As always, soliciting FReeper comments, observations, and opinions.
Another Sunday and now only 5 months 'til November and still no Hildeast. Not that I want to see/hear her, but I find it odd that our Senator from New York never makes it to the Sunday morning gab fests.....
MNJ, I've been "studying on" your post #
14 in the preview thread since you posted it and I wanted to put my response over here, on the Sunday thread, partly because I think your post and link are worthy of the attention they'll get here and partly because I think you may have hit on a new meme that has exploded on the web in the last 24 hours. I'm taking the liberty of quoting your entire post from the preview thread, but I would suggest that anyone who finds the points made as interesting as I did click on the link above and go read them as a contiguous post, without my interruptions below. I'm also asking that a special merit award be given for your original post in the awards for today's thread.
First, the link and video was great:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/05/31/haditha/index.html
Video on lower right hand side of the screen. Called "Haditha Uncovered. Go watch it.
Perhaps someone can explain to me the logical and factual flaws in the "Iraqi Civilian Right Groups" "story. How can these facts be logically reconciled with what the Iraqis, and some supposed Freepers, are accusing the Marines of doing?
I think your analysis is spot on about this video:
To Quote Time:
"According to published reports, a number of Marines from the storied 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, 1st Marine Division are accused killing more than 20 Iraqi civilians in retaliation for the death of one of their comrades by a roadside bomb in November, 2005."
Okie, 20 Dead Civilians. Which we are told were all shot thus supposedly proving "the Marines falsified the original report". So what could just be an honest mistake between a Marine's assumption on the spot of cause of death in his After Action Report (We didn't fire up the building, they were dead, must of been the bomb shrapnel) with a medical examiners report filed after a autopsies is NOW claimed by the accusers as"proof" that the "Marines Lied".
Ok so the accusation is they were all shot to death at short range in a building that had not been penetrated by any rounds from outside. No bullet holes in the building, must mean it was not Collateral Damage but a deliberate act is the accusers claims. In other words the accusers claim the Marines shot to death the Iraqis inside the building as a deliberate act not an accident of war. In fact, Some are running around claiming a shrapnel wound is so obviously different that a Combat Infantry Marine would know the difference between the two. Leave aside the obviously question why would Infantry Marine would be examining the wounds of dead Civilians, lets assume, that is correct.
Or to extend your comment, perhaps the particular people shot to death at close range weren't dead when the Marines filed their report, only later, when other "parties" showed up, such as insurgents an "Iraqi Civilian Right Groups" looking to stage an incident
Ok, then how come the "survivors" as interviewed for CNN by the "Iraqi Civil Rights group" are making such obviously absurd claims on the video?
"They burned the room with my father in it then threw a bomb"? Neat trick that. How they "Burn the room"? We don't use flame throwers. "Threw a bomb" but the accusers are telling us it all gun shot wounds. "a Bomb" inflict shrapnel wounds.
Yeah, that bothered me a lot, too.
Notice also the mannerism of the "children survivors". Having come thru what would of been the most terrifying event of their lives and being forced to talk about it again, yet the kids show no hesitation or emotion. Just a dull recital of supposed "Facts" as if they were reciting a story as an memorization assignment in School. Very strange that. Absolutely no real emotion, just a breathless recital of "Facts" Then when done speaking look over to the person standing to the right of the camera (You can see his shadow behind the kids). Sure looks like kids looking at a teacher to see how they did in reciting their "lesson"
I'm not sure whether they've changed the video between the time you watched it and when I did, but narrator/reporter does pick up on this a little, including pointing out a discrepancy where the little girl, on the 3rd time through her story, says that she knew the explosion was going to happen so she covered her ears. He doesn't outright say that the people in the house (assuming she was anywhere near that particular house that morning) were involved in the bombing, but he clearly leaves that as one possibility. Perhaps they saw your post and are trying to clean up their presentation to avoid accusations of bias?
