The Man Who Broke The Haditha Story

If I am to take Tim Mcgirk of Time magazine at his word then he and his colleagues are taking credit for the Haditha story :

In January, after Time presented military officials in Baghdad with the Iraqis' accounts of the Marines' actions, the U.S. opened its own investigation, interviewing 28 people, including the Marines, the families of the victims and local doctors.

To get a good idea of Tim McGirk's unbiased reporting from Afghanistan and Iraq, here's a small sampling of his work since September 11, 2001 :

From November 26, 2001; (when the fires were still burning at Ground Zero and the recovery efforts of the 2300+Taliban victims were still highgear) Thanksgiving With The Taliban :

With a few colleagues, I spent my thanksgiving meal squatting on the floor of an Afghan passport office, talking to Taliban fighters about miracles and Judgment Day...We're waiting for four reporters who had been led off into the Rigestan Desert by the Taliban to look at some fuel tankers blown up by U.S. commandos...

...So here we are, with darkness setting in, surrounded by curious and heavily armed Taliban. A fighter points up into the mauve twilight sky. I think he's showing me the crescent moon and nod appreciatively: "Yes, very beautiful." Impatiently, he gestures over to a range of darkening hills, and then I see it: a B-52 bomber, its vapor trails catching the last rays of light. "American?" he asks me menacingly. "No, French," I lie. I try to distract him by offering him some raisins, and he backs away, laughing. Our guide Ahmed explains that the Taliban are fasting. It's Ramadan. On the other side of the world, Americans are waking up to Thanksgiving Day, football and turkey...

...The sun has gone down, and now the starving Taliban can eat. A man named Amanullah beckons us into his office, a mud-walled room with a table, an iron passport-stamper, floor mats, a lopsided bed and three murals he has painted of mountains and a Muslim saint's tomb. He starts eating from a rusty can and offers it around. I offer my bag of raisins. "Look," he says with a grin, "all we ever eat around here are raisins. Do you have anything else?" The Post man conjures up some mango juice, and I go out on the road to a bakery selling wheels of sweet bread fresh from a wood-fired oven. The lights go out (electricity is stolen from Chaman a few hundred meters down the road), so we light candles. There was a genuine Thanksgiving glow about the meal. The bread is good, and more Taliban fighters come in to partake. One of them, a little man with a beard like a troll's, says he is Mullah Mohammed Omar's nephew. But he hasn't seen his uncle much lately: the Taliban supreme leader has been awfully busy since Sept. 11.

Thankfully, there are no more B-52s rumbling overhead to remind the Taliban about the enemy. The subject of religion comes up, and the Taliban are curious about us infidels. Amanullah asks what we believe happens after death. He explains his vision: the coffin opens up like a trap door and either you go to hell or you're escorted up to paradise by beautiful maidens. "That's fine for men, but what can women expect in paradise?" asks the woman from the Times of London. Amanullah isn't exactly sure (Who is?) but he says, "Everything is equal, for men and women in paradise." He then reminds us, with solemn pity, that only True Believers of Islam would be allowed into paradise on Judgment Day. That pretty much leaves us out of the picture.

Then we're talking about miracles. Taliban legend has it that the Prophet Muhammad came to Mullah Omar in a 1994 dream and told this simple, half-blind village cleric to rid Afghanistan of the warlords, who were nothing but thieves and debauched murderers. In the early days, Afghans thought that angels rode into battle with the Taliban, hovering above their tanks and pickup trucks. I ask if Mullah Omar has performed any miracles lately. "Sure," says Amanullah, "he's still alive, isn't he? Isn't that miracle enough, when the mightiest nation on earth is trying to kill him?"...
...The Le Monde correspondent asks what it would take to reach peace in Afghanistan. "We had peace," Haqqani insists. "The Taliban was on the verge of defeating these bandits, until America helped them out. Now there are robberies and killings everywhere. The Taliban will have to start all over again." Our missing colleagues finally arrive, and I leave thinking that maybe this evening wasn't very different from the original Thanksgiving: people from two warring cultures sharing a meal together and realizing, briefly, that we're not so different after all.

The evening wasn't very different from the original Thanksgiving? Hello? HELLO? The pilgrims and the indians were not warring. They helped one and another to survive. That's why it was called THANKSGIVING. Tim McGirk has Stockholm Syndrome.

* From February 15, 2002; Why Doesn't the CIA Want to Talk to a Top Ex-Taliban?

Mullah Abdulsamata Khaksar has been waiting months for the CIA to talk to him. The former deputy Interior Minister of the Taliban says he has a lot of information to give up, perhaps even some that will lead to Mullah Omar, the fugitive leader of Afghanistan's fallen regime and chief ally of Osama bin Laden. But, until TIME alerted U.S. military officials in Kabul in late January of his willingness to talk, no American officials had debriefed Khaksar. Two weeks after, no senior U.S. intelligence official had spoken to him yet.

What does Khaksar want for his hoard of information? Safe passage for his family to a location of his choice. ...The mystery is, why hasn't the CIA come to debrief him?...

