Haditha and what the world is saying

This is my first post on Haditha.  I thought I might actually wait for the facts to come out before expressing an opinion, but it doesn't seem that anyone else feels the need for facts.  That is very unfortunate.  If these marines are guilty then I believe they should be tried and punished to the full extent of the law.  But that is a big "if" that has not been determined yet.  Also, I'm wondering if this entire thing is about money.

What are those who already have the marines convicted saying?  "Don't blame only the marines who shot those 24 people. They shouldn't have been there in the first place.  ...  The leadership is to blame... Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. These men started this unjust war."  *yawn*

Yes, according to the left everything that goes wrong in the world is caused by the "most dangerous man on the face of the earth".  No, they don't mean Iran's President Ahmadinejad, they mean United States President George W. Bush.

There have been reports that the marines may not have told the truth in the initial investigation and now  pieces of evidence that conflicted with the Marines story were death certificates that showed all the Iraqi victims had gunshot wounds, mostly to the head and chest."

But the Marines accounts to Colonel Watt, the marines said they took gunfire from the first of five residences they entered near the bomb site, according to the senior military official.  I want to know why it took so long for this to become public?  If these marines were taking fire, they had every right to return fire.  Also the marines were told that there were insurgents in these houses.

It is known now that the families of the victims were compensated with cash for their losses.  Is this a common practice to the civilian families that lose loved ones?  Is this entire thing about money?  If 99% of the information is coming from the Iraqis asking for cash, how accurate can it be?

In an interview Tuesday, Maj. Dana Hyatt, the officer who made the payments, said he was told by superiors to compensate the relatives of 15 victims, but was told that rest of those killed had been deemed to have committed hostile acts, leaving their families ineligible for compensation.

After the initial payments were made, however, those families demanded similar payments, insisting their relatives had not attacked the marines, Major Hyatt said.  source

Even U.S. news agencies are jumping on the "already guilty before an investigation" bandwagon:

Apparently, "justice" cannot come swiftly enough for the Times. In their rush to get to the punch line, the editorial staff can't even wait for the body of the essay to begin the arm-waving, choosing instead (lest we Americans, being notoriously hasty folk, lose patience 4 seconds into a one-page essay), to cram their main point into the subtitle : The military needs to speed up its investigation into why civilians were killed last fall in Haditha.

Don't forget Rep. John Murtha, who couldn't wait to get to a microphone to declare the marines guilty.  Bloggers seem to be the only ones putting this thing in the proper perspective. 

John Murtha, here's your cold blooded killer (Via Gateway Pundit). 

"John Murtha, if you quit beating down the US troops long enough, you might notice that a real cold blooded killer was arrested in Iraq on Monday."

Ahmed Hussein Dabash Samir al-Batawi.  Al-Batawi, who was arrested in Iraq on monday, has confessed to "hundreds of beheadings"... "hundreds of beheadings!"

My Lord, what kind of an animal performs "hundreds of beheadings!"

That, John Murtha, is cold blooded killing!

Qatar's Al Watan daily on May 31 said that the "new American massacre"  ...  was just one of many massacres carried out by the US forces "wherever they go", including Iraq.   

Yemen's Al Thawra commented on May 31 that the "American massacre" ...   was a sign of the collapsing "colonialist American scheme" and disintegration of the morale of US forces. 

Egypt's Al Gumhuriya said on May 29 that only a few days after US President George W. Bush admitted the torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib was the biggest American mistake in Iraq that an even bigger mistake was made ...  American marines had massacred Iraqi civilians in cold blood and without provocation constitute war crimes.

Get the picture, guilty by default because they are Americans.  Being an American seems to be the only reason some people need to declare us guilty.  I'm willing to wait for the evidence.  How about you?
Chickenhawk Express has an amazing article on "Time Magazine, Murtha and the Taxi Driver Incident in Haditha". I recommend you go read it all here.

For the first time today, I read both articles about Haditha written by Time Magazine. A few things that I have not heard before jumped out at me...

Others posting on this:

Anti-Idotarien Rottweiler
Blue Star Chronicles
Red Hot Cuppa Politics
Blue Crab Boulevard
Blogmeister
Ace in the Hole
Euphoric Reality
Funmurphy's The Blog
Gateway Pundit
Hillbilly White Trash
Captain's Quarters
Hot Air
In the Bullpen

Gina Gobb asks, "Shall We Skip the Trial and Go Straight to the Verdict?" John Burtis thinks Rep. Murtha has the handling of the Haditha incident backwards: "John Murtha – First the guilty verdict, then the trial."

