Time’s McGirk Wanted To Call Haditha “A Massacre”

New York Observer/Sweetness & Light ^ | June 5, 2006 | N/A

[Sam Hill]

This is a brief excerpt from the (it's so left it's pink) New York Observer:

Reporter Tim McGirk in the Mazlak Camp in Afghanistan.

The Devil Goes Gaga

By Gabriel Sherman

Neither “Haditha” nor “Massacre” appeared on the cover of the March 27 Time, which broke the news of the slayings of civilians. That scoop, which led the way for investigations by The New York Times and other major outlets, was flagged with a milder “Was Iraq Worth It?” on the front. The bigger question on the cover was “Are Kids Too Wired for Their Own Good?”, accompanying a soft-news photo illustration of a boy with three cell phones, a Treo and an iPod orbiting his head.

“At the time, I knew if the allegations turned out to be true, then it was clear this would be a story of significance,” Mr. Kelly said. “We put [Haditha] in the context of Iraq three years later, and we knew what we could talk about at the time was not a 10-page story …. If you’re going to do it as a cover, you need that kind of weight. We gave it the space it deserved at the time.”

Time correspondent Tim McGirk, who broke the Haditha story, said that in the weeks before publication, he had lobbied editors to use the word “massacre” in the March 27 story.

“That was a battle I lost,” Mr. McGirk said by phone May 30 from Jerusalem, where he is currently based. “I think the editors felt ‘massacre’ was too heavy of a word. They didn’t want to use it; they felt there was some justification for what had happened.”

“I think it was definitely a massacre,” Mr. McGirk said.

Has the Haditha story helped push Time back toward hard news, after swinging toward soft stories and trend pieces?

“I never took that charge seriously,” Mr. Kelly said. “Ever since 9/11, I put out a magazine that tried to make people understand better the world that was created by 9/11.”

“It was nonsense, that lifestyle tag,” Mr. Kelly said. “If this is a lifestyle magazine, I don’t know whose lifestyle it is.”

You see Tim McGirk knew it was a massacre.

He has a videotape and emails from his unbiased sources to prove it.

[Sam Hill]

Thanks to the relentless researcher KCVL for the heads up on this blurb.

[Sam Hill]

More on McGirk.

[P-40]

Thanks to Michael Savage also. :)

[jazusamo]

What a sad piece of work McGirk is. He's about as unbiased as his "unbiased sources" who seem to be America hating insurgents.

[Sam Hill]

Yep:

Haditha Reporter’s Thanksgiving With The Taliban | Sweetness & Light
http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/times-haditha-reporter-had-thanksgiving-2001-with-taliban

[Vn_survivor_67-68]

Time's arabic "reporter" who gets neglected all too often is "Bobby" Aparisim Ghosh, who ALWAYS has a line to terrorists, insurgents, suicide bombers, etc.....

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=Bobby+APARISIM+GHOSH+iraq&btnG=Search

[A Cyrenian]

After seeing all of this bias and false reporting, I am beginning to wonder if what I heard about Vietnam was mostly fabicated reporting as well.

How can you tell when a liar is telling the truth?

[Sam Hill]

You are exactly right. And it would seem that the Time story never got going until Ghosh got involved.

From Time Magazine:

In early February, McGirk presented this evidence to, and asked for comment from, Lieut. Colonel Barry Johnson, U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad. Johnson viewed the VCD, listened to the accounts and responded straightforwardly, "I think there’s enough here for a full and formal investigation." Army Colonel Gregory Watt was dispatched to Haditha to conduct a three-week probe in which he interviewed Marines, survivors and doctors at the morgue.

At that point, TIME’s Aparisim Ghosh joined the efforts in Baghdad, asking the U.S. military for more information even as the preliminary investigation was continuing. Lacking any official U.S. response to the allegations, TIME chose not to publish an article on the episode in Haditha based solely on the eyewitnesses’ accounts. On March 14, a U.S. military official in Baghdad familiar with the Watt probe finally responded to Ghosh. According to the official, the probe concluded that the civilians were in fact killed by Marines and not by an insurgent’s bomb–but that the deaths appeared to be the result of "collateral damage" rather than malicious intent. Nevertheless, the official told Ghosh, the matter had been handed over to a criminal investigation.

Over the next five days, the reporting by McGirk and Ghosh continued to be reviewed by TIME editors and Pentagon correspondent Sally B. Donnelly. TIME’s story "One Morning in Haditha" was published on March 19 on TIME.com and appeared the next day in the print magazine (which carried a March 27 cover date).

