 |
SwiftVets.com
Service to Country
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
SBD
Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2004
Posts: 1022
|
 Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 6:25 am Post subject: Reuters Cameraman in Haditha-No Mention of Massacre |
 |
|
| Quote: | ABC News Online Australia ^ | November 20, 2005 | Reuters
Posted at Free Republic on 06/07/2006 10:58:33 PM PDT by SBD1
US details Haditha shoot-out
A roadside bomb that killed a US Marine in the restive town of Haditha on Saturday also killed 15 Iraqi civilians and led to intense clashes with insurgents.
The powerful bomb detonated as a US military convoy was passing through the town, which is 220 kilometres north-west of Baghdad.
The US military says immediately after the blast, gunmen opened fire on the convoy.
US and Iraqi soldiers returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another in a firefight.
A cameraman working for Reuters in Haditha says bodies had been left lying in the street for hours after the attack.
He says the town has been virtually shut down for the past two days as US and Iraqi forces try to impose order.
US troops have been trying for months to quell the insurgency in Haditha and other Sunni Arab towns on the Euphrates.
It was suspected several months ago that Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was hiding out in the area.
The casualties from Saturday's blast raised the death toll from attacks across Iraq over the past three days to at least 166.
Sunni-led insurgents are stepping up their battle against US and Iraqi forces ahead of parliamentary elections in December.
- Reuters |
SBD |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
SBD
Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2004
Posts: 1022
|
| Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 8:54 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: | Marine Corps Times
October 24, 2005 Monday
SECTION: FAST TRACK; Pg. 9
LENGTH: 632 words
HEADLINE: Around the Corps
BODY:
Iraq
RCT--2 links car bomb to video evidence
Members of Regimental Combat Team 2 found a video camera in the possession of three men stopped at a vehicle checkpoint northeast of Haditha, Iraq, on Oct. 12, according to a 2nd Marine Division news release.
Minutes later, a similar white, four--door sedan approached the checkpoint. U.S. forces guarding the checkpoint used hand and arm gestures to signal the vehicle to stop, but the car continued to accelerate toward the checkpoint, even after warning shots were fired, according to the release. The vehicle detonated shortly after the first shots were fired, killing the driver.
When the video camera was inspected, it yielded several minutes of footage showing one of the men from the first
sedan speaking to the driver of the car that detonated. The Marines said videotaping suicide car bombings is an insurgent propaganda tactic used to spread fear and intimidate Iraqi citizens.
Earlier, Iraqi Security Forces discovered an insurgent propaganda center in Haditha. The site raided by Iraqi forces included "numerous prepared al--Qaida in Iraq compact discs and audio tapes, three computers, several printers, banner makers, multi--disk copiers and thousands of [blank] disks and tapes," according to an Oct. 10 Stars and Stripes newspaper report. |
SBD |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
becca1223
PO3
Joined: 23 Aug 2004
Posts: 293
Location: Colonial Heights, VA
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 4:07 pm Post subject: Haditha: Is McGirk the New Mary Mapes? |
|
|
| Quote: | Haditha: Is McGirk the New Mary Mapes?
June 9th, 2006
Evidence accumulates of a hoax in Haditha. The weblog Sweetness & Light has done an estimable service gathering together the articles which cast substantial doubt on the charge of a massacre of civilians at Haditha . Because the blog is too busy gathering and fisking the news, I offered and the publisher accepted my offer to put what he has uncovered in a narrative form.
Having done so, I can tell you that the story has a whiff of yet another mediagenic scandal like the TANG memos or the Plame “outing.” While the Marines quite correctly will not comment on the case pending the outcome of their investigation, I am not bound by those rules, and I will sum up the story for you.
