks these Marines were facing. There's also another side to the story, and the accused are beginning to tell it through their lawyers:

A sergeant who led a squad of Marines during the incident in Haditha, Iraq, that left as many as 24 civilians dead said his unit did not intentionally target any civilians, followed military rules of engagement and never tried to cover up the shootings, his attorney said.

Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, 26, told his attorney that several civilians were killed Nov. 19 when his squad went after insurgents who were firing at them from inside a house. The Marine said there was no vengeful massacre, but he described a house-to-house hunt that went tragically awry in the middle of a chaotic battlefield.

3. The Nature of the Enemy

Something terrible happened in Haditha. The day ended with one Marine and 15 Iraqi civilians dead. But we don't know how it happened or what the reasons were.

What we do know is that it is the exception to the rule to find American Marines wantonly murdering civilians. It is rather the rule, however, for insurgents to put those same civilians-- women and
children-- in harm's way.

That is what Terrazas' father says happened that day in Haditha:

Exactly what happened that day remains unclear. Miguel Terrazas' father, Martin, said the Marines his son fought with told him that after the car bomb exploded the Marines took a defensive position around his son's battered vehicle. Insurgents immediately started shooting from nearby buildings, and the insurgents were using women and children as human shields, Martin said he was told.

The Marines shot back because "it was going to be them or" the insurgents, Martin said of what his son's fellow Marines briefly described to him.

It wouldn't be the first time terrorists have shown such disgusting disregard for the lives of children.

We do not know what happened in Haditha on November 19, 2005. When two military investigations and any trials that result are complete, it will become more clear. If Marines are guilty of atrocities, they will be punished severely.

In the meantime, rely on alternative media and bloggers like Mudville Gazette, Sweetness and Light, California Conservative, and this bunch of informed milbloggers to keep level heads about the accusations.

The mainstream media spent a couple of weeks throwing around the "cold blood" and "maybe murder" stories. Now that they're backtracking, it's our job to make sure new corrections and less damning facts don't get lost in the corner of page two.

Mary Katharine Ham is the former Senior Writer and Associate Editor for Townhall.com.

 

[busybody..]

Lack of autopsies in Haditha case presents challenges

By: WILLIAM FINN BENNETT - Staff Writer

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

CAMP PENDLETON —- If investigators can’t examine the bodies of 24 unarmed civilians allegedly killed by Camp Pendleton Marines in Haditha in November, building a case against the accused could be difficult, according to two military law authorities.

Families of all the victims have declined U.S. and Iraqi requests to exhume the bodies for autopsy, according to news reports. In most cases, exhumation is prohibited under Islamic law.

"You can prove murder without a body, but it’s much more difficult," Gary Solis, a 26-year Marine Corps veteran and former judge advocate, said in a Monday telephone interview.

No one has been charged in the case, which centers on allegations that a dozen Marines from the Pendleton-based 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment’s Kilo Company killed the civilians, including women and children, after a roadside bomb killed a young Marine in their convoy.

Autopsies could show whether the victims were shot at close range, execution-style, as some survivors have alleged.

Earlier this month, Marine Corps Commandant Michael Hagee said there is a set of photographs taken by a Marine intelligence team that examined the scene of the killings in Haditha. News reports have said the photos show that civilians in at least two houses were shot in the head and torso at close range.

A Washington attorney representing one of the men under investigation said last week that those photos would not necessarily prove anything. Attorney Neil Puckett said his client, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, told him the Marines invaded two homes after taking fire from one of the houses. Wuterich was the top-ranking enlisted man in Haditha that day.

Puckett said that after throwing grenades into the houses, Marines fired their weapons as they entered the door.

"Imagine a room full of smoke (from the grenades), people might be at various distances, as close as inches," he said.

For the defense, obtaining autopsy reports could be especially important, said Solis, who now teaches the laws of war at Georgetown University Law Center.

Defense attorneys "may want the bodies to back up their defense of random firing," said Solis, who is not representing anyone in the case.

After the killings, Haditha lawyer Khaled Salem Rasayef said he lost several relatives in the alleged massacre.

In an interview with the Associated Press earlier this month, Rasayef said he and his family and other victims’ families have refused requests to exhume the bodies for autopsies.

"No way we can ever agree to that," Rasayef said.


Under Islamic teaching, exhuming bodies is generally prohibited. It is allowed on a case-by-case basis, sometimes after a fatwa, or edict, from a senior cleric allowing it to proceed.

However, investigators were able to obtain family permission for exhumation of the victim’s body in an April 26 case involving another group of Camp Pendleton Marines.


