September 29, 2007
A military panel found Sgt. Jorge Sandoval from Laredo, Texas,
not guilty of murder Sept. 28.Sandoval was found not guilty of murdering an unknown male April
27. He was also found not guilty of murdering an unknown male May 11;
placing an AK-47 rifle on the body and failing to ensure humane
treatment of the victim while he was being detained.Sandoval was found guilty of placing command wire on the body of
the male victim on April 27.The military panel will reconvene Sept. 29 for Sandoval's
sentencing. He can face between six months to five years in prison.
Some background here.
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September 28, 2007
The first caught the Gathering of Eagles using a photo illustration--a photoshopped image, in this instance--that showed Code Pink supporters carrying a banner that proclaimed, "We support the murder of American troops."
The problem is, Code Pink didn't make this particular banner... these guys did, or at least they created the image.
To be fair, the Gathering of Eagles were not the first nor the last to be taken in by this "fake, but accurate" image that does capture what many conservative feel are the real sentiments of some radical left wing groups, and the sign isn't that far off the mark from very real signs that have been carried by "progressive" protesters in the past.
Yesterday, Sadly, No! once again caught a fake photo being used to support a protest, this time, capturing FrontPageMag using an image from an obscure 30-minute Dutch indie film in promoting Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.
This is a little more difficult to blame on the magazine (dubious as their credibility often is), as reputable news organizations and human rights groups have used the exact same image in the past, building up credibility for it as a legitimate photo, when in actuality it was not.
All the snark at Sadly No! aside, in an age where image sources can sometimes be questionable and even relying on other media outlets can leave a blogger, magazine, newspaper, etc posting an image that is either staged, altered, misappropriated or mis-captioned, what is the best way to address the issue of correcting such misinformation?
How it Should Be Done (One Blogger's Opinion)
It seems that in many instances where a publisher gets taken in by bogus or mis-captioned images such as these, that the immediate reaction is defensiveness, which is human nature. We, as humans, hate to be wrong, and it makes things worse when the credibility of the image/caption in question is typically brought about by a less-than-polite critic.
That said, it is wrong to ignore the issue and act as if the image is unquestionably accurate when it's credibility has been credibly challenged, and also wrong to simply remove it and act as if it was never there.
On July, 13, 2007, RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty ran the exact same image stoning image from the Dutch film, with the caption, "An Iranian woman is buried up to her chest before being stoned to death, though to have taken place some 20 years ago (file photo) (public domain)"
Ideally, in an instance such as this, the inaccurate caption could be corrected by something like this:
A dramatic depiction of a stoning from the 1994 Dutch film, De Steen. The photo was previously incorrectly identified as a photo from an actual stoning in Iran roughly 20 years ago.
Corrections don't have to be that hard.
In this particular instance, however, the problem is compounded for this news organization, because the same photo had been used by RFE/RL in other stories as well.
In situations where a photo has become stock, and used multiple times, it is probably worth correcting both the captions, and creating a separate article explaining how the error occurred, and what steps will be taken to make sure such things do not occur in the future.
I have some sympathy for the various news outlets who were using this photo as the actual depiction of a real event. The actual source of the photo (filmmaker Mahnaz Tamizi) is probably unaware of the picture's by news outlets, and once a photo is used by one or more credible news outlets or organizations, it can readily become part of the "conventional wisdom."
That said, there are right ways and wrong ways to address corrections, and tossing the photo and caption "down the memory hole" and acting as if they never existed as FrontPageMag has done, is an entirely unacceptable rewriting of history.
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September 27, 2007
Via one of those neocon warmongers at Hot Air. Get more Uncle Jay Explains, here.
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Somehow his story is starting to sound strangely familiar:
Early on, McSwane did a piece about cocaine dealing in Fort Collins, based on anonymous sources, Lowrey said. Lowrey said he decided to kill the article when McSwane declined to reveal the sources to him.Also troubling to other students was McSwane's story of growing up in a foster home.
"So he has this heartbreaking story," Lowrey said. But students learned that the foster mother in the home was Hansen, McSwane's natural mother.
"I raised him, and yes, I'm a foster mother," Hansen said. "He was never, ever a foster child."
McSwane's editor, Brandon Lowrey, attempted to fact-check McSwane's cocaine story, and refused to run it when McSwane didn't provide evidence to support the claims.
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From the Associated Press:
The leading Democratic White House hopefuls conceded Wednesday night they cannot guarantee to pull all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the end of the next presidential term in 2013.
"I think it's hard to project four years from now," said Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois in the opening moments of a campaign debate in the nation's first primary state."It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting," added Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
"I cannot make that commitment," said former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
Senator Christopher Dodd and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson said that they would pull out American military forces if elected president, but with Richardson currently polling at only 3% and Dodd not even on the radar at 1%, what they feel, frankly, matters little.
As Bryan notes at Hot Air, "The netroots ain't gonna like this."
He's quite right, but at this point, they seem not to matter.
"Captain Ed" Morrissey gives General David Petraeus credit for shifting the debate over the war:
How far has General David Petraeus moved the debate on Iraq? His testimony on the surge, and the effects of the surge itself, has made it much more difficult for Democrats to argue for withdrawal and defeat...[snip]
...Americans don't like to lose wars, and given the successes that Petraeus has generated, more Americans see an opportunity to persevere in Iraq. Leading Democrats realize now that running as the party of defeat when we continue to gain ground may sound good in the primaries, but will be disastrous in the general election.