And as you say, it's clear from just the most cursory Google that Ghosh has his own America-hating terrorist-loving agenda.

[Vn_survivor_67-68]

McGirks head would roll over there without Ghosh holding his hand.....I HOPE Ghosh is being looked at by HUMINT and SIGINT folks. In this interview, he brags to AMY GOODMAN on how he personally developed the stink about this matter:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/21/1418210&mode=thread&tid=25

(scroll down 25% to interview)

[mewzilla]

“I think it was definitely a massacre,” Mr. McGirk said.

Well, no sense in waiting since the facts might get in his way.

Did this guy get his degree from Joseph Goebbels U?

[jazusamo]

Haditha Reporter’s Thanksgiving With The Taliban

Nothing like getting to know the enemy so you can give an unbiased report on them. /sarc

[MrCruncher]

bump

[Sam Hill]

Here is a very telling interview Ghosh did with the Communist propagandist Amy Goodman on taxpayer-supported Democracy Now:

Democracy Now! | Videotape Forces Pentagon to Investigate Claims U.S. Marines Shot Dead 15 Iraqi Civilians in Apparent Revenge Killings
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/21/1418210&mode=thread&tid=25

In it, he misrepresents the source of the video, Taher Thabet, calling him "young" when he is 43, and not mentioning that he is in fact the "Hammurabi Human Rights."

Ghosh says he can't reveal his name because he would be in danger. Even though that no longer seems to be true. And almost certainly never was, since he lives in the Sunni terrorist controlled Haditha.

Ghosh also seems to be able to see everything from this very brief videotape. And everything he sees supports the claims of the terrorists. (Such as his claim that there are no bullet holes on the outside of the houses.)

[Sam Hill]

LOL. That's what I get for taking so long with my posts.

GMTA.

[bray]

The only massacre is the one that PravdABDNC is doing to our Marines. After they are found innocent is Slime Mag going to apologize on the Cover?

Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters

[I'm ALL Right!]

"They didn’t want to use it; they felt there was some justification for what had happened.”

[Sam Hill]

That kind of jumps out, doesn't it.

Also, McGirk was transferred out of Iraq to Jerusalem not too long after this story.

I wonder if it was a promotion or a demotion.

[Enchante]

"I wonder if it was a promotion or a demotion"

I'm pretty sure it was a promotion - one article referred to him as the new "Bureau Chief" in Jerusalem. Slime US Marines, get promoted..... it's the MSM way.

[Thebaddog]

Was it only the fellow's word and videos in play until the military guy said that there was enough for an investigation? Who do you know to trust so far after the fact. And it really seems that Time had bupkis until the military guy made his comment.

[Sam Hill]

I'm sure you also caught Ghosh's paean to a (real life) suicide bomber:

Inside the Mind of an Iraqi Suicide Bomber
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9327.htm

"One day soon, this somber young man plans to offer up a final prayer and then blow himself up along with as many U.S. or Iraqi soldiers as he can reach. Marwan Abu Ubeida says he has been training for months to carry out a suicide mission. He doesn't know when or where he will be ordered to climb into a bomb-laden vehicle or strap on an explosives-filled vest but says he is eager for the moment to come."

So touching.

[AmericanYankee]

"AMY GOODMAN: And then, this Haditha journalism student, who is this student?

APARISIM GHOSH: We’d rather not say, for his own protection, but he’s a young local man. It’s not uncommon in Iraq for young people to have video cameras and cameras, and there's so much going on in their lives that they have plenty to shoot. "

---

What a load of crap that answer was. The student was probably an insirgent.

[Sam Hill]

"The student was probably an insirgent."

Almost certainly.

Today's Time article describes him as:

"budding Iraqi journalist and human-rights activist. Taher Thabet, 43..."

And:

"Thabet–who last year co-founded a small outfit called the Hammurabi Organization for Human Rights and Democracy Monitoring..."

According to Time, Thabet (a "budding journalist") sat on tis for months, and never bothered to pass it on to any media outlets, or even NGOs or anything.

Hell, he didn't even bother to video this "massacre" until the next day. And even then he seems to have gotten very little revealing footage.

Time never says how they got the tape, BTW. Which is kind odf weird.

But all of the sources that Time claims are highly suspect:

The Questionable Sources For Time’s Haditha Scoop | Sweetness & Light
http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/budding-journalist-sat-on-haditha-tape#comment-25213

[dollar_dog]

I'm actually surprised Time didn't have in giant block letters "Massacre" on the cover seeing as how their new managing editor Richard Stengel is on record donating to a Democrat!