Early this month, the body of the Iraqi man allegedly kidnapped from his home and killed was exhumed and taken to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for a forensic examination and autopsy.

The men in that case are from the 3rd Marine Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment and are in a Camp Pendleton brig. The investigation into that case continues.

In the Haditha case, photos could be used in a trial, but only autopsy results would provide solid proof of the cause of death, Solis said.

"Photos won’t do," he said. "How are you going to prove the person is dead without a body —- a coroner’s report shows a person is dead and how the person was killed. Otherwise you have to prove (things) based on statements of the survivors or the Marines themselves."

However, the photographs could prove incriminating, if they show that several of the people were shot at point-blank range, he said.

"If you have three of the bodies with holes between the eyes, that is evidence that this was not a random shooting," Solis said. "Random victims are not shot between the eyes."

Even if investigators are able to convince the families to allow exhumations, so much time has elapsed that deterioration of the bodies would make a medical examiner’s work much more difficult, the head of the National Institute of Military Justice said Friday.

"You have to establish that the killings were unlawful and without any evidence of the nature or cause of death, it’s going to be a very high hurdle for the prosecution to overcome," institute Executive Director Kathleen Duignan said. The nonprofit group works to improve public understanding of the military justice system and is mostly composed of former military attorneys.

"Photos will be a piece of evidence, but without having autopsy results to link to the photos, it will make it more difficult to prove," Duignan said.

Despite those obstacles, "circumstantial evidence can be quite convincing," she said. "They may be able to obtain witness testimony as well as other physical evidence at the scene."

It sure looks like this prohibition is only invoked when the relatives don’t want the facts to come out.

There have certainly been plenty of bodies exhumed in Iraq over the last few years:

















The Coalition Provisional Authority in cooperation with the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry even have an ongoing program to document Saddam’s atrocities, which counts on heavy participation from local Iraqis:

Training and Iraqi Involvement

To successfully implement the mass graves strategy and, more generally, arrive at an accounting of the victims of the regime, Iraqi involvement is necessary. Iraqis from all regions have expressed their desire to participate in Local Iraqis examining remain in order to show progress as quickly as possible. Accordingly, programs are under way to train Iraqis in community-led exhumations, with a focus on humanitarian identification of the missing. This will enable Iraqis to conduct and participate in exhumations of those mass graves not selected for full forensic exhumation by international teams.

But note this from the Reuters article:

Even if investigators are able to convince the families to allow exhumations, so much time has elapsed that deterioration of the bodies would make a medical examiner’s work much more difficult, the head of the National Institute of Military Justice said Friday.

Maybe this helps account for the long delay in reporting the massacre. And the families’ ongoing fight against having the bodies dug up and examined.

Maybe they aren’t interested in the truth.

Update!

As for the religious proscriptions, here is what the Islamic scholars at Al-Islam.org have to say:

Rules About Burial of the Dead Body

650. Digging up the grave is allowed in the following cases:

* When the dead body has been buried in an usurped land and the owner of the land is not willing to let it remain there.
* When the Kafan of the dead body or any other thing buried with it had been usurped and the owner of the thing in question is not willing to let it remain in the grave. Similarly, if anything belonging to the heirs has been buried along with the deceased and the heirs are not willing to let it remain in the grave. However, if the dead person had made a will that a certain supplication or the holy Qur’an or a ring be buried along with his dead body, and if that will is valid, then the grave cannot be opened up to bring those articles out. There are certain situations when the exhuming is not permitted even if the land, the Kafan or the articles buried with the corpse are Ghasbi. But there is no room for details here.
* When opening the grave does not amount to disrespect of the dead person, and it transpires that he was buried without Ghusl or Kafan, or the Ghusl was void, or he was not given Kafan according to religious rules, or was not laid in the grave facing the Qibla.
* When it is necessary to inspect the body of the dead person to establish a right which is more important than exhumation.
* When the dead body of a Muslim has been buried at a place which is against sanctity, like, when it has been buried in the graveyard of non-Muslim or at a place of garbage.
* When the grave is opened up for a legal purpose which is more important than exhumation. For example, when it is proposed to take out a living child from the womb of a buried woman.
* When it is feared that a wild beast would tear up the corpse or it will be carried away by flood or exhumed by the enemy.
* When the deceased has willed that his body be transferred to sacred places before burial, and if it was intentionally or forgetfully buried elsewhere, then the body can be exhumed, provided that doing so does not result in any disrespect to the deceased.

I’d say "it is necessary to inspect the bod[ies] of the dead person to establish a right which is more important than exhumation" in this case.

