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Was Haditha a fraud?

2006-06-10
By

There’s considerable evidence that the Haditha “massacre” may be a complete fabrication. We still aren’t completely sure what happened, but it’s become quite clear that many of the supposed eyewitnesses to this event are not credible.

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.”

If it turns out that there’s been a fraud perpetrated here, heads will roll, much as they did when Dan Rather reported on obviously fake Texas Air National Guard documents despite all the evidence that they were bogus.

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  • Eye Doc

    And, attacking Iraq was absolutely not a violation of international law. I would recommend you actually read the international law in question.

  • Eye Doc

    And, attacking Iraq was absolutely not a violation of international law. I would recommend you actually read the international law in question.

  • Eye Doc

    The TANG documents were forgeries for which Dan Rather was forced to resign. You don’t really believe that CBS would have forced Dan Rather and Mary Mapes out if they weren’t forgeries do you? They would have gone to the mat for them, no question about it. this is a good review of the subject:

    http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/007760.php

    It’s really stunning that you actually believe CBS is conservative! All three networks in the US are astoundingly leftist, and about 90% of television journalists voted against Bush in 2004.

    A network that presents forged documents just before the 2004 election in a blatant attempt to keep Bush from being re-elected can hardly be called conservative. Networks that dragged out an ancient George Bush DUI from decades ago prior to the 2000 election in a blatant attempt to keep Bush from being elected can hardly be conservative.

    Tom Brokaw threatening to walk off the air rather than read a true story about how Bill Clinton used to have Arkansas state troopers bring him prostitutes when he was governor can not be called a conservative.

    During election night in 2000 the staffers at NBC had to be warned to stop applauding every time they announced that Gore had won a particular state because the viewing audience could hear their clapping on the air. I would say that’s hardly a sign of political conservatism at NBC.

    All three networks ignoring and/or slandering the Swift Boat vets when what they were saying about Kerry was well documented, because they wanted Kerry to be elected is hardly a sign of conservatism.

    The list of how liberally biased the mainstream media in the US is goes on and on. It’s truly sickening.

    You also very clearly don’t understand anything about white phosphorus either. Please do yourself a favor and look it up.

    And to the other posters talking about other supposed atrocities, nice try at trying to change the subject, which is Haditha. I never said atrocities have never have occured. Unfortunately, in every war atrocities occur. In the case of Haditha though, there’s good reason to believe an atrocity really did NOT occur. We’ll have to wait and see.

  • Eye Doc

    The TANG documents were forgeries for which Dan Rather was forced to resign. You don’t really believe that CBS would have forced Dan Rather and Mary Mapes out if they weren’t forgeries do you? They would have gone to the mat for them, no question about it. this is a good review of the subject:

    http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/007760.php

    It’s really stunning that you actually believe CBS is conservative! All three networks in the US are astoundingly leftist, and about 90% of television journalists voted against Bush in 2004.

    A network that presents forged documents just before the 2004 election in a blatant attempt to keep Bush from being re-elected can hardly be called conservative. Networks that dragged out an ancient George Bush DUI from decades ago prior to the 2000 election in a blatant attempt to keep Bush from being elected can hardly be conservative.

    Tom Brokaw threatening to walk off the air rather than read a true story about how Bill Clinton used to have Arkansas state troopers bring him prostitutes when he was governor can not be called a conservative.

    During election night in 2000 the staffers at NBC had to be warned to stop applauding every time they announced that Gore had won a particular state because the viewing audience could hear their clapping on the air. I would say that’s hardly a sign of political conservatism at NBC.

    All three networks ignoring and/or slandering the Swift Boat vets when what they were saying about Kerry was well documented, because they wanted Kerry to be elected is hardly a sign of conservatism.

    The list of how liberally biased the mainstream media in the US is goes on and on. It’s truly sickening.

    You also very clearly don’t understand anything about white phosphorus either. Please do yourself a favor and look it up.

