Posted on 09/06/2007 10:37:05 PM PDT by Bulldawg Fan
A video taped from a Scan Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle – purported to show the action that took place in Haditha when 24 Iraqi civilians and insurgents were killed – was heavily edited by government investigators, a NewsMax investigation reveals.
The reason, according to an inside source: to avoid showing anything that exonerates the Marines who were accused of murdering the victims.
Four Marines originally faced murder charges stemming from the Haditha incident. Charges against three of them have since been dropped, but Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich is still facing a court martial.
NewsMax can reveal that the video – which was broadcast by CNN – was a small, carefully edited part of what the Scan Eagle transmitted during its daylong surveillance flight over the battle scene on Nov. 19, 2005. And shockingly, the approximately one hour of edited footage was the only Scan Eagle footage provided to the Marines’ defense teams by the prosecution.
According to CNN, “The video appears to show that, throughout that day, Marines engaged in fierce firefights and called in air strikes to level buildings - often with no definitive idea of who was inside."
Had the entire video been shown it would have revealed that the Marines knew exactly “who was inside” - insurgents were clearly shown entering the target buildings before the structures were bombed. If CNN had been able “to review the whole video, they would see that we did indeed have a definitive idea of who was inside,’" an intelligence officer told NewsMax.
The insurgents’ car parked outside the buildings “was packed to the gills with weapons, and we had just witnessed them complete an ambush on our ambulance,” the officer said. “We saw them enter the house, clapping each other on the back and congratulating themselves.”
The Marine intelligence officer who monitored the Scan Eagle’s video transmissions throughout the day told NewsMax that there was continuous video feed from the Scan Eagle for 8 to 10 hours. Yet barely an hour of it was provided to the Marines' defense teams by the prosecution or the Naval Criminal Investigation Service.
“Someone, under the supervision of NCIS, screened this video feed, and made the conscious decision to preserve only four segments of approximately 15 minutes each – according to the defense attorneys who received it upon discovery release,” our intelligence source confided.
“This 8 to 10 hours, viewed in its entirety, shows men in black, with weapons, fleeing the neighborhood of houses 1, 2, 3 and 4 [the area where the civilians and eight of the insurgents were killed]. It follows their route as they meet up with other insurgents throughout the city. It clearly demonstrates the magnitude of the insurgents’ organization, skill, and timing in attacking Marines.”
The video, he recalled, “shows them parking, exiting the vehicle, and entering the housing complex. It shows Marines assaulting the building, insurgents fleeing out the back of the building, and Marines falling back from the assault as the insurgents defend the house.”
Finally, the intelligence officer revealed, the full, undoctored Scan Eagle video “shows an insurgent, at the end of the day, under continuous observation from the air and under continuous pursuit and fire, emerge from a family's home holding their children hostage, in order to protect himself from further air strikes.”
The deliberate editing of the video to show the defendants in the worst possible light, the Marine intelligence expert told NewsMax, “should have the defense screaming prosecutorial and NCIS misconduct.”
The media have focused on the killing of five young men who arrived in the midst of the insurgent ambush in a white car, usually described as a taxi, and were gunned down by Wuterich and/or Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz. Dela Cruz was one of the Marines originally accused of murdering civilians before charges were dropped when he agreed to testify against his fellow Marines.
Those media have generally sought to portray the Haditha ambush as a massacre by Marines on a rampage, and the media’s bias has been on display as recently as Friday when major newspapers largely ignored a key development in Frank Wuterich’s Article 32 hearing.
As reported by Nat Helms – who is covering the hearing for NewsMax as well as for the "Defend our Marines" Web site – the prosecution’s star witness all but collapsed on the witness stand after a withering cross-examination.
Wrote Helms: “During four hours of cross examination by defense attorney Lt. Col. Colby C. Vokey, Dela Cruz was unable to clearly explain his previous testimony. At one point he simply stopped talking and stared into the distance, seemingly at a loss for words. At other times he simply rambled on until he was ordered to quit talking.”
Richard Thompson is president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, a legal advocacy group that has represented Marine Lt. Colonel Jeffrey Chessani, who was charged with failing to fully investigate and report Iraqi civilian deaths in Haditha. Thompson wrote:
“The government has spared no expense seeking to find wrongdoing on the part of our hard-fighting Marines. They should spend like resources investigating … allegations of investigatory misconduct.”
Why would the government do this?
What kind of people is it that work so hard to cause their own country to lose a war? What sort of people would go so far as to try to convict our warriors for doing their duty?
God help us if we cannot counter these new Bolsheviks.
We need to get the traitors and their supporters ousted and banished. Were it up to me, I'd strip them of their citizenship and remove them from the country.
Bombshell Cripples Case Against Haditha MarinesThis officer, described by senior Marine Corps superiors as one of the best and most dedicated intelligence officers in the entire Marine Corps, was in possession of evidence which provided a minute-by-minute narrative of the entire day's action — material which he had amassed while monitoring the day's action in his capacity as the battalion's intelligence officer. That material, he says, was also in the hands of the NCIS. Much of that evidence remains classified, but it includes videos of the entire day's action, including airstrikes against insurgent safe houses. Also included was all of the radio traffic describing the ongoing action between the men on the ground and battalion headquarters, and proof that the Marines were aware that the insurgents conducting the ambush of the Kilo Company troops were videotaping the action — the same video that after editing ended up in the hands of a gullible anti-war correspondent for Time magazine.
And the MSM wonders why we don't trust them.
Maybe it’s time to start holding CNN responsible for their actions and others like them.
Same crap, different war zone...
Nifong. Stalin...
A runaway “justice” system (or injustice system). One that values convictions and “trophies” and “equal representation” in prison.
Something’s gonna give way, and it ain’t gonna be pretty.
Why would the government do this?
I get the distinct impression that the NCIS investigators are out for convictions above all other considerations. The investigating officer and the defense teams should have full access to the unedited footage.
I don't get the connection. The same people aren't involved with both cases.
Well, that may make you feel good, but I'm actually looking for some facts to support the idea that the government is after these people.
Why wouldn't they have this access? Why would the government be trying to frame these soldiers?
As with the border patrol agents mentioned elsewhere, we have to hold high standards for our troops, which are superior morally and in terms of training, than all others. It seems that the government would want to uphold those standards.
So what would be the government's movites for framing them?
I'm not looking for rhetoric and emotion. I'm looking for facts--where are the facts that the government is framing these people?
Here’s an interesting excerpt from the newly published book about President Bush, called Dead Certain.
“At one point he growled at a CIA briefer, “Since whatever you tell me in the PDB is in the New York Times two or three days later, why don’t we just cut out this middle stage? Just give it directly to the Times and I’ll find out about it in my morning press briefing.”
That’s funny.
Actually, I don’t find it funny that so much of our government is in the hands of commie sympathizers and fellow travellers.
Well, the comment is funny, but it doesn’t count as facts in the specific case this thread is about. In fact, no one seems to have any facts about why the government would do this—
Because there are commies in it” isn’t a factual answer, it’s an assertion.
Why are you here on FR?
Because I like to have facts with which to debate liberal idiots who have none.
If someone wanting hard facts to use to defend conservative priciples confuses you so much, I have to wonder why YOU'RE here on FR.
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