In other words, your ignorant.
McGirk: How many marines were killed and wounded in the I.E.D. attack that morning?
Memo: If it bleeds, it leads. This question is McGirk’s attempt to get good bloody gouge on the situation. He will most likely use the information he gains from this answer as an attention gainer.
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McGirk: Were there any officers?
Memo: By asking if there was an officer on scene the reporter may be trying to identify a point of blame for lack of judgment. If there was an officer involved, then he may be able to have his My Lai massacre pinned on that officer’s shoulders. ...
In the reporter’s eyes, military officers may represent the U.S. government and enlisted marines may represent the American People. Given the current political climate in the U.S. at this time concerning the Iraq war and the current administration’s conduct of the war, the reporter would most likely seek to discredit the U.S. government (one of our officers) and expose victimization of the American people by the hand of the government (the enlisted marines under the haphazard command of our “rogue officer.”) Unfortunately for McGirk, this is not the case.
One common tactic used by reporters is to spin a story in such a way that it is easily recognized and remembered by the general population through its association with an event that the general population is familiar with or can relate to. For example, McGirk’s story will sell if it can be spun as “Iraq’s My Lai massacre.” Since there was not an officer involved, this attempt will not go very far.
We must be on guard, though, of the reporter’s attempt to spin the story to sound like incidents from well-known war movies, like “Platoon.”
In “Platoon,” Sergeant Barnes, the movie’s antihero, is depicted as a no-nonsense, war-haggard platoon sergeant who knows how to get things done in the bloody jungles of Vietnam — and it ain’t always pretty. During one scene, Sergeant Barnes is shown on the verge of committing war crimes in front of his platoon by threatening to kill women and children as a means of interrogation. This is a classic “runaway sergeant” storyline wherein the audience is supposed to be sickened by the sergeant’s brutality and equally sickened by the traumatic effects war has on soldiers. This schema is especially fruitful for Mr. McGirk because if he tries to adapt our situation to this model it simultaneously exposes a “war crime cover-up” and shows the deteriorative (albeit exaggerated) effects of war on U.S. marines (the best of the best), which could be expanded by the general press as a testament for why the U.S. should pull out of Iraq.
[Colonel Chessani later shortened this answer to “No.”]
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McGirk: How many marines were involved in the killings?
Memo: First off, we don’t know what you’re talking about when you say “killings.” One of our squads reinforced by a squad of Iraqi Army soldiers were engaged by an enemy initiated ambush on the 19th that killed one American marine and seriously injured two others. We will not justify that question with a response. Theme: Legitimate engagement: we will not acknowledge this reporter’s attempt to stain the engagement with the misnomer “killings.”
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McGirk: Were there any weapons found during these house raids — or terrorists — where the killings occurred?
Memo: Again, you are showing yourself to be uneducated in the world of contemporary insurgent combat. The subject about which we are speaking was a legitimate engagement initiated by the enemy. ...
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McGirk: Is there any investigation ongoing into these civilian deaths, and if so have any marines been formally charged?
Memo: No, the engagement was bona fide combat action. ... By asking this question, McGirk is assuming the engagement was a LOAC [Law of Armed Conflict] violation and that by asking about investigations, he may spurn a reaction from the command that will initiate an investigation.
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McGirk: Are the marines in this unit still serving in Haditha?
Memo: Yes, we are still fighting terrorists of Al Qaida in Iraq in Haditha. (“Fighting terrorists associated with Al Qaida” is stronger language than “serving.” The American people will side more with someone actively fighting a terrorist organization that is tied to 9/11 than with someone who is idly “serving,” like in a way one “serves” a casserole. It’s semantics, but in reporting and journalism, words spin the story.)
Tim McGirk in Time (March 19, 2006):
The Marines raided a third house, which belongs to a man named Ahmed Ayed. One of Ahmed's five sons, Yousif, who lived in a house next door, told Time that after hearing a prolonged burst of gunfire from his father's house, he rushed over. Iraqi soldiers keeping watch in the garden prevented him from going in. "They told me, 'There's nothing you can do. Don't come closer, or the Americans will kill you too.' The Americans didn't let anybody into the house until 6:30 the next morning." Ayed says that by then the bodies were gone; all the dead had been zipped into U.S. body bags and taken by Marines to a local hospital morgue. "But we could tell from the blood tracks across the floor what happened," Ayed claims. "The Americans gathered my four brothers and took them inside my father's bedroom, to a closet. They killed them inside the closet."
The military has a different account of what transpired. According to officials familiar with the investigation, the Marines broke into the third house and found a group of 10 to 15 women and children. The troops say they left one Marine to guard that house and pushed on to the house next door, where they found four men, one of whom was wielding an AK-47. A second seemed to be reaching into a wardrobe for another weapon, the officials say. The Marines shot both men dead; the military's initial report does not specify how the other two men died. The Marines deny that any of the men were killed in the closet, which they say is too small to fit one adult male, much less four....In all, two AK-47s were discovered.
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But McGirk's account was entirely based on insurgent fabrications.
LCpl Justin Sharratt was put on trial for murder on the basis of McGirk's story.
You won't read it in the New York Times, but the hearing officer said, after all of McGirk's evidence was actually examined: Evidence does not support murder case
In other words, your ignorant.
McGirk refused to testify in any of the hearings...hearings that came about because of his story
McGirk is gutless.
Does this offer evidence that time magazine and the nyt are colluding to subvert the war effort? The short answer is YES.
Haditha: Is McGirk the New Mary Mapes? (Is Haditha a Hoax?)
... 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.” ...
“a budding journalism student”
The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict
By Marvin Kalb
...
The upshot is a new kind of populist journalism, which strongly influences the story that is being covered. Indeed, the journalist or, in this new age, the commentator, often becomes part of the story.
During the Lebanon War, for example, the bloggers had more influence over the flow of the story than they had had during any other war. Ravi Nessman, the senior Jerusalem correspondent of the Associated Press, thought the influence of the bloggers, especially in the United States, was "unprecedented." When the bloggers [in the U.S.] discovered that photographs had been doctored, "the credibility of the bloggers ... skyrocketed and our credibility plummeted." Nessman added, "After that everything that we did was suspect. And that makes it very difficult to cover a war, to have honest people who are trying, who are not doctoring photographs, who are not taking one side or the other, but who are trying to present the truth of what is going on there, and have everything we say be examined, which is fair, but basically be questioned as a lie, and starting with that premise that the media is lying."
Wow, good stuff. Whoever wrote the memo is sharp as a tack and has got the media’s methods pegged. Just another reason to love the Marines, and for the media to hate them.
Good context and references in this thread.
Good eyes on the “talking points” derogation.
Thanks for posting. America’s finest! BTTT!