What we may--and I caution, may--be witnessing here is a bursting of the progressive blogosphere's image of its influence over the rest of the Democratic Party.
I'm not stating by any stretch of the imagination that the entire online progressive community has been neutered as the result of a presidential primary debate that few American watched, but it should be sobering nonetheless for groups such as A.N.S.W.E.R., Code Pink, and others who have made their primary political issue the full, near-term withdrawal of American forces from Iraqi soil.
The three front-running Democratic candidates have said, in no uncertain terms, that they will not commit to a pull-out during the next presidency. The very vocal supporters of these groups have been told, in no uncertain terms, that the Democratic frontrunners do not think that their arguments are viable.
General Petraeus' Congressional testimony changed few minds on Iraq, but the testimony of men and women on the ground as to the effects of the "surge" seem to have created a groundswell of what may not be support for the war, but is certainly at least tolerance among the American people to give our military and the Iraqi people the chance to continue the campaign.
It was this tolerance and trust of our soldiers and the Iraqi people that anti-war types have tried since 2003 to undermine.
They've constantly played the refrain over and over again of Abu Ghraib and other atrocities large and small, inevitable failure, nefarious schemes and schemas, and unnecessary deaths that would only end, and could only end, if American forces turned tail and fled Iraq, to let it become a failed state. Worse, they often protrayed Iraqis themselves as a blood-lusting "other," that longs only for war and martyrdom, instead of stability, opportunity, and hope for their children.
But Iraqis love their children.
With the help of American sailors, soldiers, airmen and Marines, Iraq's villagers and tribesmen have joined in their own grassroots efforts towards stabilizing Iraq, with both provincial Sunnis and Shias fighting back against terrorists, extremists, and criminals responsible for so much of the nation's violence. They do so by forming their own federally-recognized militias, the police and the Army, and joining a political process they once shunned. The small towns and villages are leading, and larger towns and national politicians seem to be slowly following their lead, even as outsiders from al Qaeda and Iran find Iraqi lands to be less hospitable and far more lethal than they once were.
When a terrorist car bomb decimates a tribal militia checkpoint guarding a village, and the townspeople rebuild and re-man the checkpoint even as the dead are being laid to rest, that makes a statement. When terrorists blow up a police recruiting center and potential recruits step into the footprints of those who have fallen before them, it makes a statement.
This is a budding grassroots effort that Americans watching the conflict are willing to get behind.
Clinton, Obama, and Edwards have grasped this truth.
The netroots, it seems, will take a while longer.
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September 25, 2007
According to the Hill's Karissa Marcum:
Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan is making celebrity endorsements a key facet of her long-shot bid to defeat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) next year.In a recent interview with The Hill, Sheehan said she has been endorsed by actress Roseanne Barr, country crooner Willie Nelson and Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello.
Sheehan added that White House hopeful Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and former Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) are also backing her.
"Celebrities bring a certain kind of — good or bad, it seems like our lives are centered around TV and movies — I think it does bring credibility," Sheehan said.
Nelson is a friend of Sheehan's and has offered to help her raise money for her campaign. "[Nelson and his wife] just have the exact correct politics and the exact compassion for the earth and humanity that I think attracts us as friends," she said.
"I support Cindy Sheehan in everything she does," Nelson wrote in an e-mail, "whether it's running for Congress, or the president of the U.S. She's a great American, not afraid to stand up for what she believes in."
I wonder if Barr, Nelson, etc. support these comments penned by Sheehan yesterday:
I heard that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University because Columbia's president wanted to foster a "free exchange of ideas." Even though I am not an Ahmadinejad supporter, I know he was elected in Iran in a knee-jerk and understandable response to the USA's bloody unnecessary invasion of Iraq, as many reactionary governments have been elected in that region and all over the world in response to the spreading U.S. corporate and military empire.Citing such human rights' violations in the form of imprisonment and executions, Columbia University's president very boorishly said that Ahmadinejad appeared to be a "petty and cruel dictator." First of all, how does one invite someone to your place for a "free exchange of ideas" and be such a rude American? Did he only invite Ahmadinejad so he could publicly scold him or to become the darling of Fox News?
[snip]
Another boorish American, Scott Pelley (of 60 Minutes) hammered Ahmadinejad about sending weapons into Iraq without even once acknowledging the immoral tons of weapons that we rained on the citizens of Iraq during "shocking and awful"; the cluster bombs that look like toys that litter the killing fields of that country and have killed and maimed so many children; the mercenary killers that outnumber our troops and use the people of Iraq for target practice; the thousands of tons of weapons that the U.S. let out of such weapons dumps as al-Qaqaa that were left unguarded while the oil ministry was heavily fortified.
[snip]
The fascist, near dictatorship of the Bush regime (a la Nazi Germany) has even intimidated universities to align with their hypocritical murderous rhetoric. Universities should feel free to invite anyone to speak to open much needed dialogue in our country and in the world. And if a person is invited, they should be treated by the person who invited them with a slight modicum of courtesy and then let the rocking and rolling begin with the "Q & A"... which would truly be a free exchange of ideas. I am surprised President Bollinger didn't have President Ahmadinejad tased.
Peace is going to take all the nations working in cooperation to limit naked aggression and human rights' violations, not just the ones that the U.S. declare as evil. How many nukes do we have? How many does Pakistan have? How many does India, Israel, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union have? Should the rhetoric be about destroying all weapons of mass destruction and not just prohibiting Iran from obtaining one?