It could be a matter of life and death.

 

[Slowlane]

I read parts of it, I don’t see it as particularly relevant on the surface of it. Both cases, the journalist and the Marines, are ongoing so far as I know.

I’m more interested in the gunsmiths who are saying that he shell casings in the video are from an AK not an M16.

 

[busybody..]

The Readers Digest version is this

To get a FULL PICTURE of what happened, we needa do an autopsy, the people say NO!

Even on Religious grounds Autopsies are OK

Why are they saying NO?

HMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmm????????????????????

 

[busybody..]

The My Lai Lie

Behind the coverage of Haditha.
by Fred Barnes, for the Editors
07/03/2006, Volume 011, Issue 40

THE MEDIA COVERAGE of the killing of 24 Iraqis at Haditha has given rich new definition to the phrase "rush to judgment." The coverage, plus the reaction of antiwar politicians like Democratic representative John Murtha, amounts to a public verdict of guilty, rendered against a handful of Marines, before an investigation of the bloody incident is completed or a trial (if there is one) held.

An egregious example was MSNBC host Chris Matthews’s interview with Murtha on May 17. Asked to "draw us a picture of what happened in Haditha," the congressman said he’d tell "exactly" what occurred. "One Marine was killed and the Marines just said we’re going to take care. They don’t know who the enemy is. The pressure was too much on them, so they went into houses and they actually killed civilians."

"Was this My Lai?" Matthews interjected, referring to the slaughter of more than 300 civilians by American soldiers in Vietnam in 1968. "Was this a case of–when you say cold blood, Congressman, a lot of people think you’re basically saying you have got some civilians sitting in a room [or] out in a field and they’re executed."

"That’s exactly what happened," Murtha replied.

Murtha, of course, doesn’t really know if the Haditha civilians were killed in cold blood. There’s no way he could know. He’s been briefed by Marine Commandant Michael Hagee, but so have other key members of Congress. Republican Duncan Hunter, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, talked to Hagee and did not conclude either that the case was all but closed or that 24 Iraqis had indeed been executed. Murtha, an ex-Marine, claims to have other Marine sources, but it’s doubtful any of them were in Haditha on November 19, 2005, the day of the killings. So Murtha is winging it–and in a particularly shameful way.

But Murtha’s accusation is only the worst example of prejudicing the case against the Marines. There are others:

* The press has repeatedly likened the Haditha killings to the My Lai massacre, an invidious comparison if there ever was one. Newsweek, for instance, wrote that Haditha "may turn out to be the worst massacre since My Lai." True, the magazine writes that "the scale" of Haditha "should not be exaggerated" and the 24 Iraqis killed are "a fraction of the 300-plus lined up and murdered at My Lai." But with the facts in Haditha so sketchy or in serious dispute, the mere association of Haditha with My Lai is, to say the least, tendentious.

* In breaking the Haditha story last March, Time relied heavily on statements from a 9-year-old girl, a self-styled human rights activist with credibility problems, and a doctor who has publicly expressed his hatred of America. Since then, Time has issued three corrections. A video of the 24 dead bodies and the places where the killings occurred was not taken by "a Haditha journalism student," as first reported, but by a 43-year-old Sunni Muslim who heads the two-person "Hammurabi Human Rights Group." Nor is that group associated with Human Rights Watch, the respectable if anti-American outfit, as the magazine had said. The magazine also allowed that it could not confirm that an alleged photo taken by a Marine, suggesting the killings were executions, even exists.

* The nastiest swipe at the Marines came in a cartoon in the Chicago Sun-Times by Jack Higgins. It showed dead men with their hands behind their backs. One had the word "Haditha" on his body. Underneath were the words, offered as an ironic counterpoint: "We will be greeted as liberators." The cartoon was based on a photo, not of the 24 slain civilians but of 19 Shiite fishermen executed by Iraqi insurgents in Haditha. The photo had appeared in the Times of London, which misidentified the dead as U.S. victims. To its credit, the Times promptly apologized, and so did the Sun-Times and Higgins. Another cartoon, this one in the Arizona Republic, showed the Marine emblem and said USMC stood for "United States Massacre Cover-Up." An investigation by an Army general later found there was no coverup in the case.