    And to the other posters talking about other supposed atrocities, nice try at trying to change the subject, which is Haditha. I never said atrocities have never have occured. Unfortunately, in every war atrocities occur. In the case of Haditha though, there’s good reason to believe an atrocity really did NOT occur. We’ll have to wait and see.

  • http://www.ciber-runa/ab amosbatto

    “The same goes for the other supposed atrocities you’ve mentioned, some of which have already been debunked, like the white phosphorus bullshit.”

    Dahr Jamail reported that the US military used white phosphorous in Fallujah within days after the fighting ended, but none of the US newspapers would carry the story. Then some US soldiers began reporting that they used it. Again the US press wouldn’t report on it. The US military repeatedly denied that it was using white phosphorous in Fallujah. Some people in the military grew concerned that they wouldn’t be allowed to use white phosforous ever again, so one of the Army journals wrote an article describing how it had been such an effective weapon in Fallujah. They probably wrote the article to force the military brass to admit that they were secretly using it, because they didn’t want it to be banned. That forced the issue out into the open. Then the military spokespeople admitted that they had use white phosphorous bombs, but claimed that it was only for illumination and non-human targets, which was quite ridiculous because you can’t drop white phosphorous bombs on a city filled with civilians and claim that people weren’t getting killed. Later the military admitted that they had used it against human targets but this is legal because white phosphorous is only an incendiary weapon, but it is not a chemical weapon. The US signed the 1995 Chemical Weapons Convention, but not the 1980 ban on Incendiary Weapons.

    All this was widely reported. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_use_in_Iraq See Gabriele Zamparini’s articles, linked in the footnotes of this article:
    http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ZAM20051130&articleId=1371
    Also see: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/08/1516227

    Dr. Hafid al-Dulaimi, head of Fallujah’s compensation commission, reports that 36,000 homes and 8,400 shops were destroyed in Fallujah. The destroyed homes would have sheltered about 200,000 people. Many thousand additional homes have been so badly damaged as to be uninhabitable. [see Steele and Jamail: "This Is our Guernica", Guardian (April 27, 2005)]. The military cordoned off the city cutting of water, electricity, and medical supplies, and food and prevented civilians from leaving the combat zone. The Geneva Conventions are very clear that these are violations.

    The US press hasn’t reported on efforts to investigate US and UK violations of the Geneva Conventions and other international law. For instance, this May 22, 2006 petition to the UN security council was totally ignored in the mainstream press:
    “NGOs Demand UN Security Council to Review Violations of International Law in Iraq & Crimes committed by US-UK Forces”
    http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23448

    Also the proceding of the World Tribunal Iraq in Istanbul, Turkey which documented war crimes were not reported in the mainstream US press. Some of the final statements at the tribunal:
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9278.htm

    The US military has a long history of deceiving the US public. Look at the lies about the use of napalm in Iraq. Initially, the military claimed that they weren’t using napalm in Iraq, despite all the eye-witness accounts that it was being used. Finally the evidence became overwhelming, so military then admitted that they were using MK-77, which is a modified form of napalm. The military sais that you can’t call it “napalm” because they had modified the formula so it would wash off more easily over time and cause less harm to the environment. Whatever you call it, the 1980 Convention against Incendiary Weapons still bans its use. The US was a signatory of this convention, but never ratified it, so we don’t abide by it. Most of the rest of the world looks on us as barbarians because we use these types of weapons. For this reason, our military was eager to deny using it.

    “And, if you really still think the TANG documents were not conclusively proven to be bogus, then you really need to be on anti-psychotic medication, because you are frankly delusional. First of all, they were proven to be forgeries. And second, do honestly think a liberal television network like CBS would sack Dan Rather if the documents weren’t fake? Get a grip on reality.”

