Abu Wabu

I've deliberately stayed away from the Haditha story because the whole thing smells rotten to me. Even those expressing a wait-and-see attitude were issuing the caveat that if the story is true, then the guilty should be punished, which I've always thought goes without saying. I also took into account that the story involved alleged manifold atrocities, grievous departures from the ROE by a Marine patrol, a scenario that required one to believe that a company of highly-skilled men, most if not all on at least their second tour of duty in the the hardest of Iraq's hard-ass terrorhoods- places like Fallujah- seasoned warriors in the most professional fighting force in the world, had suddenly acted against all their training and simply, mindlessly run amok.

Damned unlikely.

The more people wrote and pontificated on the thing, the less I heard of substance. This wasn't news, this was baseless speculation combined with moral positioning presented as panel discussion, a disdainful but popular MSM practice. Even Fox got sucked into the morass.

Now a host of blogs are reporting that the story is beginning to unravel, and they all point to Sweetness & Light. Here is a round-up of their articles on the subject:

Reuters Reported "Bodies In The Street" At Haditha
Why Did "Rights Group" Sit On Its Haditha Story?
Did Marine Photographer Have A Personal Motive?
Time's McGirk Wanted To Call Haditha "A Massacre"
The Questionable Sources For Time's Haditha Scoop
Haditha Lawyer Wants More "Compensation"
Times Claims COs Knew Of Haditha Within 2 Days
Haditha Reporter's Thanksgiving With The Taliban
The Haditha Our Media Won't Tell You About
Haditha Doctor Was Arrested, Hates US
Haditha Reporter Was Jailed By US, Shares Name With Source
What Google Considers News Sources For Haditha
Times Begs For Tales Of "Marine Massacre"

Other sources:
The Strata-Sphere
Power Line has links
Washington Post

The Iraqi "journalist" at the center of this story is of interest to me. Consider this caption below his photograph in this AP story:

Secretary-General of the Hammurabi Organization for Human Rights and Democracy Monitoring, and also a Haditha resident who witnessed parts of the incident, Thaer al-Hadithi, gives a detailed account of the alleged massacre of 24 Iraqis by U.S. Marines last year, to an Associated Press reporter at the offices of the group in Baghdad, Iraq Tuesday, June 6, 2006. The US Marines allegedly stormed at least 20 homes after a deadly bombing in a security sweep that lasted up to nine hours, he said.

I'm supposed to be dazzled by his account, but Who is this guy and Why should I believe him? What are his motives? When did he come forward? Where was he during the incident and afterward?

Answer: He may not even know it, but Thaer al-Hadithi is working on behalf of George Soros and Fenton Communications, which coincidentally serves as the press agent for notorious liar Joe Wilson and books him on the moonbat rubber-chicken circuit. Fans of Dana Priest, who relied on CIA Inspector-General officer Mary McCarthy's leaks to weave a Pulitzer-winning story about apparently non-existant European CIA prisons, will recall that Priest's husband owns Fenton Communications, which handles public relations for Human Rights Watch, which TIME stated worked with the Hammurabi Organization for Human Rights and Democracy Monitoring, a flowery name for a two-man front-operation that involved only al-Hadithi and Abdul-Rahman al-Mashhadani.

Says Sweetness&Light:

Al-Mashhadani is described in a December 15, 2005 article from the Institute For War And Peace as an election monitor. In fact, he expressed great satisfaction with the turnout in the Iraqi elections:
Abdul-Rahman al-Mashhadani, an election monitor in Baghdad with the non-governmental organisation Hamurabi, said no major violations occurred in Baghdad. He expected 90 per cent turnout in Sunni Arab areas. (Which is quite ironic, given that only 150 people out of 90,000 dared to risk their lives to vote in the earlier
October referendum in Haditha.)

But if Abdul-Rahman al-Mashhadani was talking to the media in December about the election turnout, why didn’t he tell them then about this alleged atrocity at Haditha that had just occurred three weeks before?

Wasn’t that the purpose in starting the Hammurabi group?

Here's the link to the AP report. Compare that nonsense with this from Sweetness&Light.

Protein Wisdom

Then comes a muttered correction from TIME, buried "at the bottom of its online archive of the story which few will revisit." Note the author:

The Haditha Scandal’s Other Casualty

With the Pentagon completing its probe into whether U.S. forces massacred civilians one November morning in Western Iraq, the damage to America’s image abroad could take a further hit

By MATTHEW COOPER/WASHINGTON

Posted Friday, May. 26, 2006

In the original version of this story, TIME reported that "one of the most damning pieces of evidence investigators have in their possession, John Sifton of Human Rights Watch told Time’s Tim McGirk, is a photo, taken by a Marine with his cell phone that shows Iraqis kneeling — and thus posing no threat — before they were shot." While Sifton did tell TIME that there was photographic evidence, taken by Marines, he had only heard about the specific content of the photos from reports done by NBC, and had no firsthand knowledge. TIME regrets the error.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1198843,00.html

Imagine my surprise: a Soros-funded anti-American NGO disguised as a benevolent organization named "Human Rights Watch", whose press agency is Fenton Communications, the head of whom is married to Washington Post reporter Dana Priest and pimps gigs for notorious liar Joe Wilson (whose super-secret CIA soccer-mom wife was "under cover" and therefore his motives can't be questioned), accuses U.S. Marines of atrocities based on information they gave TIME, which defined said information as "one of the most damning pieces of evidence", then recants and scurries back into the shadows when the spotlight on TIME shines in its direction.

Go ahead. Tell me HRW is merely a Fenton Communications client.

Connecting the dots just got a whole lot more interesting.