* Perhaps the worst part of the immediate coverage was the failure to provide anything more than minimal context for the Haditha incident. The New York Times gave a little in its lengthy June 17 article, noting that Haditha "had taken a heavy toll in Marines that spring and summer." Six from an Ohio reserve unit were killed, then 14 more by antitank mines, and four in a firefight. Haditha was a hotbed of Sunni insurgent activity and an enormously dangerous place for Marines. At least one resident said she knew about the planting of an improvised explosive device (IED) in the town’s main road that killed a Marine in a convoy of Humvees. That explosion preceded the killing of the 24 civilians. A reporter for the British Guardian newspaper who spent three days in Haditha last year called it "an insurgent citadel." The town the Marines encountered was anything but a peaceful village.

In truth, we know very little with certainty about what really happened that November morning in Haditha. We know one Marine was killed. And we know his fellow Marines killed 24 civilians, an alarming number of victims. Whether the Hadithans were killed as Marines carried out their duties or whether they were murdered in retaliation for the death of the single Marine–that we don’t know. And that’s what a probe by the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, not yet finished, is supposed to determine.

For several months, the Marines took an unmitigated beating in the media. "But in recent days," Ed Pound noted in U.S. News & World Report last week, "another side of the story has begun to emerge, this one from defense attorneys who insist that their clients did not intentionally kill unarmed civilians. Instead they describe a harrowing house-to-house search for insurgents that ended in tragedy."

Through their lawyers, the Marines say they were following the official rules of engagement (ROE) or the warning of their officers "to be aggressive in taking care of themselves." It was in this manner, they claim, that they killed 5 Iraqi men as they fled and the other 19 in three houses. The Marines say they had been fired on from the area of the houses.

After the IED exploded, they spotted five men in a nearby car, men they assumed were insurgents. The Marines called to them, in Arabic, telling them to stay put. When the men tried to flee, they were shot dead. Inside the houses, the Marines claim they adhered to the ROE by first throwing a grenade in a room where they heard activity, then entering the room and spraying it with gunfire. This resulted, they say, in the accidental deaths of civilians. Given the town they were in, their story is at least plausible.

What’s amazing is that so few questions have been raised about the witnesses against the Marines. Were they free to tell the truth about what happened, though the insurgents were likely to return? Or were they forced, on pain of death, to make up stories about a premeditated massacre? We don’t know. And why did the "human rights activist" wait months before stepping forward with his tape? At this point, there are more questions than solid answers.

Congressman Hunter has wise advice on what we should do as the true story of Haditha unfolds. "We should slow down and let the military justice system work and let the chips fall where they may," he says. "The military system has integrity." Hundreds of Marines and Army soldiers have been punished, many severely, for abusing Iraqis. Eight Marines were charged last week with murdering an Iraqi man. Whatever occurred at Haditha, Hunter adds, "shouldn’t reflect on the value of this mission." In World War II, he says, unarmed Germans were killed by American troops, but "we didn’t stop the war." We shouldn’t in Iraq either.

If it turns out that Murtha and our one party media were wrong, what will happen to them?

When have hot-headed pols or our agenda driven reporters ever been held accountable?

 

[DevilishTexan]

Amazing what small details come out in the wash once you start investigating. Too bad the traitorous dirtbag Jack Mertha cares more about his party than the soldiers when he opened his dicktrap.

 

[busybody..]

He is a DumOHcrap

He HATES the troops and America!

 

[RoryN]

Your title is referencing a song that hasn't been on the radio since 1991.

Ties in well with the rest of your thinking.

 

[busybody..]

Your title is referencing a song that hasn't been on the radio since 1991.

Ties in well with the rest of your thinking.

Slit your throat!

 

[busybody..]

Will MAD MURTHA apoligize to the Marines?

I doubt it

New Evidence Emerges in Haditha Case

Phil Brennan, NewsMax
Monday, June 26, 2006

New evidence continues to emerge that U.S. Marines did not wantonly kill Iraqi civilians in Haditha last November - and the soldiers’ accounts of what happened are backed up by videotape shot by an ultralight vehicle, NewsMax has learned.

According to media reports, last Nov. 19 members of a Marine Corps company killed some 24 innocent civilian Iraqis in Haditha, a town 140 miles northwest of Baghdad and near the Syrian border.

In the ensuing media firestorm that broke out after the story was revealed, many news reports here and abroad compared the Haditha deaths to the infamous My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War.

Michael Sallah, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his My Lai reporting, has said: "You would have difficulties finding a single newspaper in Germany or elsewhere in Europe which does not deal with My Lai."

But the facts and accounts from Marines and others on the ground tell another story.

What is not in dispute is that the Marines’ engagement in Haditha began when an IED (improvised explosive device) detonated, killing a Marine from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division.

In the aftermath of the action two investigations were launched, one by Army Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell, who was charged with investigating how the incident was reported through the chain of command. A second investigation, headed by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), is looking into any possible criminal aspects of the incident.