    Please provide sources where these documents were conclusively proven to be forgeries. Mary Mapes book does a good job of disputing it. (See my previous post)

    Media bias is very subjective in how you measure it. For instance, Tim Groseclose and Jeffrey Milyo’s article “A Measure of Media Bias,” ranks CBS Evening News as having a bias measure on 70 on a scale where 0 is Bill Frist and 100 is Kennedy. There has been much questioning of the methodology. Many have noted that you could get the opposite results with a different measure of bias. For instance, the media watchdog group FAIR did an analysis of the coverage of the run-up to the War in Iraq in 2003: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1628
    It concludes that CBS didn’t interview or report on hardly anyone opposing the invasion of Iraq
    or questioning the inaccuracies in Colin Powell’s speech before the UN. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky do a marvelous job of analyzing the supposedly liberal media in the book _Manufacturing Consent_ and they overwhelmingly conclude that the US media reports US government sources without adequately questioning them. FAIR has done a number of studies on pro-government bias in US mainstream reporting. Eric Alterman says that the important thing is too look at who owns a media outlet and study how it reflects their wealthy interests. Here I think I see a decidedly bias. You won’t see much positive news on CBS about unions for instance. I’m a leftist and I see CBS as conservative, and most of my foreign friends agree. I have French and Swiss friends who are appalled by how bad our TV news is and how pro-US government it is. For instance, they could not believe that US news was not reporting that invading Iraq was a violation of international law. This is commonly reported in the rest of the world, but the US press doesn’t report on it.

  • amosbatto

    “The same goes for the other supposed atrocities you’ve mentioned, some of which have already been debunked, like the white phosphorus bullshit.”

    Dahr Jamail reported that the US military used white phosphorous in Fallujah within days after the fighting ended, but none of the US newspapers would carry the story. Then some US soldiers began reporting that they used it. Again the US press wouldn’t report on it. The US military repeatedly denied that it was using white phosphorous in Fallujah. Some people in the military grew concerned that they wouldn’t be allowed to use white phosforous ever again, so one of the Army journals wrote an article describing how it had been such an effective weapon in Fallujah. They probably wrote the article to force the military brass to admit that they were secretly using it, because they didn’t want it to be banned. That forced the issue out into the open. Then the military spokespeople admitted that they had use white phosphorous bombs, but claimed that it was only for illumination and non-human targets, which was quite ridiculous because you can’t drop white phosphorous bombs on a city filled with civilians and claim that people weren’t getting killed. Later the military admitted that they had used it against human targets but this is legal because white phosphorous is only an incendiary weapon, but it is not a chemical weapon. The US signed the 1995 Chemical Weapons Convention, but not the 1980 ban on Incendiary Weapons.

    All this was widely reported. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_use_in_Iraq See Gabriele Zamparini’s articles, linked in the footnotes of this article:
    http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ZAM20051130&articleId=1371
    Also see: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/08/1516227

    Dr. Hafid al-Dulaimi, head of Fallujah’s compensation commission, reports that 36,000 homes and 8,400 shops were destroyed in Fallujah. The destroyed homes would have sheltered about 200,000 people. Many thousand additional homes have been so badly damaged as to be uninhabitable. [see Steele and Jamail: "This Is our Guernica", Guardian (April 27, 2005)]. The military cordoned off the city cutting of water, electricity, and medical supplies, and food and prevented civilians from leaving the combat zone. The Geneva Conventions are very clear that these are violations.

    The US press hasn’t reported on efforts to investigate US and UK violations of the Geneva Conventions and other international law. For instance, this May 22, 2006 petition to the UN security council was totally ignored in the mainstream press:
    “NGOs Demand UN Security Council to Review Violations of International Law in Iraq & Crimes committed by US-UK Forces”
    http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23448

    Also the proceding of the World Tribunal Iraq in Istanbul, Turkey which documented war crimes were not reported in the mainstream US press. Some of the final statements at the tribunal:
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9278.htm

    The US military has a long history of deceiving the US public. Look at the lies about the use of napalm in Iraq. Initially, the military claimed that they weren’t using napalm in Iraq, despite all the eye-witness accounts that it was being used. Finally the evidence became overwhelming, so military then admitted that they were using MK-77, which is a modified form of napalm. The military sais that you can’t call it “napalm” because they had modified the formula so it would wash off more easily over time and cause less harm to the environment. Whatever you call it, the 1980 Convention against Incendiary Weapons still bans its use. The US was a signatory of this convention, but never ratified it, so we don’t abide by it. Most of the rest of the world looks on us as barbarians because we use these types of weapons. For this reason, our military was eager to deny using it.