Many countries are committing human rights' violations and sending arms and troops into many parts of the world. America's biggest export is violence and we would do well to call for an end to all occupations and violence by beginning to end our own.
Let's clean our own filthy house before we criticize someone else for theirs.
Sheehan is offended that Bollinger was impolite to a man that belongs to a regime that murders it's citizens for the capital offense of being gay.
Sheehan is outraged that the mouthpiece for a regime that kills young women for defending themselves against rapists, wasn't given the proper respect.
This, from a woman who lost a son to the same Shia militias that this petty tyrant's regime still arms to kill other American mother's sons.
Update: Related.
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- nice guy by the way) and have helped local ranchers at their branding and roundups many times. Gee, actual cowboy stuff...wonder how many brandings Willie has worked?
And, for full disclosure, I am a registered Independent in a state where politicos generally only differ between a D, R, or L at the end of their names.
Civil war has been averted in Iraq and Iranian intervention there has "ceased to exist," Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said yesterday."I can't say there is a picture of roses and flowers in Iraq," Maliki told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "However, I can say that the greatest victory, of which I am proud . . . is stopping the explosion of a sectarian war." That possibility, he said, "is now far away."
While political reconciliation is not yet complete, he said, progress is being made. "Reconciliation is not a decision that can be made, but a process that takes continuous efforts and also needs strategic patience," Maliki said.
He said cabinet ministers who have left his government in protest will be replaced, and he expressed confidence that the Iraqi parliament will pass legislation that he, the Bush administration and Congress have demanded.
Maliki, who will speak to the U.N. General Assembly tomorrow, deftly dodged questions about last week's incident in which employees of Blackwater, a private U.S. security firm, allegedly killed 11 Iraqi civilians. While "initial signs" are that "there was some wrongdoing from Blackwater," he said, he will await the results of a U.S.-Iraqi investigation. He dismissed a statement by the interior minister in Baghdad that Blackwater will be banned from Iraq, saying the positions of the ministry and his office are "the same."
Iraqi security forces, Maliki said, are increasingly capable of operating without U.S. support. But he agreed with the Bush administration that an early U.S. withdrawal would be unwise.
Iraq's political leadership, he said through an interpreter, "wants the process of withdrawing troops to happen [simultaneously with] the process of rebuilding Iraqi Security Forces so that they can take responsibility." No one, he said, "wants to risk losing all the achievements" they have made.
Whether or not you agree with al-Maliki's assessment (and there is plenty of room to doubt his pronouncements from both the right and the left), you would think that the Iraqi Prime Minister's statements that the threat of a full-on sectarian war " had ceased to exist" along with Iran's involvement in meddling in Iraq, would be page A1 material.
After all, American politics, foreign and domestic, are being driven by the actions and reactions of Democratic and Republican politicians to news in Iraq.
You might think that a strong claim of positive news--and there is no way to say this is anything other than that sort of claim--would be wildly trumpeted by the Post, if for no other reason than to generate ad revenue and hits that would come from such a controversial claim.
The current WashingtonPost.com home page instead features what leading stories?
Sanctions against a country the newspaper had to rename because most readers would not know what it was otherwise, the announcement that the Supreme Court would examine a death penalty case, and that the UAW hopes for a quick resolution to the strike they called for.
Claiming that the sectarian war in Iraq has "ceased to exist?"
Page A15.
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A screen capture posted on mediabistro.com's FishbowlDC seems to indicate that TNR fact-checker and Beauchamp's wife Elspeth Reeve is also no longer with the beleaguered magazine.
Update: Patrick Gavin, who posted the Facebook entry noting that Reeve was no longer at The New Republic, has followed up on his original post, noting that Reeve has indeed left the magazine, but:
...not for any sinister reasons. Her year-long internship had expired and she is currently working as a research assistant for Mike Grunwald.
Reeve's first published story for TNR, "Patriot Act," was published May 3, 2006. Reeve was still on the Masthead in July of 2007, and according to Robert McGee, she was still employed at The New Republic when he was fired July 26 for revealing her marriage to Beauchamp, more than 14 months later.
The New Republic is apparently no better at keeping time than they are checking facts.
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September 24, 2007
Imagine, for a moment, that you are a member of the Islamic State of Iraq. You wear no uniform, no insignia that identifies you as anything other than a civilian. Late to a meeting with cell members at a nearby safehouse, you step off the main road to take a shortcut down a path through a grove of trees. Before you, on the path, is a spool of wire often used by your fellow insurgents in building IEDs. Seeing no one around, and wondering if one of your fellow cell members may have use for it, you warily pick it up with the intention of giving it to you cell's bomb builder...
Imagine, for a moment, that you are a U.S. Army sniper in a concealed position a hundred meters away, watching these scenarios play out. Can you cipher their intentions and determine which man is the insurgent, and which is the civilian, based merely upon the decision to pick up the spool of wire?
If a Washington Post story this morning is correct, that is precisely the determination that an elite sniper platoon was asked to make as part of a classified baiting program hoping to identify and eliminate insurgents in one area of Iraq.
"Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy," Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. "Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces."In documents obtained by The Washington Post from family members of the accused soldiers, Didier said members of the U.S. military's Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in January and later passed along ammunition boxes filled with the "drop items" to be used "to disrupt the AIF [Anti-Iraq Forces] attempts at harming Coalition Forces and give us the upper hand in a fight."
Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said such a baiting program should be examined "quite meticulously" because it raises troubling possibilities, such as what happens when civilians pick up the items.
"In a country that is awash in armaments and magazines and implements of war, if every time somebody picked up something that was potentially useful as a weapon, you might as well ask every Iraqi to walk around with a target on his back," Fidell said.
In a country where every household is expected to have small arms for protection, using bait such as small arms, magazines, or ammunition for these small arms would be entirely and unquestioningly unacceptable. It would be far too tempting for civilians to pick up such found implements that they could legally own, use, or sell.
On the other hand, if the unit was using bait items that could only be use by insurgents and terrorists--say, artillery rounds or plastic explosives--then the baiting becomes more targeted and less likely to ensnare innocent civilians. But when the penalty for picking up such objects and attempting to carry them away is a marksmanÂ’s bullet, is it acceptable to take that gamble?
The story reported by Josh White and Joshua Partlow, unfortunately, immediately begins to purposefully conflate unlike things almost immediately after raising very legitimate questions about the baiting program.
Citing two soldiers who only revealed the program in revenge for pending disciplinary actions is problematic, as is conflating murder charges pending against soldiers for planting evidence after a shooting took place with the program of leaving bait to hopefully identify insurgents worth shooting.
It is one thing to shoot someone because they are holding a hand grenade as the approach your position, but quite another to shoot someone coming down the same path and then plant the grenade on their body after the fact. White and Partlow spend the majority of their article blurring the distinctions between the two, while admitting begrudgingly in one sentence on the second page of the article:
Though it does not appear that the three alleged shootings were specifically part of the classified program, defense attorneys argue that the program may have opened the door to the soldiers' actions because it blurred the legal lines of killing in a complex war zone.
The reporters present the defense team arguments of murder suspects as their "evidence" of a failed program, but it is nothing of the sort.
The men they speak with are on trial for planting weapons on men they've killed, after the fact, to justify a killing that they felt was questionable under their rules of engagement. The baiting program, while a legitimate topic for vigorous debate and legal review in itÂ’s own right, has nothing to do with planting evidence at all.
The "throwaway" gun is a staple of television shows and films going back decades based upon the dishonorable practice of a very few real-life law enforcement officers who planted guns on the bodies of criminals to justify a "bad" or questionable shooting. That this practice also occurs in war zones is unsurprising, if regrettable.
That White and Partlow would be so gullible as to immediately and uncritically swallow defense team arguments that the program is to blame for the alleged criminal acts of their clients planting evidence to justify a shooting is an unconscionable act of criminal advocacy to advance apparent personal biases against a program only tangentially related, if newsworthy in its own right. Put another way, they donÂ’t like the program, and are willing to use the club provided for them by the defense team, without any critical eye towards the merits of the defense, which are few.
The illegitimate sniping in this case clearly doesn't stop with the soldiers, and we deserve better from our professional journalists than this.
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September 23, 2007
It is perhaps ironic that I never got fired up as much about this story as have some others (I only touched on it again here to note my surprise, and here to note the Times first explanation).
Reading Hoyt's explanation, my primary thought is relief that this was an apparent mistake (and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here considering their eventual transparency on this issue), and hope that they'll be forgiving of the Times advertising person that sold the ad below market rate.
I can't quite bring myself to be as forgiving of Steph Jespersen, the executive who approved the ad, or of the self-serving argument of publisher "Pinch" Sulzberger, that "If weÂ’re going to err, itÂ’s better to err on the side of more political dialogue. ... Perhaps we did err in this case. If we did, we erred with the intent of giving greater voice to people."
Somehow, that argument seems quite hollow coming from a man who in a previous war, hoped that American soldiers would get shot because "It's the other guy's country." (h/t Ed Driscoll)
The saying goes that "a fish rots from the head," so if anyone gets taken to task over this at the Times, I hope that the senior leadership at the times looks squarely in the mirror.
The cost would not have been a factor if the executives of the Times had followed their own polices, and declined to run the ad in the first place.
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September 21, 2007
IraqÂ’s Ministry of Interior has concluded that employees of a private American security firm fired an unprovoked barrage in the shooting last Sunday in which at least eight Iraqis were killed and is proposing a radical reshaping of the way American diplomats and contractors here are protected.In the first comprehensive account of the dayÂ’s events, the ministry said that security guards for Blackwater USA, a company that guards all senior American diplomats here, fired on Iraqis in their cars in midday traffic.
The document concludes that the dozens of foreign security companies here should be replaced by Iraqi companies, and that a law that has given the companies immunity for years be scrapped.
Four days after the shooting, American officials said they were still preparing their own forensic analysis of what happened in Nisour Square. They have repeatedly declined to give any details before their work is finished.
Privately, those officials have warned against drawing conclusions before American investigators have finished interviewing the Blackwater guards. In the Interior Ministry account — made available to The New York Times on Thursday — Iraqi investigators interviewed many witnesses but relied on the testimony of the people they considered to be the four most credible.
The account says that as soon as the guards took positions in four locations in the square, they began shooting south, killing a driver who had failed to heed a traffic policemanÂ’s call to stop.
“The Blackwater company is considered 100 percent guilty through this investigation,” the report concludes.