(a) On November 20, 2005, Reuters reported that on the previous day an IED killed a US Marine and 15 civilians in Haditha, a town known to be a center of the insurgency, a town as hostile to our forces as the better known Fallujah was. Reuters reported that “immediately after the blast, gunmen opened fire on the convoy” and US and Iraqi forces returned fire, killing 8 insurgents and wounding another in the fight. The paper further reported that “A cameraman working for Reuters in Haditha says bodies had been left lying in the street for hours after the attack.” Reuters never named this cameraman but he was almost undoubtedly Ali al-Mashhadani.
(b) Ali al-Mashhadani had been imprisoned for five months before his report because of his ties to insurgents. He was subsequently placed under another 12 days in detention for being a security threat.
(c) 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.
A key source for McGirk’s report that US Marines in Haditha had deliberately attacked civilians was Thaer al-Hadithi. whom McGirk inexplicably described as “a budding journalism student”. He is a middle-aged man, and was subsequently described by the AP as an “Iraqi investigator.”
McGirk also failed to note that Hadithi is “a member and spokesman for the Hammurabi.” The chairman of Hammurabi Organization and Hadithi’s partner in publicizing the “massacre” is Abdul–Rahman al-Mashhadani. It is unknown if he is related to Ali al-Mashhadani but their names suggest a possible relationship, and it beggars belief that as Sweetness& Light notes,
“Abdel Rahman al-Mashhadani just happened to be given a video by and unnamed local. And that he then turned it over to Ali al-Mashhadani who just happens to make videos for Reuters.”
Hadithi’s story is that was staying near to one of the two houses where the massacre occurred and saw it with his own eyes. According to his version of events he waited one day to videotape what had occurred, though apparently nothing prevented his doing so from the very window he “watched” it from as it took place. More troubling is why he waited months to turn the tape over to anyone.
The actions of his partner al-Mashhadani are equally puzzling. On December 15, 2005 Mashhadani was interviewed by the Institute for War and Peace which described him as “an election monitor.” In that interview he expressed great satisfaction with the election turnout (which in fact was terribly low in Haditha). Why did he not mention to this apparently sympathetic group one word about the supposed “atrocity” which he claimed had occurred three months earlier?
Hammurabi apparently did share the video in March with the largely Soros-funded Human Rights Watch which in turn provided it to Time.
(d) The videotape. On March 21, 2006 Reuters reported that Hadithi and Mashhadani’s organization, the Hammurabi Organization, had provided the organization was a copy of a videotape showing corpses lined up in the Haditha morgue, claiming these were the bodies of civilians deliberately killed by the Marines. Aside from the suspiciously-timed release of the video and the fact that chairman al-Mashhadani had never mentioned the incident or the tape in December when he was interviewed, the video shows people removing bodies from a home, a report at odds with the Reuters report the day after the incident which spoke of bodies lying in the street.
(e) The witnesses to the “massacre”
(1) The Doctor.
In the March 27 report, McGirk quotes the local doctor:
Dr. Wahid, director of the local hospital in Haditha, who asked that his family name be withheld because, he says, he fears reprisals by U.S. troops, says the Marines brought 24 bodies to his hospital around midnight on Nov. 19. Wahid says the Marines claimed the victims had been killed by shrapnel from the roadside bomb. “But it was obvious to us that there were no organs slashed by shrapnel,” Wahid says. “The bullet wounds were very apparent. Most of the victims were shot in the chest and the head–from close range.”
Another report however, indicates the doctor bore considerable animus to the US troops.
(2)The Iraqi eye-witnesses.
In “Haditha: Reasonable Doubt,” Andrew Walden describes how a similar case against British soldiers fell apart , describing the Arabic “blood money” tradition which hardly is as exotic as it sounds. Ask the American Trial Lawyers Association.
Reports of the eyewitnesses are conflicting and incredible. Al-Haditha was the source of a report by the AP on the death of a man whom the Washington Post quoted 10 times as an eyewitness on May 27,six months after his reported death, and the young girl “survivor” has given between two and four utterly inconsistent versions of the events.
(3) The American eye witnesses.