    “And, if you really still think the TANG documents were not conclusively proven to be bogus, then you really need to be on anti-psychotic medication, because you are frankly delusional. First of all, they were proven to be forgeries. And second, do honestly think a liberal television network like CBS would sack Dan Rather if the documents weren’t fake? Get a grip on reality.”

    Please provide sources where these documents were conclusively proven to be forgeries. Mary Mapes book does a good job of disputing it. (See my previous post)

    Media bias is very subjective in how you measure it. For instance, Tim Groseclose and Jeffrey Milyo’s article “A Measure of Media Bias,” ranks CBS Evening News as having a bias measure on 70 on a scale where 0 is Bill Frist and 100 is Kennedy. There has been much questioning of the methodology. Many have noted that you could get the opposite results with a different measure of bias. For instance, the media watchdog group FAIR did an analysis of the coverage of the run-up to the War in Iraq in 2003: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1628
    It concludes that CBS didn’t interview or report on hardly anyone opposing the invasion of Iraq
    or questioning the inaccuracies in Colin Powell’s speech before the UN. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky do a marvelous job of analyzing the supposedly liberal media in the book _Manufacturing Consent_ and they overwhelmingly conclude that the US media reports US government sources without adequately questioning them. FAIR has done a number of studies on pro-government bias in US mainstream reporting. Eric Alterman says that the important thing is too look at who owns a media outlet and study how it reflects their wealthy interests. Here I think I see a decidedly bias. You won’t see much positive news on CBS about unions for instance. I’m a leftist and I see CBS as conservative, and most of my foreign friends agree. I have French and Swiss friends who are appalled by how bad our TV news is and how pro-US government it is. For instance, they could not believe that US news was not reporting that invading Iraq was a violation of international law. This is commonly reported in the rest of the world, but the US press doesn’t report on it.

  • Odysseus160

    Hal said, “the United States is the last best hope of the Earth.”

    Well, that’s your opinion, isn’t it? To paraphrase McDonalds, billions have been served, and billions differ …

  • Odysseus160

    Hal said, “the United States is the last best hope of the Earth.”

    Well, that’s your opinion, isn’t it? To paraphrase McDonalds, billions have been served, and billions differ …

  • Hal

    Mary Mapes is an idiot, and even her liberal over-the -top network fired her.

    And no one says the U.S. has never done anything wrong. That doesn’t change the fact that the United States is the last best hope of the Earth.

  • Hal

    Mary Mapes is an idiot, and even her liberal over-the -top network fired her.

    And no one says the U.S. has never done anything wrong. That doesn’t change the fact that the United States is the last best hope of the Earth.

  • http://www.ciber-runa/ab amosbatto

    “You have no idea at all what you’re talking. If you wanted to have any credibility at all you would do a little research.”

    It is you who need to do a little research. Read Mary Mapes’ _Truth and Duty: The Press, The President and the Privilege of Power_. She does a very good job defending why she still believes that the documents were authentic. See her interviews on Democracy Now!: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/09/163259
    http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/10/1434202&mode=thread&tid=25

    According to Maipes, the typesetting of the documents doesn’t prove that they weren’t authentic. And the experts aren’t in agreement about this. The secretary who was in charge of typing up these sorts of memos didn’t deny the authenticity of the memo. She just said that she couldn’t remember typing it. It is well documented that all sorts of Texas politicians at the time got their sons into the Texas National Guard to avoid Vietnam. Why don’t you think Bush Sr did this, when almost every major politician in Texas was doing the same? Do you contest the evidence that this was wide spread practice in Texas? Remember that a number of people have verified that this was happening. Do you contest the evidence that Bush didn’t complete his required national guard service and was given special permision to get out of completing it? Statistically it was nearly impossible to get into the Texas National Guard, and Bush had no special qualifications which ordinarily would have gotten him into the guard. So whether the CBS documents were authentic or not, this larger story that Bush used his political influence to get out of Vietnam was buried after the CBS the other evidence still indicates that Bush used his political influence

    “Only to someone who doesn’t care about the truth.”

