Jun 09 2006
Haditha: The Media As Benedict Arnold
Our good friend Clarice Feldman has compiled a listing of key events discovered by the blog Sweetness & Light from the Haditha charade that exposes the US news media as an out and out ally of the terrorist propaganda efforts. The news coming from Haditha is not one of massacre by US forces, it is of betrayal and alliances with our enemies by our media. A snippet:
Tim McGirk of Time wrote about the incident at Haditha for the March 27 issue of the magazine. He unsuccessfully lobbied his editors to use the term “massacre†in the story. McGirk seems hardly a neutral reporter. He spent the first Thanksgiving after 9/11 in Afghanistan dining with the Taliban and concluding of this celebratory meal:
Our missing colleagues finally arrive, and I leave thinking that maybe this evening wasn’t very different from the original Thanksgiving: people from two warring cultures sharing a meal together and realizing, briefly, that we’re not so different after all.
Right, Tim. We all want to enslave women, bend the world to Sharia law, behead nonbelievers and otherwise carry on the honored traditions of the Taliban.
What we need is an investigation into the news media for allowing themselves or knowingly participating in this lie and slander against our troops. Anyone who knew there were issues with the people making claims should be called to explain why they hid these issues from us. It is time to demand minimal standards from the media and then challenge them when they cannot meet these standards. And if they cannot meet these standards, then they cannot be treated with any special priveleges by our government that we the people provide to the media.
Addendum:Â Seems great minds think alike – not that I am a great mind of course.
Well, certainly nothing wrong with your thinking on this story, AND they want a Shield Law, so no matter what US intelligence some traitor gives them, they can publish it free of fear. Doen’t matter if it kills Americans or costs us Billions, get the word out, help the enemy, make the US president look bad,, play gotcha. They don’t need a shield law in these cases, we need to use the lynch law.
That was what I disagreed with you on the Ann Coulter episode. Here you have a bunch of, yes, victims, using that victimhood to blast Bush and blame it all on the USA, even Bush knew in advance crap, BUT NOOO, we can’t say anything bad about the victims. As long as they are just victims, then we shouldn’t, but when they use the victimhood as a shield, as the news people want to do, THEN THEY ARE FAIR GAME and who better to load up and shoot at them, our National treasure, Ann Coulter.
I’ll try to put it in context, and it may not be exactly right, but.
Read all those things, that say McGirk said, and attribute them to the Jersey Girls. Then they should get a free ride? don’t say anything bad about them? I don’t think so.
I don’t believe for one second that American soldiers killed children. Only a fake story could make that allegation, a Muslim fake story.
I would like to thank Clarice for doing this article. There has been a lot of work done over at S&L and it is great someone put the gist of it together into a narrative.
There is one thing that has bothered me all along about Haditha. Had Marines gone berzerk on the population there, why would the number of killed be limited to 15? Considering the firepower available to these warriors, they had the potential to dispatch dozens of people in very short order.
If you take into perspective what was going on in Haditha that day, things might look a little different. Consider that in addition to the action that Kilo company was engaged in, there was another group only 600 yards or so up the road engaged in a protracted firefight that reportedly included Harrier aircraft performing airstrikes in support of troops pinned down by insurgent fire.
If you take into account the entire scope of actions taking place in Haditha that day, it appears entirely likely that there would be 15 bodies in the morgue. When you have an insurgency that hides among the civilian population, uses homes as fighting positions, engages our troops from locations occupied by civilians, and uses the resulting civilian casualties for their own propaganda purposes, one has to suspect the version of events that the press has been repeating.
15 people probably represent the occupants of two homes as many Iraqis live in large extended family units. While nothing I have said here is proof of anything, it speaks to what is likely based on our experiances in fighting there. Had a group of marines gone medieval on the population, they could have done a lot more damage and frankly, I would expect a lot more casualties. The level of casualties we are seeing on Haditha that day is consistant with the level of violence occurring and isn’t out of line with casualty rates seen from collateral damage when air strikes are ordered on insurgents in a populated town.