Then there is the part where the "Iraqi Civil Rights Group" filming the kids told the Iraqi boy to "show his wounds". It must not of occurred to the "Iraqi Civil Rights Group" making the video to consider the Iraqi boy's supposed "wound". Apparently no one bothered to think about where he was "shot". The supposed "wound" supposedly inflicted by US Marines at point blank range, (as claimed by the "Iraqi Civil Rights Group)" is directly over his spine. Yet when told he got up and turned around for the camera to "Show his wounds"?
If he HAD been shot there, he would be crippled for life, his spine severed just below the neck. So all this is being based on the claims of an "Iraqi Civil Rights Group" which are demonstrated to be lying. Since they lied about this, what ELSE might they have lied about? So maybe some one can explain these inconsistencies in the "witnesses" testimony? Some "Americans", especially in the Junk Media, maybe want to rethink their rush to judgment on these Marines
The "bullet wound" directly over the upper part of the spine would almost certainly have left him a quadriplegic, if it really were a bullet wound. I have a very dear friend who has been in a wheel chair for over 30 years following an accidental shooting while he was an MP in Germany. His wound was about 3 vertebrae higher than this kids and the kid certainly wouldn't have been able to move his legs, if not all of his extremities, even if he survived such a wound. This is so obviously faked that I'm shocked that it hasn't made the front page of every paper in the world.
But maybe that's changing. Not long after you posted on the preview thread a firestorm broke on Michelle Malkin's blog over a UK Times article and photo about Haditha: UK TIMES SMEARS OUR MARINES (UPDATED WITH RESPONSE). The Times had used a photo of dead bodies lined up against a wall, hands tied and obviously executed to illustrate their story on Haditha, titled "Massacre Marines blinded by hate." The small problem is that the photo was of local Shiite workers and police massacred by "insurgents" a few months before Marines are supposed to have commited the supposed "atrocity." This was first pointed out by Joe G. on his blog. Malkin gave it much wider exposure and a bit of a blogstorm started. Michelle even got a response to an email she sent the US editor for the UK Times and the offending photo and caption was removed, but no apology was forthcoming and it is being passed off as a "mistake."
Mistake my ass!
This is an all out assault on the US, the US military and the hated US Marines in particular. The psychotic left, who are so well represented in the drive by media, the so called "peace movement" and the modern Democrat party are trying to destroy this country's ability to defend itself because they view any such defense, regardless of cause, as illegitimate. And the more effective a person or institution is the more they hate it. Not hate as in dislike. Hate as in "they must not only die, they must be wiped from the face of the Earth and erased from history." We've all been talking about Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS). Now we can add to that Military Derangement Syndrome and the far more virulent and specialized psychosis Marine Derangement Syndrome.
And, as they usually do, they've allowed their psychosis to blind them to obvious flaws in these stories. And a bit at a time they're being exposed at it. Take Jason Smith's catch on the NRO Media Blog: BBC: Taking the Insurgents' Word For It (discussed on this FR thread). They've lost the "culture of corruption" attack angle with the William Jefferson and other dim scandals (despite the absolutely atrocious performance of Hastert and Boehner). They've fallen back on their supposed "great victory" of the Vietnam days and they're trying to recreate what they think they did back then. First, what they think they did that "worked" isn't what actually happened. Second, they were dealing with a conscript military who didn't have any idea of what they were doing or why they were there. This time they have to look long and hard to find such malcontents and they are usually exposed as either outright frauds, such as the lies told by the fake Ranger, Jesse MacBeth (several threads on FR, plus lots of blog comments blowing this one out of the water) or careerists who trained to fight tank battles in the Fulda Gap and lash out because they can't adapt to fighting a new enemy. And remember the New York Times "exclusive interview" with the Abu Ghraib "hooded man" who turned out to be a liar? Or the gift that keeps on giving, the Gitmo flushed Koran story from Newsweek?
They're out of their minds, out of control and very rapidly descending to Air America levels of credibility. I'm beginning to think that, within a month or so, this whole thing is going to blow up in their faces completely. Something will happen, some incident that exposes without possibility of obfuscation their completely insanity, treason and agenda of hate. What frightens me is that, if that happens, we don't know what they might do. We've established pretty effectively that they literally are losing their hold on reason. They still have the ability to cause damage on a massive scale. Desperate people, particularly desperate insane people, are truly dangerous.