    No, I care about the truth more than you. There was the truth that there were questionable documents obtained under questionable circumstances, but the larger truth is that Bush used his political influence to get out of going to Vietnam. The reality is that the press stopped looking at this larger truth, because CBS decided to run a segment where they used some questionable documents. Then Dan Rather got sacked despite the fact that he didn’t really do anything wrong. He followed correct procedure for checking these documents and he and the CBS staff obviously believed that the documents were authentic.

  • amosbatto

    “You have no idea at all what you’re talking. If you wanted to have any credibility at all you would do a little research.”

    It is you who need to do a little research. Read Mary Mapes’ _Truth and Duty: The Press, The President and the Privilege of Power_. She does a very good job defending why she still believes that the documents were authentic. See her interviews on Democracy Now!: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/09/163259
    http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/10/1434202&mode=thread&tid=25

    According to Maipes, the typesetting of the documents doesn’t prove that they weren’t authentic. And the experts aren’t in agreement about this. The secretary who was in charge of typing up these sorts of memos didn’t deny the authenticity of the memo. She just said that she couldn’t remember typing it. It is well documented that all sorts of Texas politicians at the time got their sons into the Texas National Guard to avoid Vietnam. Why don’t you think Bush Sr did this, when almost every major politician in Texas was doing the same? Do you contest the evidence that this was wide spread practice in Texas? Remember that a number of people have verified that this was happening. Do you contest the evidence that Bush didn’t complete his required national guard service and was given special permision to get out of completing it? Statistically it was nearly impossible to get into the Texas National Guard, and Bush had no special qualifications which ordinarily would have gotten him into the guard. So whether the CBS documents were authentic or not, this larger story that Bush used his political influence to get out of Vietnam was buried after the CBS the other evidence still indicates that Bush used his political influence

    “Only to someone who doesn’t care about the truth.”

    No, I care about the truth more than you. There was the truth that there were questionable documents obtained under questionable circumstances, but the larger truth is that Bush used his political influence to get out of going to Vietnam. The reality is that the press stopped looking at this larger truth, because CBS decided to run a segment where they used some questionable documents. Then Dan Rather got sacked despite the fact that he didn’t really do anything wrong. He followed correct procedure for checking these documents and he and the CBS staff obviously believed that the documents were authentic.

  • Odysseus160

    Of course Haditha didn’t happen but was a liberal fabrication. In all of U.S. history no single atrocity was ever committed by American soldiers. The supposed massacre of refugees at No Gun Ri in Korea is a fable concocted by the communists. The My Lai allegations were invented by disgruntled left-wing anti-war protesters, the pinko fellow-travelers that they were. The 1980′s death squads in Nicaragua, supposedly trained, equipped and dispatched by Washington were really sent by Fidel Castro with the intention that the U.S. be falsely accused, innocent as it always is. Even the alleged spreading of smallpox-infected blankets to the Native Americans during the Indian wars was a propagandistic invention by the tribes, designed to blacken the sterling reputation of the ever so peace-loving U.S. government. And so on and on.