There are two American witnesses who have spoken out. Despite the press spin, neither has a first hand account of the events.
Lance Cpl. James Crossnan is the source of some very selective quotes on the incident. He, however, was wounded in the IED explosion with killed the US Marine Martin Terrazas. He was evacuated from the scene and saw none of the after-action.
And then there is Lance Cpl. Ryan Briones. He helped evacuate Crossnan and took bodies to the morgue. He was not an eyewitness. He claims he took pictures of the bodies at the morgue and has made various statements about what happened to the pictures and his camera. Aside from the fact that he is not an eyewitness, and his claims about his photographs seem unlikely, his story remained unuttered until he was arrested for stealing a truck, driving under the influence and crashing the stolen vehicle into a house. It was then for the first time that he claimed post traumatic distress and pointed to Haditha as the source of that stress. (His report of taking the bodies to the morgue, moreover, seems inconsistent with the first Reuters report that there were 15 bodies left lying in the street the day after the incident.)
The sum and substance of this thumbnail sketch on the Haditha claims is that it follows so closely the template for the TANG and Plame stories. Take a reporter with an anti-Administration agenda, an interested group (think of the Mashhadanis as the VIPS in the Plame case or Burkett and Lucy Ramirez in the TANG case) and a story too good to be checked and circumstances where the people attacked are limited in what they can quickly respond to and you get a story which smells to me like it will soon be unraveled.
This time, I’m betting the consequences to the press which rushed to judgment will be more disastrous than it was to Dan Rather. I surely hope so.
Clarice Feldman is an attorney in Washington, DC and a frequent contributor.
The American Thinker |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
fortdixlover
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 12 May 2004
Posts: 1476
|
| Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 12:02 am Post subject: Re: Haditha: Is McGirk the New Mary Mapes? |
|
|
| becca1223 wrote: | | Quote: | Haditha: Is McGirk the New Mary Mapes?
June 9th, 2006 |
|
McGirk may be the new John Kerry.
If this turns out to be a hoax, the Marines (and ex-Marines) will have a little business with our 'brave' MSM 'heroes.'
-- FDL
_________________
"Millions For Defense, Not One Cent For Tribute" - Thomas Jefferson on paying ransom to Muslim corsairs (pirates). |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
3rd gen Navy
Lieutenant
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 227
Location: Gainesville, Fl.
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 8:49 pm Post subject: Haditha-the Other Boot Drops |
|
|
Thanks for this Becca----it really should get wider dissmenation...
_________________
Warm Regards,
Sean G. Smith,
RN, BSN, EMT-B, U.S. Navy, 1994 - 2003.
BS Biology, Business Administration, Nursing
The Deal with Life: Make decisions based on what you might gain, not on what you may lose.
!!!!!! LET THE WILD RUMPUS BEGIN !!!!!! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
dcornutt
PO3
Joined: 26 Aug 2004
Posts: 267
Location: Brooklyn, NY
|
| Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 4:16 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Did you note...that the report says the bodies were lieing in the "street"?? Not houses. In the street. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
dcornutt
PO3
Joined: 26 Aug 2004
Posts: 267
Location: Brooklyn, NY
|
| Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 4:18 pm Post subject: Re: Reuters Cameraman in Haditha-No Mention of Massacre |
|
|
| SBD wrote: | | Quote: | ABC News Online Australia ^ | November 20, 2005 | Reuters
US details Haditha shoot-out
A roadside bomb that killed a US Marine in the restive town of Haditha on Saturday also killed 15 Iraqi civilians and led to intense clashes with insurgents.
The powerful bomb detonated as a US military convoy was passing through the town, which is 220 kilometres north-west of Baghdad.
The US military says immediately after the blast, gunmen opened fire on the convoy.
US and Iraqi soldiers returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another in a firefight.
A cameraman working for Reuters in Haditha says bodies had been left lying in the street for hours after the attack. ......
- Reuters |
SBD |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