The version of events told by Blackwater employees, some Iraqi eyewitnesses, and even the early Interior Ministry accounts, relays an entirely different story:
The ministry said the incident began around midday, when a convoy of sport utility vehicles came under fire from unidentified gunmen in the square. The men in the SUVs, described by witnesses as Westerners, returned fire, the ministry said.Blackwater's employees were protecting a U.S. official when they were hit by "a large explosive device, then repeated small-arms fire -- and to the point where it disabled one of the vehicles, and the vehicle had to be towed out of the firefight," said Marty Strong, vice president of Blackwater USA.
A senior industry source said Blackwater guards had escorted a State Department group to a meeting with U.S. Agency for International Development officials in Mansour before the shootings.
A car bomb went off about 80 feet (25 meters) from the meeting site and the contractors started evacuating the State Department officials, he said. A State Department report on the attack said the convoy came under fire from an estimated eight to 10 people, some in Iraqi police uniforms.
The guards called for backup, at one point finding their escape route blocked by an Iraqi quick-reaction force that pointed heavy machine guns at one vehicle in the convoy. A U.S. Army force, backed by air cover, arrived about half an hour later to escort the convoy back to the Green Zone, the report states.
A team from another security company passed through the area shortly after the street battle.
"Our people saw a couple of cars destroyed," Carter Andress, CEO of American-Iraqi Solutions Groups, told CNN on Monday. "Dead bodies, wounded people being evacuated. The U.S. military had moved in and secured the area. It was not a good scene."
You'll note that the Interior Ministry's current claim has quietly dropped all mention of the convoy coming under fire, and of Blackwater employees returning fire instead of instigating it.
Nor does the version of events carried in the Times account for the more than one dozen other people killed or wounded in the square, and focuses on one family, in one car. A week into this story, we are no closer to any real answers about how the events transpired, who should shoulder the blame, or if the blame for civilian deaths should be shared between security contractors, insurgents, police and innocent mistakes by Iraqi civilians.
What we can comment on is the opportunism being displayed by many in this tragedy and the political rush to judgment by both government officials and pundits.
As the Jones Commission Report has made clear, the forensic capabilities of Iraqi police investigators are dubious, at best. As a result of their lack of training and equipment for forensic evidence gathering, processing, and analysis, "CSI Baghdad" is forced to rely heavily on eyewitnesses statements and personal observations of the investigators, which of course are prone to interpretation, biases, cognitive processing errors, etc. As we have radically different interpretations from the Iraqi government, Blackwater's spokespersons, and vastly different versions of events told by various eyewitnesses, it may very well be that we never precisely find out what happened shortly after noon this past Sunday in Nisour Square.
It may not matter.
Experts intimately familiar with the political terrain in Iraq have already stated that Blackwater's guilt was a foregone conclusion, as it is a valuable political tool for a battered Iraqi government.
Likewise, political pundits outside of Iraq, primarily opponents of the Iraq War, have used this latest incident to attack Blackwater in specific and security contractors in general for past offenses, and take for granted Blackwater's "obvious" guilt in this instance as well for political reasons of their own.
Why shouldn't they?
Public perception and political self-reinforcement have far exceeded any rational discussion of culpability in this case. Who is actually to blame for instigating the shootout and deaths at Nisour Square has become sadly irrelevant. Whether or not excessive force was used does not matter. Nor does it matter that despite the factually ignorant and frankly hysterical criticisms of some, security firms operating in Iraq are indeed susceptible to Iraqi law.
The truth of this matter has become a casualty to convenience.
Not that anyone cares.
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CCG: Appreciate it sir! I may just have to tell you to do me a favor and take a Iraq Vet out to dinner instead... he or she deserves it much more than I!
Besides... 30 Days and I got me some R&R... or I&I... (Intercorse and Intoxication!!!!! LOL)
Nebraska state Senator Ernie Chambers has sued God, (who has since responded?). The file AP photo (and there appears to be only one) has a rather interesting composition, don't it?
I guess I should be glad that he's an icon to somebody, but to me, the imagery blows cold.
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September 20, 2007
Several conservative blogs have raised questions about the Diarist "Shock Troops," written by a soldier in Iraq using the pseudonym Scott Thomas. Whenever anybody levels serious accusations against a piece published in our magazine, we take those charges seriously. Indeed, we're in the process of investigating them. I've spoken extensively with the author of the piece and have communicated with other soldiers who witnessed the events described in the diarist. Thus far, these conversations have done nothing to undermine--and much to corroborate--the author's descriptions. I will let you know more after we complete our investigation.--Franklin Foer
Editor Foer has also argued on July 26 that the article "was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published."
Since that time, a few things have happened:
- It has been conclusively proven that The New Republic did not fact-check a claim made in a previous "Scott Thomas" story, even though that claim was an allegation of murder. A simple Google Search would have proven the basis for the claim categorically false on the first two pages of results. It was 30 seconds they didn't take.
- The first claim made in "Shock Troops," was that "Thomas" and a fellow soldier verbally abused a burn victim at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Falcon because combat left them desensitized to basic human decency and dignity. After it was noted that no such woman has ever been at FOB Falcon, the story was changed to another base, in another country, at a time before the unit saw combat. This of course, completely undermines the premise of the claim, and FoerÂ’s claim that the article had been "rigorously edited and fact-checked." As it turns out, both military personnel and civilian contractors at the Kuwaiti base also dispute the story having occurred there, either. They state on the record that no soldier or civilian contractor matching this description has ever been at this base, and that the story is an urban legend or myth. This was told to TNR editor Jason Zengerle. Zengerle never relayed that to the readers of The New Republic. No such woman has ever been found, and yet TNR has yet to have the decency to retract this claim.