    Let’s take a closer look at the activities over the years of America, this peace-loving people. Amazingly, for the last 58 years there has not been a single year in which the U.S. has not bombed or otherwise harmed another country. In fact, in most years the U.S. has attacked two or more countries at the same time. We’ll do a quick rundown:

    Let’s start with Korea (1950-1953) During the same period, the U.S. attacked in the Philippines to stifle an indigenous leftist uprising. Previously, in the period 1945-49, the U.S. sent half a million troops to China, again to hinder the communists. In 1946-48, the U.S. sent troops to Italy; in 1947-49 to Greece; 1949-53 to Albania; together with the UK it attacked Iran in 1953; Guatemala also in 1953; Indonesia in 1958; Cuba (1961-62); Thailand (1962); Laos (1962-75); Congo (1964); Peru (1965); Dominican Republic (1965-66); Vietnam (1961-73); Cambodia (1969-70); Chile (1973); the proxy war in Afghanistan (1979-88); Nicaragua (1981-90); El Salvador (1980-92); Libya (1981, 1986, 1989); Panama (1989); Grenada (1983); Persian Gulf (1984); Iraq (1991, with continuing air strikes for the next 12 years); Somalia (1992); Haiti (1995?); Serbia (1997); Afghanistan and Sudan (1998); Afghanistan (2001 to date); Iraq (2003 to date.) If I missed any, it was quite unintentional. And these are only the knows cases of aggression. It is also likely that many secret operations were also conducted.

    It’s very upsetting that the U.S. military is distrusted world wide. Don’t they know that our soldiers only kill bad guys? So what if some kids get bumped off in the process? They’re not American kids, and that makes everything all right. Or, I should have said, they’re not white middle- and upper-class American kids. The Blacks and Mexicans can screw themselves; it’s okay if they croak.

    No doubt, future nationalistic historians will describe the relentless assault on other nations as a “noble experiment.” Every criminal misdeed by the U.S. government is described as a “noble experiment” if the results are sufficiently gruesome. Both Prohibition and the current incarceration frenzy have both been described as “noble experiments.” See, the U.S. can do no wrong. You should all be proud of belonging to such a fine, moral nation.

  • Odysseus160

    Of course Haditha didn’t happen but was a liberal fabrication. In all of U.S. history no single atrocity was ever committed by American soldiers. The supposed massacre of refugees at No Gun Ri in Korea is a fable concocted by the communists. The My Lai allegations were invented by disgruntled left-wing anti-war protesters, the pinko fellow-travelers that they were. The 1980′s death squads in Nicaragua, supposedly trained, equipped and dispatched by Washington were really sent by Fidel Castro with the intention that the U.S. be falsely accused, innocent as it always is. Even the alleged spreading of smallpox-infected blankets to the Native Americans during the Indian wars was a propagandistic invention by the tribes, designed to blacken the sterling reputation of the ever so peace-loving U.S. government. And so on and on.

    Let’s take a closer look at the activities over the years of America, this peace-loving people. Amazingly, for the last 58 years there has not been a single year in which the U.S. has not bombed or otherwise harmed another country. In fact, in most years the U.S. has attacked two or more countries at the same time. We’ll do a quick rundown:

    Let’s start with Korea (1950-1953) During the same period, the U.S. attacked in the Philippines to stifle an indigenous leftist uprising. Previously, in the period 1945-49, the U.S. sent half a million troops to China, again to hinder the communists. In 1946-48, the U.S. sent troops to Italy; in 1947-49 to Greece; 1949-53 to Albania; together with the UK it attacked Iran in 1953; Guatemala also in 1953; Indonesia in 1958; Cuba (1961-62); Thailand (1962); Laos (1962-75); Congo (1964); Peru (1965); Dominican Republic (1965-66); Vietnam (1961-73); Cambodia (1969-70); Chile (1973); the proxy war in Afghanistan (1979-88); Nicaragua (1981-90); El Salvador (1980-92); Libya (1981, 1986, 1989); Panama (1989); Grenada (1983); Persian Gulf (1984); Iraq (1991, with continuing air strikes for the next 12 years); Somalia (1992); Haiti (1995?); Serbia (1997); Afghanistan and Sudan (1998); Afghanistan (2001 to date); Iraq (2003 to date.) If I missed any, it was quite unintentional. And these are only the knows cases of aggression. It is also likely that many secret operations were also conducted.