[kcvl]

Why Iraqis Aren't Cheering Their New Government
By Aparisim Ghosh
Time Magazine

Saturday 20 May 2006

http://tinyurl.com/ora89


******


‘It helps to have an Indian passport in Iraq’
Tracking insurgents, moving with armed escort, waking up to bomb blasts — it’s all in a day’s work for Aparisim Ghosh.

DEBASHIS BHATTACHARYYA meets Time’s man in Baghdad
Aparisim Ghosh still remembers the little boy. Barely seven or eight, the victim of a car bomb attack lay lifeless at the shrine of Imam Ali in the holy city of Najaf. His body was burnt but his face was untouched — and was almost a picture of calm.... | Read..


http://tinyurl.com/sy2mp


******

The U.S. military had previously refused to believe villagers who accused the Marines of murdering unarmed civilians, even when presented with credible evidence assembled by Time magazine for an article in March.

"They were incredibly hostile," said Time's Aparisim Ghosh. "They accused us of buying into enemy propaganda, and they stuck to their original story, which is that these people were all killed by the IED [improvised explosive device]."


(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...

http://tinyurl.com/pf9aj

[AmericanYankee]

Funny how they make a "human rights" organization AFTER the were liberated by U.S. troops..then use the "human rights" group against our troops.


I wonder how many human rights groups and student/activists were actaully in Iraq before they were liberated.

[Velveeta]

This will make your skin crawl:

The Abominations of War From My Lai to Haditha
By Cindy Sheehan
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060506B.shtml

[kcvl]

The Breaking Point
An Eye For an Eye

As the violence in Iraq grows more shocking and brutal, TIME explores the roots of the murderous rage--and why the U.S. may be powerless to stop it

By APARISIM GHOSH/BAGHDAD


http://205.188.238.109/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1167741,00.html

[AmericanYankee]

According to the star witness, a marine shot one person 7 TIMES in the head,so that would be kind of hard to believe since one shot should do the trick. This is something that an autopsy would determine very easily.

[AmericanYankee]

Maybe I didnt get the memo, but there has been no charges brought against the marines at all so how in the world can this compare to My Lai? Its not even close.

[kinghorse]

Whenever I think of these middle aged guys over there doing the press work I think of the fat Brit "journalist" in the movie The Year of Living Dangerously. That is all.

[kcvl]

July 17, 2005
Institutionalizing Biased War Reporting

Posted By: Brian Dominick

Pretty much all mainstream media institutions insist they are "objective" and "unbiased." How either of those can be true when those same outlets take explicit sides in wars is beyond me. But what is worse -- there is really not even an understanding among journalists or journalism ethicists with regard to taking sides in war. It's just a given; journalists, editors, producers and publishers are all supposed to root for the home team -- even assist the home team. And they don't even bother hiding this, despite their insistence on "objectivity."

A piece on National Public Radio's weekly show On the Media put this truism on ugly display last weekend. Entitled "Murderous Intent," the segment (transcript / audio) is an interview with correspondent Aparisim Ghosh of Time magazine, who recently interviewed a suicide bomber-to-be. OtM co-host Bob Garfield seemed to find a fascinating moral dilema in the concept of interviewing a man intent on killing Americans and then doing anything other than seeing to that source's arrest.

http://tinyurl.com/ktjvb

[kcvl]

"We launched an investigation of our own with the help of a human rights group," said Aparisim Ghosh, a writer for Time. "We spoke to some eyewitnesses. And it turns out all the people killed were killed by the Marines in small arms fire and, in a few instances, by an explosive that was tossed into the home by the Marines themselves."

http://tinyurl.com/fgqd8

[kcvl]

Suicide Bomber Report (6:00)
Suicide bombings are some of the most effective weapons used by Iraqi insurgents. And a key to that effectiveness is training. Host Lisa Mullins speaks with reporter Aparisim Ghosh, whose story about an Iraqi man who trains suicide bombers appears in the current issue of Time Magazine.

http://tinyurl.com/e7s8l

[johnny7]

Maybe it was to save his stinkin', commie neck.

[AmericanYankee]

This guy Ghosh, is a damn traitor!! Talk about aiding the enemy! This "human rights" group is packed with insurgents. Iraq cicvilains are murdered, executed and beheaded everyday for a few years and I have never once heard this group mentioned in that context.

[Vn_survivor_67-68]

Gauche (Ghosh) is a jihaddi masquerading as a journalist....here's his pic wearing red. I saw him on the tube and mistook him for Zacarias Moussaoui the 20th hijacker (now in Denver Max Fed); they could easily be brothers!

