Well, glad we planned that withdrawal so extensively
BAGHDAD — One by one, the Marines sat down, swore to tell the truth and began to give secret interviews discussing one of the most horrific episodes of America’s time in Iraq: the 2005 massacre by Marines of Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha.
“I mean, whether it’s a result of our action or other action, you know, discovering 20 bodies, throats slit, 20 bodies, you know, beheaded, 20 bodies here, 20 bodies there,” Col. Thomas Cariker, a commander in Anbar Province at the time, told investigators as he described the chaos of Iraq. At times, he said, deaths were caused by “grenade attacks on a checkpoint and, you know, collateral with civilians.”
The 400 pages of interrogations, once closely guarded as secrets of war, were supposed to have been destroyed as the last American troops prepare to leave Iraq. Instead, they were discovered along with reams of other classified documents, including military maps showing helicopter routes and radar capabilities, by a reporter for The New York Times at a junkyard outside Baghdad. An attendant was burning them as fuel to cook a dinner of smoked carp.
I think about all I have to add is…..um…Holy Sheepshit are you effen kidding me?
I care less about the actual documents than I do us just leaving secret shit all around. It’s like when I leave the house and the wife invariably leaves the TV for the dog, who apparently has an innate desire to catch up on the news of SportsCenter. Um, no. Mr. Electricity gets shut off. I would say the first rule of international fight club should be, “burn all the shit before you leave.”
Category: Politics
A NYT reporter… outside Baghdad??! And who conveniently just happened to be what, picnicking at a junkyard? Doesn’t that start to look like a blip on your BS radar
Not that the military isn’t always as careful as it should be with classified info, but in this case, I’m willing to bet someone walked these documents/copies to the reporter.
Yet another example of what has oft been said here: it’s not the kind of military we knew.
A blip, Phil? The NY Times has been trying to destroy this country for DECADES.
Here’s the story on how the documents came to be in the NYT’s hands:
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/secret-military-documents-straight-from-an-iraqi-junkyard/
MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
“Several weeks ago, we heard that a local businessman had purchased some trailers from a closing American base.
We were told the trailers were parked at a nearby junkyard, so one afternoon I headed out with our security team to find them.”
“20 bodies throat slit” “20 bodies, ,beheaded”
Sounds like the work of insurgents.
“Grenade attacks on a Checkpoint”
Again sounds like insurgents killing civilians.
They are cherry picking quotes to try and smear the troops. Sounds like the work of the NYT.
What a horribly written propaganda piece. Loaded words, loaded words everywhere. Everything taken out of context. Completely glosses over the actual events of the “massacre.” someone should lose their job over this, even though I know they will not.
I used to enjoy standing around the burn barrel every night, smoking cigars and bullshitting with my troops…it was one of the ways I could relax…and make sure every shred of paper was burned…stirred….bruned some more, stirred and burned….
What I am about to write is something that I really wanted to write on Juancole.com. That website is an extreemly liberal, red, as in commy front, webstight published by a University of Michingan proffessor. The reason that I have to post it here is that the article that he had posted about where Iraq stands today today compared to where is stood in Febuary of 2003 has been romoved. Well at least I could not find it. It said things like the number of Iraqis living in poverty in 2002 was 20% compared wtih 50% today. Well I wanted to respond to this commie propoganda and direct it towards the readers of that website. Sadly I am reduced to sharing with the readers here what I would have written there. Although the short term consequences of the US invansion of Iraq might appear at first glance completely disasterous for the vast majority of Iraqis it is quite likely that this invasion prevented many attacks in our streets in America by Angrey Al Queda members. More importantly for Iraqis one can never know in the long term whether or not Iraq will be better of or worse off as a result of the US invasion. This invasion was possibly a catalyst for an Iraqi civil war that may have very possibly have been fought anyways and would have very possibly caused many more casualties if the US had not been there. We can not know how bad Iraq wouild have if Saddam had remained in power for another decade or two. Even worse to imagine is what wouild have become of Iraq had one of his two sons taken over. Ok if the son who was not known as a serial killer of beautiful women had not come to power Iraq might not have changed much. But if the other crippled son had come to power Iraq might have made North Korea look like a paradise. Furtermore with Iraq now unofficially under Clerical Rule what the future of Iraq will be is very much up in the air. That last… Read more »
Phil — It’s probably the work of a stringer.
Note the bottom, where it says:
“Yasir Ghazi contributed reporting.”
And Curt — Juan Cole is all the things you say but I doubt he got rid of that old post. He’s got too high an opinion of himself to think of deleting his own words.
Curt — Juan Cole’s blog allows archive bots, which means you can find his original posts at Archive.org.
For example, here are his posts from January 2003:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030623033101/http://juancole.com/2003_01_01_juancole_archive.html
But, like I said, I don’t think he’d delete it. It’s more likely that you’re remembering something he wrote that was published elsewhere.
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