The Bargewell report has not been released and is still being reviewed by Army Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, a top U.S. commander in Iraq. But military officials told the Los Angeles Times that although it concludes there was no deliberate cover-up by senior Marine officers, the Corps failed to follow up and ask questions that the known details should have provoked them to ask.

The NCIS investigation is still ongoing.

In May, when Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, appeared on "Good Morning America," he accused the Marines of K Company of killing innocent civilians "in cold blood" and said that the killings had been covered up by higher officers.

The Bargewell report has disproved that allegation, and with the NCIS investigation so far incomplete and no soldier charged with a crime, how would Murtha know?

Intelligence sources tell NewsMax the facts of the Haditha incident paint an entirely different picture from the one Murtha and others are propagating.

Military sources familiar with the incident have told NewsMax:

# Within minutes of the early morning IED explosion, a firefight erupted between insurgents and Marines. Civilians were caught in the middle of the firefight. Also, although civilians did die, their deaths were the result of door-to-door combat as the Marines sought to clear houses and stop the insurgent gunfire.

# Ample evidence proves that a firefight took place. For example, every second of the ensuing firefight was monitored by numerous people at company, battalion, and regimental HQs via radio communications.

# Video evidence supports the Marines’ claims. Within a very few minutes, battalion, regimental, and division headquarters were able to watch the action thanks to an overhead ultralight aircraft that remained aloft all day. Photos of some of the action were downloaded and in the hands of Marines and the NCIS.

# Some of the insurgents involved in planning the attack and firing at Marines during a daylong engagement have been apprehended and are in custody.


Much of the story claiming what really happened in the aftermath of the IED explosion was reported by the Washington Post on June 11. NewsMax can now reveal the rest of the story about what really happened at Haditha.

In order to fully understand what happened last Nov. 19, it is important to know what kind of city Haditha is.

"We require more manpower to cover this area the way we need to," one military official told the Los Angeles Times. One Knight Ridder reporter called Haditha, a town of about 100,000 people, "an insurgent bastion," reporting that "insurgents blend in with the residents, setting up cells in their homes next to those belonging to everyday citizens, some of them supportive."

Knight Ridder said that around the time of an August attack, when a total of 20 U.S. Marines were killed in two days, "several storefronts were lined with posters and pictures supporting al-Qaida. … "There is no functioning police station and the government offices are largely vacant. The last man to call himself mayor relinquished the title earlier this year after scores of death threats from insurgents."

According to an August 2005 story in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Haditha, under the nose of an American base, "is a miniature Taliban-like state. Insurgents decide who lives and dies, which salaries get paid, what people wear, what they watch and listen to."

When the Marines first went into the city, they were aware of the tight control insurgents exercised over Haditha. They discovered that the insurgents had freshly paved over dirt roads leading into town under the auspices of civic works projects.

They were, according to a NewsMax source, "beautiful asphalt-surfaced roads" that even included painted lines. The only problem, the source recalled, was that insurgents had laid more than 100 mega-IEDs under that asphalt. And, in order to avoid having to change batteries in the triggering devices, they had wired them into the city power lines lining the road.

It is important to remember that the so-called details of the alleged massacre came from Iraqis and residents of Haditha, a city run by insurgents who have those residents not allied with them under their bloody thumbs.

In the Post story, an attorney for Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, 26, said that his client told him that several civilians were killed Nov. 19 when his squad went after insurgents who were firing at them from inside a house. He insisted there was no vengeful massacre, but he described a house-to-house hunt that went tragically awry in the middle of a chaotic battlefield.

"It will forever be his position that everything they did that day was following their rules of engagement and to protect the lives of Marines," Neal A. Puckett, who represents Wuterich in the ongoing investigations into the incident, told the Post. "He’s really upset that people believe that he and his Marines are even capable of intentionally killing innocent civilians."

According to the Post, Wuterich told his attorney in initial interviews over nearly 12 hours that the shootings were the unfortunate result of a methodical sweep for enemies in a firefight. Two attorneys for other Marines involved in the incident said Wuterich’s account is consistent with those they had heard from their clients.

Wrote the Post: "On Nov. 19, Wuterich’s squad left its headquarters at Firm Base Sparta in Haditha at 7 a.m. on a daily mission to drop off Iraqi army troops at a nearby checkpoint. "It was like any other day, we just had to watch out for any other activity that looked suspicious," said Marine Cpl. James Crossan, 21, in an interview from his home in North Bend, Wash. He was riding in the four-Humvee convoy as it turned left onto Chestnut Road, heading west at 7:15 a.m.

