The Blog @ Spolitics

Did Time “Order” the Haditha Story?

by Heywood U. Reedmore -- June 18, 2006 at 3:57 pm | In No, Seriously | No Comments

Sweetness & Light is really dogging Time and reporter Tim McGirk over the discrepancies in their Haditha story. Two points are worth mentioning: one, Time actually went looking for a story on civilian casualties. The Haditha story was delivered to them as a result of them specifically asking for a story like it.

Well, we wanted to do a story that looked at civilian casualties, because in December, President Bush mentioned for the first time that there were around 30,000 civilian casualties. So we contacted the Hammurabi human rights monitoring group, since we did stuff with them before, and we knew that they had very good contacts in the Sunni triangle and could get places that we couldn’t get to. So, they came one day and they brought this horrendous video…

The fact that Time specifically asked Hammurabi for this kind of story, and then they obliged “one day,” makes this video suspect. I’m also curious, did Time pay for this story? Was money discussed upfront? Was there a financial incentive for Hammurabi to produce this video? In other words, did Time unwittingly “order” the Haditha video?

The Marines may be guilty and if they are, they should be punished. But we need to keep in mind that the enemy in question is one that beheads innocents for PR. The idea that the insurgents would stage a massacre and try to blame it on our soldiers is right out of their playbook. It’s not enough to say the victims were shot at close range. It needs to be determined that the gunshot wounds are consistent with the Marines’ weapons. A fact I have yet to hear.

Second, it’s worth highlighting this quote if just to point out McGirk’s attitude towards the professionalism of the Marines:

We told them that we’d like to go up and see the place for ourselves, but it was too dangerous for us to go up there alone, can [they] arrange an embed? So, they did, but the problem was that the ABC anchor [Bob Woodruff] had just been wounded the day before we were supposed to go out, and [Time managing editor] Jim Kelly, I think wisely, said that it probably wasn’t a good idea for us to go out to Haditha, and put our safety in the hands of the men that we were then going to turn around and accuse of having gone on a rampage and killed civilians. 

Clearly, he didn’t trust the Marines he was ready to condemn. And, it should be noted he was prepared to condemn them before even seeing the scene.

This whole thing stinks.