...He sits at a desk with a picture of the late Northern Alliance hero, Ahmed Shah Massoud, on his desk, perhaps insurance in case the current rulers of Kabul might begin to doubt his loyalties. [The Northern Alliance hero would be one of the bandits-see Thanksgiving with the Taliban above- that the Taliban murdered just days prior to September 11, 2001] As a Taliban, he publicly enforced an edict banning television but he has one prominently displayed in his office. "Even as a Taliban, I had a TV," grinned Khaksar, "but I had to keep it hidden."...

..."I just don't understand it," Khaksar says. His information might be outdated or even incorrect, but as deputy interior minister of the Taliban, Khaksar's offer to collaborate should not be dismissed so lightly.

The Commander in Chief has stated we don't negoiate with terrorists. An ex-Taliban leader is a terrorist. Wanting safe passage out of Afghanistan in return for information is negoiation, Mr. McGirk.

* From March 3, 2002; When Bad Information Kills People :
U.S. special forces in Afghanistan are frustrated by the perception that they are killing civilians heedlessly; they insist many strikes have been called off because of concern over such deaths. And they refuse to talk to the press. Last week a TIME reporter spotted two of them at the gates of a Gardez hospital; others were out back, tinkering with a rusty generator. But the two soldiers bolted.

By March of 2002, the relationship between Time Magazine and the military had broken down so badly, soldiers fled when they saw the reporters coming.

Mrs. P

Comments

[Debbie]

Well, I have just finished reading all the posts at Sweetness & Light and reading your post. (I'm so behind in my reading, ugh!)

It is amazing to me that people just jump to the assumption that the American Marines at guilty -- no questions asked, no investsigation --. It's just sickening to me.

The 'doctor' involved in this does sound very suspicious to me. We have to remember that this place is/was full of terrorists (insurgents, whatever folks want to call them, they are killers).

A friend emailed me this morning. Her friend's grandson was shot by a 13 year old boy in Iraq. Shot and killed. Very likely the soldier was trying to help the boy and his town, I don't know the circumstances. But the boy just walks up and shoots the soldier.

Where is the MSM now? Why are they not reporting incidents like this where our guys are being murdered? And it IS murder. But that doesn't sell papers to the libs (America haters).

It just makes me so darned mad.

[Jacobite]

"Taliban legend has it that the Prophet Muhammad came to Mullah Omar in a 1994 dream and told this simple, half-blind village cleric to rid Afghanistan of the warlords, who were nothing but thieves and debauched murderers."

Considering that Sunni Islam bans pictorial depictions of Muhammad, how did Omar know it was him?

Also, Mrs. P, how does one format text in the Comments? I tried using the usual HTML "text" without the quotes to italicize the text, but that doesn't work on your blog.

[Mr. Peperium]

Jacobite,

I'm only saying this to you because I know you'll understand. So, just between us Idolaters of the Whore of Babylon, I need to share a growing suspicion:

The more I learn about Islam, the more a disturbing parallel occurs to me. No pictures of Muhammad allowed. No need of a church, no mediation between God and man, just personal prayer five times a day. Belief in one book as the perfect word of God; a book so perfect that to translate it was considered--if I may use the term--not quite kosher.

Add it all up and what does it kinda sound like? Protestantism.

As to your vexing questions about HTML's and such, fie on you! Our area will soon be overtaken by the universal jihad and soon, thanks be to Muhammad, these technical questions will be a thing of the vaquely remembered past as I try to get through my day without that lunchtime G&T that comes in so handy most days.

[Mrs. Peperium]

Debbie, The reporting is so bad and so biased, it is causing me to reflexively think all of our soldiers are innocent, no matter what. Keep going with your blog. Your work is amazing.

[juana suarez]

Back in November 2001, Afghanistan was still ruled by the Taliban, so in order to enter the country and report, journalists had to get visas from the Taliban at the border. That is how McGirk, along with reporters from LeMonde, the Times of London, and the Washington Post ended up spending time with them at that miserable place. They were not armed with anything except pen and paper. How they passed that Thanksgiving makes fascinating reading. When reporters quote people, it does not mean they support what is said.

[Mrs. Peperium]

Thanks Juana. The parts of Tim McQuirk's Thanksgiving With The Taliban I found truly objectionable besides eating with the enemy was:

...But he hasn't seen his uncle much lately: the Taliban supreme leader has been awfully busy since Sept. 11...

The Taliban allowed Al-Qaeda to live in Afghanistan. They declared the buildings crumbling on Sept 11th were a sign of God's support for them and their horrible regime. McQuirk's reporting of this remark was worthless because who is to say the "Taliban fighter" (ie; enemy of U.S.) was telling him the truth? How could McQuirk confirm the guy was who he said he was? It was impossible. You used to have to confirm those things before a remark like that was published in a magazine like Time.
The other most offensive and unprofessional remark was:
..."I leave thinking that maybe this evening wasn't very different from the original Thanksgiving: people from two warring cultures sharing a meal together and realizing, briefly, that we're not so different after all."
This is so wrong, where does one begin? First, the man is emoting - very girlie of him to be so warm and fuzzy with the enemy as well as unprofessional. War correspondents are supposed to reports facts, not emotions. Second, what is the news quality in this? Third, the pilgrims and the Indians were not warring. They supported each other. The first Thanksgiving was not a day of truce in a war : It was a day of Thanksgiving.