"Shortly after the turn, a bomb buried in the road ripped through the last Humvee. The blast instantly killed the driver, Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20. Wuterich, who was driving the third Humvee in the line, immediately stopped the convoy and got out, Puckett told the Post, adding that while Wuterich was evaluating the scene, Marines noticed a white unmarked car full of "military-aged men" lingering near the bomb site. When Marines ordered the men to stop, they ran; Puckett said it was standard procedure at the time for the Marines to shoot suspicious people fleeing a bombing, and the Marines opened fire, killing four or five men.

"The first thing he thought was it could be a vehicle-borne bomb or these guys could be ready to do a drive-by shooting," Puckett said, explaining that the Marines were on alert for such coordinated, multistage attacks.

According to Puckett, as Wuterich began briefing the platoon leader, 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. After a discussion with the platoon leader, they decided to clear the house, according to Wuterich’s account.

"There was a threat, and they went to eliminate the threat," Puckett said.

A four-man team of Marines, including Wuterich, kicked in the door and found a series of empty rooms, noticing quickly that there was one room with a closed door and people rustling behind it, Puckett said. They then kicked in that door, tossed a fragmentation grenade into the room, and one Marine fired a series of "clearing rounds" through the dust and smoke, killing several people, Puckett said.

The Marine who fired the rounds - Puckett said it was not Wuterich - had experience clearing numerous houses on a deployment in Fallujah, where Marines had aggressive rules of engagement.

Although it was almost immediately apparent to the Marines that the people dead in the room were men, women, and children – most likely civilians – they also noticed a back door ajar and believed that insurgents had slipped through to a house nearby, Puckett said. The Marines stealthily moved to the second house, kicking in the door, killing one man inside and then using a fragmentation grenade and more gunfire to clear another room full of people, he said.

Wuterich, not having found the insurgents, told the team to stop and headed back to the platoon leader to reassess the situation, Puckett said, adding that his client knew a number of civilians had just been killed.

As already stated, the Haditha massacre story reported by Time magazine was based entirely on accounts from Iraqis with an ax to grind. The facts of what happened tell a different story. The real story, it will eventually be revealed, is backed up by evidence Time didn’t know existed. It gives the lie to the idea that there was anything like a massacre in Haditha on Nov. 19. Here, for the first time, is the truth about what happened.

NewsMax can verify Wuterich’s account. The site of the IED explosion was in an area well known as an insurgent stronghold, where as many as 50 IEDs were found previously, and from where, on two previous occasions, insurgents launched small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar attacks on K Company.

Within five minutes of the blast, Marines on the scene reported they were receiving small-arms fire. Within 30 minutes of the blast, and while the house-clearing was still under way, an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team en route to the site came under small-arms fire in a known insurgent tactic to ambush first responders.

At the same time, just 30 minutes after the house-clearing, an intelligence unit arrived to question the Marines involved in the house-clearing operation. NewsMax sources say the behavior of the Marines involved gave them no reason to believe anything but what they had been told.

At about the same time a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) arrived over the blast area and from that moment on, for the entire day , the UAV transmitted views of the engagement to the company command site, battalion headquarters, the regimental HQ, and the division HQ. What the UAV captured was a view of Marines in their perimeter, as they went about doing house-clearing. It was then vectored to the surrounding area to catch any fleeing insurgents. It showed four insurgents fleeing the neighborhood, loading weapons into their car, and linking up with their partners (the ones that had conducted the ambush on the EOD team).

Knowing what we now know about Wuterich’s account, these fleeing insurgents were most likely the same ones who left through the back door of the house he was clearing.

There are photos of this, and they show the insurgents getting back into their car after loading the weapons .The UAV then followed them south to their safe house. From that point forward, until about 6 p.m., the safe house was hit by bombs and an assault by a K Company squad. The UAV followed the insurgents who had been inside through town.

The final tally for these engagements was two insurgents killed by direct fire, one killed by GBU bombs, and one detained. The entire action was followed by the UAV overhead.

Keep in mind, the entire action was followed by keeping the UAV overhead all day.



The Haditha "massacre" being referred to is the 30 minutes to one hour that took place first thing in the morning. The rest of the day’s activities, in fact, confirmed the nature of the morning’s attack.
It is clear that the entire incident was planned and carried out by insurgents who detonated the IED, and then, in a familiar tactic, attacked the Marines responding to the blast – deliberately putting civilians at risk.