    It’s very upsetting that the U.S. military is distrusted world wide. Don’t they know that our soldiers only kill bad guys? So what if some kids get bumped off in the process? They’re not American kids, and that makes everything all right. Or, I should have said, they’re not white middle- and upper-class American kids. The Blacks and Mexicans can screw themselves; it’s okay if they croak.

    No doubt, future nationalistic historians will describe the relentless assault on other nations as a “noble experiment.” Every criminal misdeed by the U.S. government is described as a “noble experiment” if the results are sufficiently gruesome. Both Prohibition and the current incarceration frenzy have both been described as “noble experiments.” See, the U.S. can do no wrong. You should all be proud of belonging to such a fine, moral nation.

  • Eye Doc

    Amosbatto,

    The fact that the US media took months to report the story is because, as biased against the military and the Bush administration as they are, even they must have had the inkling that the story was bogus and they’d be putting their heads on the chopping block if it really did turn out that the “massacre” was a fabrication. Believe me, the media in this country would’ve been all over the story if there was even a shred of credible evidence it really happened the way it supposedly did. It’s laughable that you think the media in the US would be supportive of our military and do anything at all to protect them when they prove every day the exact opposite. This is the media that leaks classified information for chrissake, and undermines our national security.

    The same goes for the other supposed atrocities you’ve mentioned, some of which have already been debunked, like the white phosphorus bullshit. And, if you really still think the TANG documents were not conclusively proven to be bogus, then you really need to be on anti-psychotic medication, because you are frankly delusional. First of all, they were proven to be forgeries. And second, do honestly think a liberal television network like CBS would sack Dan Rather if the documents weren’t fake? Get a grip on reality.

  • Eye Doc

    Amosbatto,

    The fact that the US media took months to report the story is because, as biased against the military and the Bush administration as they are, even they must have had the inkling that the story was bogus and they’d be putting their heads on the chopping block if it really did turn out that the “massacre” was a fabrication. Believe me, the media in this country would’ve been all over the story if there was even a shred of credible evidence it really happened the way it supposedly did. It’s laughable that you think the media in the US would be supportive of our military and do anything at all to protect them when they prove every day the exact opposite. This is the media that leaks classified information for chrissake, and undermines our national security.

    The same goes for the other supposed atrocities you’ve mentioned, some of which have already been debunked, like the white phosphorus bullshit. And, if you really still think the TANG documents were not conclusively proven to be bogus, then you really need to be on anti-psychotic medication, because you are frankly delusional. First of all, they were proven to be forgeries. And second, do honestly think a liberal television network like CBS would sack Dan Rather if the documents weren’t fake? Get a grip on reality.

  • http://houstonconservative.com Will Malven

    amosbatto,

    Singing the Tin-Hat song. Rumor has it so it must be true.

  • http://houstonconservative.com Will Malven

    amosbatto,

    Singing the Tin-Hat song. Rumor has it so it must be true.

  • Hal

    Many of the documents of that time were found to have the type setting of the documents.

    You have no idea at all what you’re talking. If you wanted to have any credibility at all you would do a little research.

    Whether the documents were false or not false, it is really a minor point,

    Only to someone who doesn’t care about the truth. You libs are actually saying “well the documents are fake, but what matters is what they say”. Do you not get the utter insanity of this?

  • Hal

    Many of the documents of that time were found to have the type setting of the documents.

    You have no idea at all what you’re talking. If you wanted to have any credibility at all you would do a little research.

    Whether the documents were false or not false, it is really a minor point,

    Only to someone who doesn’t care about the truth. You libs are actually saying “well the documents are fake, but what matters is what they say”. Do you not get the utter insanity of this?