Please remember there is Good News from Iraq every day and The Lone Voice seems to be the only one who covers it completely.  Go visit him and learn.

(Happy Blogiversary to SerandEz)

Comments

[Debbie]

Mujahideen Ryder, you are just wrong on this. Sorry but you didn’t do your homework on this one. Please, when you read the following proof, take this repulsive bunch of lies down from your site.

That video is by a fake, a liar, a hater of this country and the military.

This man is an imposter. He has never been in any branch of US military. He did this for publicity. I can give you any number of links to disprove what he is saying and who he is. Common Sense Wonder is just one site, Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, Blackfive, plus news accounts. Here is just one:

http://commonsensewonder.com/?p=698

"But it all looks to be false. None of it could have happened if, as Army spokesman Paul Boyce confirmed to Michelle Malkin, there is no record of the young man’s service. Credit goes to Mrs. Malkin and blogger cohorts at HotAir.com, who first grew suspicious hearing among other unlikelihoods that “MacBeth” claimed to have retired from both the Army Rangers and special operations by the age of 20. Mrs. Malkin queried Mr. Boyce, who responded that “At a minimum this story appears to have been concocted” and was probably “some sort of hoax.”
In some respects the outing doesn’t matter, since the damage is already done. The claims are all over the Internet — presumably all over the Middle East, too — of willfully ordered atrocities. Leftist groups like Iraq Veterans Against the War are distancing themselves from the fiasco. (Out, damned blog, I say!) But the claims are already out there.
This is not the first time a phony soldier has been exposed. Just two years ago columnist Richard Leiby caught Micah Wright, author of the antiwar “You Back the Attack! We’ll Bomb Who We Want!,” as a phony veteran."

Others:
http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=3979
http://hotair.com/archives/the-blog/2006/05/31/amvets-official-jesse-macbeth-tried-to-defraud-the-va/

Even his sister told the media he is a fake:
http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=3934

http://usconservatives.about.com/b/a/257235.html

Last but not least, Washington Times:
http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20060529-101507-3385r.htm

UPDATE: Mujahideen Ryder has taken the video down at his site. Thank you so much!

[Iraq Veteran Speaks out on War Crimes]

http://www.mujahideenryder.net/2006/06/02/iraq-veteran-speaks-out-on-war-crimes/

[Debbie]

Mrs. P., I have just finished reading all the posts at Sweetness & Light and reading your post. (I'm so behind in my reading, ugh!)

It is amazing to me that people just jump to the assumption that the American Marines at guilty -- no questions asked, no investsigation --. It's just sickening to me.

The 'doctor' involved in this does sound very suspicious to me. We have to remember that this place is/was full of terrorists (insurgents, whatever folks want to call them, they are killers).

A friend emailed me this morning. Her friend's grandson was shot by a 13 year old boy in Iraq. Shot and killed. Very likely the soldier was trying to help the boy and his town, I don't know the circumstances. But the boy just walks up and shoots the soldier.

Where is the MSM now? Why are they not reporting incidents like this where our guys are being murdered? And it IS murder. But that doesn't sell papers to the libs (America haters).

It just makes me so darned mad.

[Mrs. Peperium]

Debbie, have you visited Sweetness&Light today?

[Debbie]

I just read the articles you mentioned, Mrs. P, and they are interesting.

You would think that reporters who are actually there, who get taken in by the insurgents and have their lives threatened, would have a more reasonable report on the situation.

Several other bloggers are questioning the eye-witness reports from the children that supposedly survived. If you read them, it's like they are quoting a script. If these children were hiding under a bed, supposedly scared for their lives, how could they give a person-by-person, step-by-step, bullet-by-bullet account of everything that happened? (Example, one girl lists each person's name, where they were hit 'precisely', how many bullets they were hit with, right down the list. How could a child do this unless they were coached? Why did it take so long for this to be an issue?)

I hope the marines are punished if they are guilty, but if they were fired upon and had just cause to fire back, then so be it. This is war.

We know that the enemy doesn't hesitate to use women and children as bait, as bombers, as excuses for good PR.

[Mrs. Peperium]

Debbie, do you know anything about a Tim McGirk of Time? Google him up and find his Haditha story. According to him, it was Time that reported this story to the authorities based on Iraqis' accounts. Then Google him up with Thanksgiving with the Taliban. Note how he refers to our air force as the enemy.

[Ezzie]

Thanks!