- A second claim made in "Shock Troops" by Thomas was that while his unit excavated ground for the creation of a new combat outpost, that the remains of children were uncovered, and one soldier in his unit wore part of a rotting child's skull on his head for amusement. Neither Foer nor any other editor at TNR have been able to substantiate this claim. An official U.S Army investigation that was launched primarily because of this specific claim found no credible evidence for this or the other claims made by "Thomas." Two months later, TNR has not issued a retraction for this claim.
- A third claim made by "Thomas" in "Shock Troops" was that a Bradley armored vehicle driver used the 25-ton tracked vehicle to crush "curbs, concrete barriers, corners of buildings, stands in the market, and his favorite target: dogs." Since this time, every Bradley IFV commander and driver in Alpha Company has refuted this story as part of the military investigation, and Bradley IFV experts, including active duty and retired drivers and commanders, and even the company's spokesman, have stated that the vehicle could not perform the actions described in the story. Once again, Franklin Foer and The New Republic has had two months to substantiate this claim. They have failed, and yet still lack the decency to print a retraction.
The honorable thing to do when a publication cannot substantiate the claims made by one of their writers is to retract the claims made in the disputed article, and all previous articles by the same author where questionable facts cannot be corroborated. There is a simple reason for this: credibility is a publication's only real currency, and if they tarnish their credibility, then the unreliable publication becomes worthless as a news source.
The New York Times realized this when Jayson Blair was caught plagiarizing and fabricating elements of many of his stories. Blair, executive editor Howell Raines, and managing editor Gerald M. Boyd eventually resigned as a result of the fallout of scandal. When Jack Kelly was caught fabricating stories at USA Today, publisher Craig Moon ran an investigation and issued a front-page apology. Editor Karen Jurgensen and News section managing editor Hal Ritter resigned as a result.
But what is occurring at The New Republic seems to far exceed the actions of a single rogue journalist, and instead seem to point to an editorial staff as corrupted as the fabulist they seek to protect.
Unlike the Blair and Kelly scandals, editors from The New Republic seem to be involved in deliberately covering up, shutting down, and stonewalling possible avenues of approach, and are clearly more interested in stifling an investigation that conducting one.
On August 2, The New Republic released "A Statement on Scott Thomas Beauchamp" (Beauchamp had "outed" himself on July 26).
In that statement, the editors of The New Republic had claimed to have interviewed a number of experts that corroborated the claims made in "Shock Troops."
All of Beauchamp's essays were fact-checked before publication. We checked the plausibility of details with experts, contacted a corroborating witness, and pressed the author for further details. But publishing a first-person essay from a war zone requires a measure of faith in the writer. Given what we knew of Beauchamp, personally and professionally, we credited his report. After questions were raised about the veracity of his essay, TNR extensively re-reported Beauchamp's account.In this process, TNR contacted dozens of people. Editors and staffers spoke numerous times with Beauchamp. We also spoke with current and former soldiers, forensic experts, and other journalists who have covered the war extensively. And we sought assistance from Army Public Affairs officers. Most important, we spoke with five other members of Beauchamp's company, and all corroborated Beauchamp's anecdotes, which they witnessed or, in the case of one solider, heard about contemporaneously. (All of the soldiers we interviewed who had first-hand knowledge of the episodes requested anonymity.)
Tellingly, The New Republic would not divulge the names of the experts they vaguely claimed supported the claims made in "Shock Troops."
One of them was credited by TNR thusly:
TNR contacted the manufacturer of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle System, where a spokesman confirmed that the vehicle is as maneuverable as Beauchamp described.
One week later, that unnamed spokesman was found. After being identified, Doug Coffey of BAE systems revealed that as it related to him, TNR's investigation was a whitewash:
To answer your last question first, yes, I did talk to a young researcher with TNR who only asked general questions about "whether a Bradley could drive through a wall" and "if it was possible for a dog to get caught in the tracks" and general questions about vehicle specifications.
The New Republic had not asked Coffey about the claims made by Beauchamp at all.
Once provided with the claims made in "Shock Troops," Coffey found the claims relating to his companyÂ’s vehicle very hard to believe.
By August 11, unable to corroborate any element of a story they claimed to have "rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published," the editors of The New Republic went on the offensive, claiming:
...we continue to investigate the anecdotes recounted in the Baghdad Diarist. Unfortunately, our efforts have been severely hampered by the U.S. Army. Although the Army says it has investigated Beauchamp's article and has found it to be false, it has refused our--and others'--requests to share any information or evidence from its investigation. What's more, the Army has rejected our requests to speak to Beauchamp himself, on the grounds that it wants "to protect his privacy."
Like the August 2 story using hidden experts, this claim by the editors of The New Republic was also deceptive.
The Army has a legal obligation not to release the investigation's findings, with confidentiality being Beauchamp's right. Further, it was Beauchamp himself that declined to be interviewed by The New Republic. The Army did not reject TNR, Private Beauchamp rejected The New Republic... and obviously still does today.
By being deceptive and argumentative since the beginning (a tragic flaw of hubris that the magazine also had preceding the Stephen Glass scandal almost a decade prior) of their investigation, The New Republic editorial staff have destroyed their credibility.
They attempted to cover up the fact that they did not fact check BeuchampÂ’s articles prior to publication, and even attempted to cover up the fact that the author was married to a TNR fact-checker. Faced with legitimate questions about the veracity of claims made by their author, the editors instead attacked those raising these questions, while at the same time running a whitewash of an investigation designed to give them rhetorical cover instead of uncovering the facts.