The issue of massacre was apparently never brought up by local leaders during subsequent meetings with US forces.
The issue if massacre was apparently never brought up by local witnesses in speaking to media and anti-war groups until many months subsequent to the event.
The issue of massacre was not brought up until the appearance of a video of mysterious origin.
When one steps back and looks at the overall picture, it is more likely this event is being created for propaganda purposes and civilians are going along with it in hopes of collecting a settlement from multinational forces and the civilian casualty numbers seen are consistant with what is normally experianced given the level and nature of activity in Haditha that day.
Oh and I found a reference to this over at Wizbang.
Found this on HuffPuff
“Representative John P. Murtha (D-Penn.), a former Marine and fierce critic of the Iraq war, emphasized, “We cannot win this. It is a civil war they are involved in. Al Qaeda is a small part of this.”
See how the Press always seems to add, a former Marine. He spent 4 yrs or less in the Marine Corp(active) the remainder all reserve time. Well, I spent 4 years in the Navy and 2 in the reserve and I don’t refer to myself as “a former Sailor” I am a veteran and that doesn’t give me a special license to criticize the Military. Yes I helped maintain that freedom for everyone, but at the same time, you hope that people use that freedom to acquire some good sense. I don’t think Murtha did, in fact, I consider him a traitor, not a patriot. I believe that traitor is defined as someone that gives aid and comfort to the enemy, especially in war time. This is Murtha.
Back to Ann Coulter, all your criticism of her seemed to be because she seemed to be talking about all widows of 9/11, well, now it comes out that, if you read the section in her book, she was “ONLY” referring to the Jersey Girls and she made that clear. The blame should be put where it is, that clueless far left Lauer.
Note to CrossP, hey I’ve been a little at disagreement with you on the illegal immigrant, but that comment just above is excellent. It is certainly a tragedy when innocent people get involved and killed, but for example the “civilians” in Zarqawi’s” safe house. I’m not sure they are innocent and wouldn’t that really be on Zarqawi’s shoulders and not the US military.
Anyhow, I’m looking for the “truth” to come out about Haditha and I hope it is not bad for the US Military. but I can say, if they are cleared it’ll be a cover up and if they’re guilty, it’ll be a massacre. Just can’t beat those Media guys, the name of the game is Bash Bush.
Rev. Ben Mathes, 53, whose son, 1st Lt. Adam Mathes, is Kilo company’s executive officer asked the following question.
“Why in the world would any young person want to continue to defend our county if that is what they are hearing?”
Rev. Ben, I believe the answer is very simple. These are young, brave, patriotic men and women that just want to do it. They love this country and what it stands for. There are many Pat Tillman’s in this country. It must be hard for some people to understand that some people do have a strong, deep heartfelt love for this country.
CrossP, thanks for the link to that article
S&L notes a couple of Time corrections to the original story and some lies still embedded in the report. http://www.sweetness-light.com/
There is just no way in hell any US Soldier is gonna be found guily of a massacre in Haditha, the more I look into it, the more it looks like it’s all Anti American hogwash
blowhard Murtha is sure gonna be disappointed.
I was talking about how the interview would have sounded to the average person watching a morning entertainment/news show that probably would have never heard of Ann Coulter, almost certainly never read the book, would have never heard of the term “Jersey Girls” before or in any way would have known what Ann was talking about.
The mind is a funny thing. You and I know the context of what she was talking about so we naturally took what she said in that context. If that context is unavailable to you, listening to her statement would have seemed horribly insensative and she came across as an ogre. All I am saying is that she should have taken a moment to frame the statement in its proper context for the benefit of the probably 90% of viewers that would not have known exactly to whom she was referring.
Conetxt si evrytghin
If Clarice Feldman, using just publicly available information, can get this much reasonable doubt, can you imagine what the actual defense attorneys are going to be doing.
I have always been suspicious of the Haditha story. It just didn’t “jive”.
Thank you Clarice, and big thanks to Sweetness & Light.
FE,
Well I owe you and everyone else who served a mighty big thank you for covering our butts.
