As a followup to my previous post here on Pantano and his piece at the WaPo about Murtha’s rush to judgement about our marines in the Haditha incident which the leftists are having such a hissy fit over–I thought I’d put up another post about some of the latest that I’ve noticed in the blogosphere and beyond.

It’s a shame-but our boys are fighting the WOT on the battlefield, and leftists are fighting them afterwards with accusations of ‘war crimes’ in court.

This became evident during the Pantano trial last year; and even more evident during the long learning curve I had on the story about Jack Idema and then men of Task Force Saber 7.

Jumping on the bandwagon of the “US Military” killing ‘innocent civilians in cold blood’, the international media has now shed some light on an incident in Ishaki, a town north of Baghdad. The soldiers were cleared of those charges, but that doesn’t seem to phase the media. Greyhawk and Mudville talks about what’s missing from the MSM reporting on that incident.

Forensic tests on the bodies of those killed at Haditha were originally denied the investigators into the incident by the families. Iraqis appear to have reversed course as the investigation continues and are now allowing the bodies of the victims to be exhumed so that forensic evidence could be collected by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) investigation. Traditional Muslims do not allow disinterment.

From the WaPo:

The NCIS is an independent criminal investigative agency that is not in the military chain of command. Its probe has included as many as 50 special agents, forensics investigators and support personnel operating in Iraq and in the United States, the largest homicide investigation of its type since the war in Iraq began in 2003, according to Navy officials.

NCIS stands for Navy Criminal Investigative Services. Guess what? It’s the Navy Department’s Counter Terrorism and law enforcement arm. So how is it ‘not in the military chain of command’ then?

Don’t know whether to be happy or perplexed that this is not a military investigation.

Update: The doctor who originally did the autopsies was affiliated with terrorists and wrote on a terrorist-supporting BRussels Tribunal a radical terrorist-supporting organization and is probably the guy who filled out their death certificates and wrote about the Haditha incident and being mis-treated by the Americans himself in December.

Sweetness and Light has more on the good doctor, including a partial reprint of an article he wrote at the Baathist Uruknet.

Now this is all supposition but it appears to be accurate.

A commenter called Warmonger Infidel posted this at Sweetness and Light and I echo his sentiments:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5039420.stm

I posted this link earlier in this thread but posting it again because Fox just announced that the military personnel involved have been cleared in this case. There are still 3 others under investigation that I know of….Haditha, the pregnant woman in the speeding car and the case where 8 Marines and one Navy Corpsman are locked up in Camp Pendelton.

I guess the new op order after we finish with the “ethics” training will be to have a team of investigator go in right after any discharge of a weapon to investigate if it was a good discharge. We cannot continue to fight a war like this. Not with each round discharged being suspect, not with the media questioning every action of our troops, not with the presidents of Iraq and Afghanistan questioning every death in combat. It’s time for total war or time for no war. This just won’t work because it’s becoming Viet Nam after My Lai all over again. Not because of our troops….they are doing a great job under the constraints placed on them. But because of the media poisoning the American public and the administration not turning loose the dogs of war.

I hope the media understands the danger they are putting our troops in and the danger they are putting the country in by their irresponsible acts of treason. This just makes me sick.

Makes me sick, too, considering what happened to Jack Idema just before his ‘arrest’ in Afghanistan. Khalilzad wanted to know, when he had a shootout with terrorists, who discharged their weapon first. And now, Khalilzad is Ambassador to Iraq. I feel this sickening deja vu feeling.

Interesting; Pantano was cleared because of forensic evidence revealed in his case. Is it possible that the people who want to convict these soldiers are making sure they get railroaded into a ‘guilty’ verdict by not allowing all the evidence to be entered into the proceedings, like in the Jack Idema case in Afghanistan?

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called the incident in Haditha “a horrible crime,” and accused U.S. troops of habitually attacking unarmed civilians.

But take a look at the ‘evidence’ that the MSM is passing around. Two shots –of the same bodies–one from a slightly wider angle–are of people killed in Haditha BY THE TERRORISTS. That’s right, folks.

The image above is being circulated as an example of Murtha’s ‘innocent civilians’ who were murdered by the horrible cold-blooded American military.

But wait! Put this into its proper context. One must take a closer look at the photograph above and compare it to the one previously. These photographs were taken in Haditha after terrorists executed 19 Shiite fishermen and National Guardsmen in a sports stadium. This is not a picture from the November incident in Haditha involving American Marines.

Michelle Malkin has the contact information for the people to write to at the Times. Her post is longer, and worth the read and following the links. She even posted her email to the Times and the Times’ response in addition to other emails she received on the subject.

Over 20 years ago my dad showed me a similar set of pictures from two separate issues of the Times talking about rioting in two different cities and using the same exact pictures to illustrate ‘police brutality’. It was way back then that I learned to seriously distrust the media, and those fellings haven’t changed; I seem to be seeing more and more evidence of it everywhere.

As far as Haditha is concerned, here are some more links to follow to really grasp the conditions under which our boys were fighting prior to the November Haditha incident.

See at Sweetness and Light: The Haditha Our Media Won’t Tell You About

In 2004, Zarqawi and his band of thugs claimed they “liberated” Haditha. “Liberation” is not what most people would call it if they knew what kind of daily terror the locals are living with, but our marines have been witnessing it.

From the Counter Terrorism blog [Doug Farah]:

“We hope to get rid of al-Qaeda, which is a huge burden on the city. Unfortunately, Zarqawi’s fist is stronger than the Americans’,” said one Sunni sheik, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of insurgent retaliation.

To me, war is not dying for your country…it’s making sure the enemy dies for his. I’m not interested in the spin; I’m interested in the truth–and unfortunately, you can bank on the media not telling it. You can bank on their getting Pulitzers for NOT telling it.

As Michelle mentions, the media has brought up the My Lai incident and drawing comparisons. The evidence isn’t in yet, but they’re doing their smear campaign adequately enough.

Too bad there are bloggers out there who can discern between propaganda and truth. They are the ones who should be winning Pulitzers.