Ultimately, it seems that even the author won't support the articles, and The New Republic is left twisting in the wind, hoping that noone will notice just how naked, exposed, and yes, corrupt they have been over the course of this sordid story.
The editorial staff of The New Republic, led for the last time by Franklin Foer, should retract all three stories penned by Scott Thomas Beauchamp, apologize profusely to the readership of The New Republic for deceiving them for over two months, and resign.
It remains to be seen if they retain that much integrity.
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September 19, 2007
Proof of cooperation between Iran and Syria in the proliferation and development of weapons of mass destruction was brought to light Monday in Jane's Defence Weekly, which reported that dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian officers were killed in a July 23 accident in Syria.According to the report, cited by Channel 10, the joint Syrian-Iranian team was attempting to mount a chemical warhead on a Scud missile when the explosion occurred, spreading lethal chemical agents, including sarin nerve gas.
As you may imagine, other bloggers are tracking this story, and Ynet news adds detail, including that the specific warhead in question was loaded with mustard gas, and that the explosion started due to a fire in the Scud-C's engine.
Chemically and historically, most weaponized mustard gas weapons retain their lethality for decades, but I'd still like to know the answer to some questions about the missile's fuel system to gauge how much of a direct threat this was or wasn't to Israel and to American forces in Iraq.
SCUD-C missiles are single-stage liquid-fueled missiles. Obviously, an empty missile does not catch fire and explode with enough force to detonate surrounding materials. Therefore, this SCUD-C was obviously fueled. This leads to the following questions:
- How are these missiles typically stored in peace-time Syria, full of liquid propellant, or empty?
- Is there any sort of practical shelf-life to the liquid fuels used to power Syrian SCUD-C missiles?
- Are they capable of being stored full of fuel for extended periods of time, or are they only fueled shortly before launch?
The mere act of mounting a mustard gas warhead on a missile does not necessarily mean that an attack is imminent, but if we knew more about how long a loaded Syrian SCUD-C can remain fueled, we might have a better idea just how serious of a threat this may have been.
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September 18, 2007
Several of the local Arizona media outlets (AZ Family (NBC), KPNX, AZ Central) carried the story, but several other local media outlets including the local Fox News, CBS, and ABC affiliates did not.
No national media outlets have carried the story at all.
Her absolute moral authority apparently doesn't matter as much as that of some.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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...could the sudden [Iraqi government political] attack on Blackwater possibly be in retaliation for the "Jones Commission" report that panned the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior and advocated disbanding the national police?
...I would not be surprised if the backlash over Sunday's shooting was planned, and waiting for an event to pin it on.
I wanted to know if the situation with Blackwater "smelled."
His response:
Bob,Blackwater doesn't smell: It's all about internal politics.
Bolani walks a thin line: he is a Shia without strong party
affiliations. He was the least objectionable Shia to a Sunni minority
who knew they'd never get one of their own into that Ministry.Bolani is beholden to MNSTC-I/CPATT for supplies, training and money
-- but he also needs support in Parliament and among tribal leaders to
get things done (recruiting, intelligence and minimizing attacks on his
police officers as they try to establish peace).By attacking Blackwater and standing up to the US over this, he gains
internal support for projects that the US can't help him with. He'll
eventually back down because he can't stay where he is without US
support, but he can't advance internal security without assistance
from other groups as well.I predict this will end in a compromise: a few people will be fired,
Blackwater will ratchet down their posture a bit and the mission will
continue.
Related thoughts here.
Update: Bryan has an excellent roundup on this subject at Hot Air, and there is more about contractor licensing at the Washington Times
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The TNR fabulist/Army private has the following posted on his MySpace page:
""SCOTT BEAUCHAMP CLAIMS TO DESIRE THE BABIES OF ELSPETH, HIS SUPPOSED WIFE!""
He includes as his interests "raptors having babies." His wife, TNR fact-checker Elspeth Reeve uses a raptor (a kind of dinosaur) as the avatar for her MySpace page.
Beauchamp first came to light when a story he wrote entitled "Shock Troops," alleging the barbarity of his fellow soldiers, was challenged on July 18 by The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb.
Since that time, the U.S Army has denounced the claims made in "Shock Troops" as fiction, and Franklin Foer, the editor of The New Republic, has failed to release the findings of the magazine's internal investigation into the veracity of the stories.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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In response to growing doubts from critics and his own readers, Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic, stated on July 20:
I've spoken extensively with the author of the piece and have communicated with other soldiers who witnessed the events described in the diarist. Thus far, these conversations have done nothing to undermine--and much to corroborate--the author's descriptions. I will let you know more after we complete our investigation."
Now, almost two months after making that promise and precisely two months after the story was first questioned, Foer has yet to announce the findings of that investigation.
We know that Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the author of the three stories Foer ran in The New Republic, had a chance to speak with The New Republic 12 days ago. We also know that Beauchamp has refused to discuss his original claims with any other media organization, and gave a blanket statement to the PAO to relay to media organizations that he will not discuss the incidents in his stories, period. It appears that Beauchamp will not speak to Franklin Foer any more about these articles, and that he may have frozen him out, perhaps upon the direction of a lawyer.
Foer now knows, or should know, whether or not Beauchamp will stand by his earlier claims.