Thanks – from the heart.
AJStrata
The Haditha situation also requires “conetxt”, and in that spirit perhaps we should revisit this 2005 story from the UK. I only learned of this story days ago on another blog and to the best of my recollection I do not recall the American MSM ever reporting in it:
“Paras cleared as Iraq trial collapses in £8m fiasco”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/04/nirq04.xml
The lede:
“The court martial of seven paratroopers accused of murdering an Iraqi teenager collapsed yesterday after the Royal Military Police investigation was condemned as “inadequate” and riddled with ‘serious omissions’…
“He strongly condemned the Special Investigations Branch of the RMP for making significant errors during its inquiry into the death of 18-year-old Nadhem Abdullah. He was said by his family to have died 15 hours after being assaulted by the defendants…
“Iraqi witnesses attending the paratroopers’ trial in Colchester were consistently found to have lied or exaggerated in statements. Michael Parroy, QC, one of the defence counsel, said: ‘They followed a trail of dollars up the aircraft steps to come here.’
The prosecution produced evidence matching blood stains on one soldier’s rifle with the dead teenager’s family DNA profile, but there was no post-mortem examination evidence, the body having been buried rapidly after death and never exhumed.
“Judge Blackett said the witnesses had admitted using the case to obtain money from the Army. They ‘frequently spoke of blood money and compensation to what were patently exaggerated claims’.”
End quote.
Coalition soldiers have been wrongly prosecuted for bogus war crimes in the past. That’s not speculation. It’s fact. It’s happened, not just in the US but in the UK as well. The question is whether it’s happening again.
TIME Issues Retractions About Their Haditha Story…
As many of us have been stating, this whole incident is starting to smell. Smell because the evidence isn’t adding up and the motives of the Iraqi’s involved are suspicious. This kind of thing just makes it stink even more.
……
The saddest part in all of this is that the military takes a hit no matter how it comes out. If they find that there is reason to take these individuals to court martial, it is bad for the obvious reasons. If they find there is insufficient credible evidence, the cry of “coverup” goes out. Either way, the military is left having to defend itself because of how the incident has been framed by people such as Jack Murtha in the media.
It isn’t fair to our service members and it isn’t fair to our citizens. Worse than unfair, it’s just plain wrong.
Allah who I love to pieces questioned what I said about Briones’ tale of taking pics at the morgue. It is from this article.
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?f882c1b8-aa42-431f-83a6-0066e7629ace
clarice:
I read that article and it was very interesting. The added motivation of compensation money might well have something to do with the entire incident.
I wonder about the whole thing too. Marines on a rampage could kill 24 people in about a minute and half, not hours of fighting. If it took hours, someone was shooting back.
FE:
Today on the radio I heard the DJ Ron Foster say that now that Zarqawi was dead the number one lunatic was gone. [ he added that they should change the name of his safe house to the not so safe house]…. But then he said that the number 2 might be Ann Coulter because she called 9/11 widows millionaire witches. That is the kind of thing that happens when you say stupid stuff like she did. Most people do not give a damn about the context, they just hear insensitive loud mouth right wing shrew. It is not helpful.
yeah, I know and sometimes it’s not even what they say, just who it is saying it.
It isn’t just on the Haditha issue either. So far just today I have seen on CNN one article today that exposed how we used cell phone tracking to follow certain people and an ABC article that exposed a full facial picture and full name of a tipster who gave us information eventually leading to Zarqawi’s demise. I put a diary entry up over on Red State, “Our Terrorist Media”. It is amazing the extent our media will go to prolong a war they see as hurting the political opposition. Cynical bastards.
Haditha a Hoax?…
Due to numerous inconsistencies, at the very least the credibility of these witnesses has to be questioned. Once again the MSM and specifically TIME has done a horrendous job of journalism.
The Strata-Sphere is as angry with the MSM as I am.
……
I apologize in advance for the shouting.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
THIS MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN
Murtha interested in majority leader post.
Please. If you are of sufficient means, donate to the campaign of Diana Irey and send this demented b*astard home for good.