This is what happened in Haditha that day. It was a daylong engagement with armed insurgents that involved civilian casualties who died as a result of being caught in the middle of a firefight. It had been reported as a blast followed by a TIC – Marine Corps terminology for "Troops in Contact." In other words, gunfire directed at the Marines.

As the battalion went about compiling information on the insurgents’ identities and determining who had been involved in the attack, its actions in the ensuing weeks resulted in the detention of several insurgents who masterminded the attack, and who remain incarcerated in Abu Ghraib prison today.





If what Newsmax says they have been told by "military sources" is true, then there has been some very selective leaking going on hitherto.

It has been previously reported (by the even less reliable Washington Post) that there was a UAV on the scene and that it did video much of the events. (See WP article in the comments below.)

But I have to say that all of this sounds almost too good to be true.

 

[busybody..]

The rush to impose judgment

Fred Barnes takes a look at "the My Lai lie" -- that is, the rush by the MSM to portray Haditha as another My Lai massacre before the facts are known. That rush was epitomized, as one would expect, by Chris Matthews in this exchange with Rep. Murtha:

"Was this My Lai?" Matthews interjected, referring to the slaughter of more than 300 civilians by American soldiers in Vietnam in 1968. "Was this a case of--when you say cold blood, Congressman, a lot of people think you're basically saying you have got some civilians sitting in a room [or] out in a field and they're executed."
"That's exactly what happened," Murtha replied.


In reality, as Barnes shows, Murtha did not know what happened, but that didn't not slow his rush to condemn American troops. Nor was Time Magazine deterred by regard for the facts in its coverage. As Barnes notes, it has been forced to issue multiple corrections in connection with respect to Haditha.

The subtitle of Barnes' piece is "behind the coverage of Haditha." What's actually behind the coverage of Haditha is the same thing that's behind the MSM's overall coverage of Iraq -- a desire to portray Iraq as another Vietnam. The lessons that the mainstays of the MSM took from Vietnam (including ambivalence or worse about America) were, from an ideological standpoint, life altering. The ideology that emerged, and then calcified, is just about the entire legacy that this generation of left-liberals hopes to pass on. Thus, an enormous psychological need exists to view Iraq as a confirmation of the "lessons" of Vietnam, and to attempt to impose that view and those lessons on the public.

That's the main reason why the MSM was calling our invasion of Iraq (one of the most successful in history) a quaqmire after two days, and that's why any hint of an atrocity is instantly equated with My Lai. In truth, the MSM isn't rushing to judgment. Its judgments have been made in advance of events and the only rush is to impose them.

Certainly, the MSM is also motivated by the desire to portray events in Iraq in the worst possible light, and this motive alone probably would be powerful enough to invoke specious comparisons to Vietnam. But I beleive the need to validate and perpetuate the Vietnam syndrome is an even stronger force.

 

[busybody..]

AIM: “Time Magazine Massacres the Truth”
June 27th, 2006
From Accuracy In Media:


Time’s Tim McGirk

Time Magazine Massacres the Truth

By Roger Aronoff | June 26, 2006

Was Time lied to by the Hammurabi boys, or did they embellish the story on their own?
Time magazine’s story of an alleged Marine massacre in Haditha, Iraq, has been falling apart.

Thanks to Time and Rep. John Murtha, the name "Haditha" has gained signature status as an American atrocity, even though the facts are not in. Haditha has even been compared to the My Lai massacre, in which U.S. forces killed a group of Vietnamese, during the Vietnam War. But as a media story, "Haditha" is beginning to look more like Operation Tailwind, a story that sounded sensational and damaging to U.S. forces before it was exposed as a fraud. The Haditha massacre story could turn out to be as phony as the Bush National Guard documents that scandalized CBS News.

Although Tailwind was primarily a CNN fiasco, one thing both stories have in common is Time magazine, CNN’s partner in the Tailwind story. Another is that they are both stories that make extremely serious allegations against the U.S. military, based on highly questionable sources, presented in a deceitful manner.

Haditha is a town in Iraq that had remained a haven for Sunni insurgents and foreign jihadists. On the morning of November 19, 2005, according to Time, U.S. forces were involved in deliberately killing Iraqi civilians. But Time has already had to correct and amend its coverage on several occasions, and on issues that are very substantive, and that raise serious questions about the likely truth of the charges. There are also serious questions about the motives behind the reporting.

What everyone agrees on is that at 7:15 a.m. that morning, a powerful improvised explosive device (IED) exploded as a convoy of Marine Humvees was passing by, killing Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas, said to be the most popular member of the squad of Kilo Company. What happened next is that in a series of combat actions, 24 Iraqis were killed. According to the lawyer for Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, an eight-year Marine who led the squad, 23 died at a traffic stop, and in three nearby houses. A 24th was killed while fleeing from a house. This is where the stories diverge.