Ghosh:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/baghdadchris/26156348/

Moussaoui (upper right) mugshot:

http://www.mugshots.com/Terrorists/Zacarias+Moussaoui.htm

[kcvl]

Time's Aparisim Ghosh brings us "A Day in the Life Of a Baghdad ER." Dr. Jalal Taha Emad is the story's Dr. Carter, minus Maura Tierney, minus the fancy medical tools. Time reports: "Prepping the ER is a simple business; there is not much to get ready. Apart from their stethoscopes, the only diagnostic tool available to the surgeons is a Soviet-era X-ray machine. Ultrasound equipment? No. CT scans? No. MRI? No."


http://tinyurl.com/few7a

[nopardons]

Thanks for the ping.

[kcvl]

AMY GOODMAN: You say the U.S. has paid relatives of the victims $2,500 for each of the 15 dead civilians, plus smaller payments for the injured?

APARISIM GHOSH: Yes. That is commonplace in cases of innocents being killed in combat.

snip

APARISIM GHOSH: As are thousands of young people in Iraq today, but this family, in particular. She's now an orphan. There is an extended family that will look after her, but she will never -- any hope of a normal life for her now over.

http://tinyurl.com/pz83o

[pollyannaish]

FWIW, much of what we heard about VN WAS fabricated or spun. Do a little research into it.

[kcvl]

Will Pakistan be jilted by America again? You bet

BY APARISIM GHOSH
Wednesday, November 14, 2001




http://tinyurl.com/nn52p

[theFIRMbss]

>The Abominations of War From My Lai to Haditha By Cindy Sheehan

In a way, it's good
Sheehan wrote this because now
everyone will link

the Haditha crap
with nuts like Sheehan no one
believes anyway.

[Sam Hill]

You are amazing.

"We launched an investigation of our own with the help of a human rights group," said Aparisim Ghosh, a writer for Time."

By this Ghosh means "budding Iraqi journalist and human-rights activist. Taher Thabet, 43" who is the founder and sole member of the "Hammurabi Organization for Human Rights and Democracy Monitoring" group.

And the guy who claims to have made the video.

But Time does everything it can to make it sound like there are more people involved.

Why?

[Sam Hill]

Great get.

He looks like he sounds.

[MizSterious]

One other article that KCVL quoted on the other thread had some similarities to this case--the infamous "wedding party" which ultimately did turn out to be what we said it was.

[gunnyg]

Lotta stuff going around....

A Time For Mutiny...

http://www.network54.com/Forum/135069/message/1149538120/A+TIME+FOR+MUTINY-

[kcvl]

The day after the massacre, Iraqi journalism student Taher Thabet videotaped the bodies at the local morgue and the homes where the shootings occurred. “You could tell [the soldiers] were enraged,” Thabet recently told Time. “They not only killed people, they smashed furniture, tore down wall hangings, and when they took prisoners, they treated them very roughly.”


http://tinyurl.com/qnllj

[kcvl]

Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with Human Rights Watch


A stranger would not know anything special had happened there,” says Taher Thabet, a local journalism student and human-rights worker


When Thabet gave him a business card, which says he works for Hamurabi Human Rights, which produced the incriminating videotape, the Marine grew apologetic. “He told me that the men who killed my neighbors were not typical Marines,” Thabet recalls. “Even among the Marines, they are known as the 'Dirty Force.' Then he said, 'For myself, I don't think killing 15 Iraqis is a fair response for the death of one Marine.'”


******

Time magazine acquired the tape through the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with Human Rights Watch. The magazine reported that the tape shows victims still in their pajamas and bullet-pocked walls spattered with blood.

http://tinyurl.com/nwzcp

Talal al-Zuhairi, who heads the Baghdad Center for Human Rights, said his organization feared that even if the military’s investigation implicated the Marines, they would not be punished severely enough, according to a March 22 report by the Associated Press.

According to the report, “this incident shows that the forces are committing, every now and then, operations that harm civilians,” al-Zuhairi said.

[kcvl]

Video shot by a Haditha journalism student corroborates residents’ accounts. The footage was turned over to the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which in turn provided it to Reuters.



"On the new tape shot by an Iraqi journalism student and given to ABC News by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group in Iraq, Younis, soft-spoken, with rounded cheeks and a headscarf, begins by calmly telling the interviewer, "My name is Safa Younis. I'm 12 years old."

The interviewer asks, "What did the American soldiers do when they broke into the house?"


http://tinyurl.com/m9utk

[kcvl]

Also, the original video's now supposed to have come from the Hammurabi Human Rights Association ... not the "student" journalist from Haditha ... ?http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2006/s1598457.htm (about halfway down the article)