  • http://www.ciber-runa/ab amosbatto

    Actually the Texas Air National Guard documents were never proven to have been a fraud. Many of the documents of that time were found to have the type setting of the documents. The conservative blob-o-sphere crucified Dan Rather without any proof and the CBS management didn’t stand up for their reporters who had followed proper procedure. There is real question about the authenticity, but basically the experts are evenly divided. Whether the documents were false or not false, it is really a minor point, considering the fact that the real story was the fact that Bush Jr used his political influence to get into the Texas Air National Guard and didn’t even serve his full time. It is well documented that politicians’ sons across the state of Texas did this and it is well documented that Bush did not serve his full term in the National Guard. So whether the documents were fabrications or not, the larger story was true.

    I’d also like to point out that whether Haditha turns out to be true or false, there have been many reports about similar incidents. The difference is that Time magazine and Jack Murtha picked up these stories, whereas most of these stories have been ignored in the US press. Did we read anything about the thousands of innocent civilians killed in Fallujah and violated the Genenva conventions and the Ban on Chemical Weapons in the attack? Did we read about the fact that battle plan was to blow up the central hospital and capture the staff of the other major hospital so that there would be no reporting on the wounded. Did we read about the use of white phosphorous bombs, the cutting off the water, electricity, and food for a city filled with civilians–all were blantant violations of international law, but you wouldn’t have read about it mainstream US press.

    The fact is that the Haditha story wasn’t reported in the US press for over 4 months after the attack, despite the fact that the reports were known almost instantly. Al Jazeera reported about it within days, but the US mainstream press dutifully repeated the US military’s account and didn’t even question it, despite the fact that alternative accounts were being reported. Al Jazeera reported about the difference between the official US military’s report and the eye-witness account within days after it happened, but it took the US press 4 months to bring for the the story. The real story of Haditha is the bias of the US mainstream press which took 4 months to report what the Arab world knew within days. And the real story is the attempts of the US Army to coverup the story when confronted with evidence. You also didn’t mention the fact that people in Haditha report that the US military has been pressuring them to change their stories.

  • amosbatto

    Actually the Texas Air National Guard documents were never proven to have been a fraud. Many of the documents of that time were found to have the type setting of the documents. The conservative blob-o-sphere crucified Dan Rather without any proof and the CBS management didn’t stand up for their reporters who had followed proper procedure. There is real question about the authenticity, but basically the experts are evenly divided. Whether the documents were false or not false, it is really a minor point, considering the fact that the real story was the fact that Bush Jr used his political influence to get into the Texas Air National Guard and didn’t even serve his full time. It is well documented that politicians’ sons across the state of Texas did this and it is well documented that Bush did not serve his full term in the National Guard. So whether the documents were fabrications or not, the larger story was true.

    I’d also like to point out that whether Haditha turns out to be true or false, there have been many reports about similar incidents. The difference is that Time magazine and Jack Murtha picked up these stories, whereas most of these stories have been ignored in the US press. Did we read anything about the thousands of innocent civilians killed in Fallujah and violated the Genenva conventions and the Ban on Chemical Weapons in the attack? Did we read about the fact that battle plan was to blow up the central hospital and capture the staff of the other major hospital so that there would be no reporting on the wounded. Did we read about the use of white phosphorous bombs, the cutting off the water, electricity, and food for a city filled with civilians–all were blantant violations of international law, but you wouldn’t have read about it mainstream US press.

    The fact is that the Haditha story wasn’t reported in the US press for over 4 months after the attack, despite the fact that the reports were known almost instantly. Al Jazeera reported about it within days, but the US mainstream press dutifully repeated the US military’s account and didn’t even question it, despite the fact that alternative accounts were being reported. Al Jazeera reported about the difference between the official US military’s report and the eye-witness account within days after it happened, but it took the US press 4 months to bring for the the story. The real story of Haditha is the bias of the US mainstream press which took 4 months to report what the Arab world knew within days. And the real story is the attempts of the US Army to coverup the story when confronted with evidence. You also didn’t mention the fact that people in Haditha report that the US military has been pressuring them to change their stories.







Right.

Man up.

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