According to alleged eyewitnesses who spoke to Time magazine reporters, the killings were in cold blood, sometimes point blank, and included women, children and the elderly. But according to Wuterich and other Marines, the deaths resulted from a firefight with terrorists. Following the IED explosion, he says, they set up a defensive perimeter. A car drove by with five Iraqi men inside, and when ordered, in Arabic, to halt, they got out of the car and began to run. The Marines shot and killed them all. They had considered their running to indicate hostile intent.

Then a shot came from one of the houses. They then decided to clear the houses along that block. They used grenades to "prep" the first house, before going in. They acknowledged killing the Iraqis over a period of several hours, but deny charges that civilians were lined up and executed. They reported the incident up the chain of command, and said there had been collateral damage, meaning civilian deaths. The next day, the 2nd Marine Division issued a statement saying that 15 Iraqis had been killed by an IED and firefight. That story, based on apparent miscommunication, wasn’t true. Wuterich insists that he never said the Iraqis had been killed as a result of an IED.

Time broke the story in March, some four months after the incident. One of their sources was described as a "journalism student" and "a young local man" who said he shot video of the aftermath of the incident and at the morgue. Time originally reported that "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." They later amended the story, and said in note at the end of the article that "In fact, Human Rights Watch has no ties or association with the Hammurabi Human Rights Group."

It turns out that the "young" journalist is 43-year-old Taher Thabet al Hadithi, and a co-founder of the Hammurabi Human Rights Group. At the time, he was also one of its only two members. Many have questioned the timing—why the charges were made much later. In an editorial, the Washington Times noted that although Hadithi claims to have witnessed the Marines killing civilians, and that he videotaped the aftermath on the following day, he waited at least two months before bringing his tape to the attention of the media. The Times noted that Hammurabi’s other founder, Abdul-Rahman al Mashhadani, failed to mention the alleged massacre during an interview with the Institute for War and Peace in December.

A Reuters article quoted a lawyer for one of the Marines being investigated as saying that that the two "employees" of Hammurabi have family members "in local prisons for insurgent activities." They deny this but questions remain about the nature of this "human rights" organization. At this point, it would not be beyond the pale to suggest that it could be a terrorist front organization. But all the facts are not in.

Was Time lied to by the Hammurabi boys, or did they embellish the story on their own? How well did Time vet the source of the tape they were shown before going forth with the story?

Making the initial charges sound extremely damaging, Time had reported that "one of the most damning pieces of evidence investigators have in their possession, John Sifton of Human Rights Watch told Time’s Tim McGirk, is a photo, taken by a Marine with his cell phone that shows Iraqis kneeling—and thus posing no threat—before they were shot." Sifton later said that he has no first-hand knowledge of that photo, and that it appears to him that "Time Magazine mixed up their reporting, possibly conflating and then confusing what I said with what others had reported."

When Time showed the video to military officials in January, it set in motion a series of investigations. One reportedly concluded that Marine officers failed to ask the right questions, but that nothing in the report indicated a "knowing cover-up." Instead, it said, that the officers involved up the chain-of-command had not demanded "a thorough investigation" of the events that took place.

As to what took place and how this happened, it has been turned over to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), which will determine whether or not the troops broke any laws, or acted within the parameters of their duty and training.

It has become clear that the terrorists don’t hesitate to use women and children as human shields, and that they have learned how to manipulate the media to gain sympathy in a campaign to break the will of the U.S. and its allies. Clearly, such a campaign could utilize fake videos and bribing or threatening people to tell lies about the Americans.

If the Time account completely collapses, much credit will have to go to the blog Sweetness & Light, which has been analyzing every twist and turn, noting how Time has been forced to repeatedly correct aspects of the story. It has focused some critical attention on the curious performance of Time reporter Tim McGirk, who "broke" the Haditha massacre story.

The American Thinker website has gone so far as to ask, "Is Tim McGirk the new Mary Mapes?" Mapes, of course, is the former CBS News producer who fell for the bogus Bush National Guard document and put it on the air. She left the network in disgrace, and her accomplice, Dan Rather, who narrated the Mapes report for the CBS 60 Minutes II program, is leaving under a cloud as well.

Time magazine insists that it engages in professional journalism, but Accuracy in Media recently caught its top reporters fabricating part of an interview conducted with National Intelligence Director John Negroponte. No apology was offered in that case.

This information is already familiar to the readers here.

But it can’t be repeated enough.