If he can provide further support for Shock Troops and the two previous articles, Foer needs to produce it. If he cannot, Franklin Foer owes it to his readers to retract all three of Scott Beauchamp's stories, which a military investigation revealed to be completely uncorroborated, and portions of which one of the magazine's own experts found "highly unlikely."
To date, Franklin Foer, Jason Zengerle, and the rest of The New Republic have been unable to provide so much as a single named expert, a single named witness, or a single concrete fact to support the claims made in "Shock Troops."
I call upon Franklin Foer to honor his word: present the findings of TNR's investigation.
If you will not, resign.
Update: Lessons unlearned:
The High and Mighty
Just after Baghdad fell in early 2003, CNN ran an astonishing confession on the New York Times’s op-ed page admitting that it had known, but kept secret, some “awful things” about the regime of Saddam Hussein over the years. “Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard—awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff,” wrote Eason Jordan, CNN’s chief news executive. “I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed.” The piece went into some gruesome detail of atrocities CNN “could not report,” for fear of reprisal from the dictator. “I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me,” he confessed.Then why didn’t CNN leave Iraq and alert the rest of the world about these “gut-wrenching tales” and atrocities?
For a couple of weeks, other mainstream media reported moral outrage. The New Republic's Franklin Foer shot back that this couldn't even be called a belated outbreak of honesty. "If it were, Mr. Jordan would be portraying CNN as Saddam's victim. He'd be apologizing for its cooperation with Iraq's erstwhile information ministry—and admitting that CNN policy hinders truthful coverage of dictatorships." CNN was, Foer stated, the network of record. "It makes rich reading to return to transcripts and compare the CNN version of Iraq with the reality that has emerged."
The lesson never quite sank in.
Obviously.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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It just got more interesting:
The ministry said the incident began around midday, when a convoy of sport utility vehicles came under fire from unidentified gunmen in the square. The men in the SUVs, described by witnesses as Westerners, returned fire, the ministry said.Blackwater's employees were protecting a U.S. official when they were hit by "a large explosive device, then repeated small-arms fire -- and to the point where it disabled one of the vehicles, and the vehicle had to be towed out of the firefight," said Marty Strong, vice president of Blackwater USA.
A senior industry source said Blackwater guards had escorted a State Department group to a meeting with U.S. Agency for International Development officials in Mansour before the shootings.
A car bomb went off about 80 feet (25 meters) from the meeting site and the contractors started evacuating the State Department officials, he said. A State Department report on the attack said the convoy came under fire from an estimated eight to 10 people, some in Iraqi police uniforms.
The guards called for backup, at one point finding their escape route blocked by an Iraqi quick-reaction force that pointed heavy machine guns at one vehicle in the convoy. A U.S. Army force, backed by air cover, arrived about half an hour later to escort the convoy back to the Green Zone, the report states.
A team from another security company passed through the area shortly after the street battle.
"Our people saw a couple of cars destroyed," Carter Andress, CEO of American-Iraqi Solutions Groups, told CNN on Monday. "Dead bodies, wounded people being evacuated. The U.S. military had moved in and secured the area. It was not a good scene."
An Interior Ministry spokesman, Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, said, "We have revoked Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq. As of now they are not allowed to operate anywhere in the Republic of Iraq. The investigation is ongoing, and all those responsible for Sunday's killing will be referred to Iraqi justice."
According to the new details in this CNN story, the Blackwater contractors were evacuating State Department personnel after a car bomb explosion when they came under small arms fire from 8-10, including personnel in Iraqi police uniforms.
It is far, far too early to think that Blackwater's security detail in this incident are anything close to being cleared, but as at least some of the wounded are admittedly not civilians as mentioned in various accounts, and multiple witnesses describe an explosive device or devices starting the ambush, followed by small arms fire, which is a typical ambush tactic. It appears that this may not be an open-and-shut case of "contractors gone wild" as some have hastily opined.
It is worth noting that the Iraqi government response could be in retaliation for the "Jones Commission" report released just weeks ago, that panned the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior for corruption and advocated disbanding the national police. I confirmed with an Iraq War analyst last night that it was possible that the backlash over Sunday's shooting (not the shooting itself) was planned in advance in retaliation for the report.
He was not stating that the attack itself was orchestrated to get Blackwater compromised, just that MOI and al-Maliki's government may have had a contingency plan set up to take advantage of such a situation when it arose to wrangle concessions from the State Department, while possibly create some political breathing room for al-Maliki's embattled government coalition.
This very well may have been a political ambush designed to take advantage of the already foundering reputations of contractors in Iraq, and Blackwater may have been pre-targeted to take advantage of the fact that they are essential to State's security.
Update: Via email this morning from Bill Roggio of The Long War Journal:
- State uses Blackwater extensively, so this incident gives the Government of Iraq some leverage. I expect State to negotiate to get Blackwater back online, and it will happen.
- Maliki needs political cover, much like he did attacking the US for raids in Sadr City last year. In the end the raids didn't stop. And in the end I think BW will be in operation in Iraq after some wrangling.
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September 17, 2007
Patrol officers will have the option of carrying assault rifles as police try to combat the rise in the use of similar weapons by criminals, Miami's police chief said Sunday.[snip]
Officers interested in the guns will have to undergo two days of training and be certified to use the weapons. The police department doesn't yet have money to purchase the guns, and if officers want to use them now, they will have to pay for them, Timoney said.
[snip]
The Miami Police Department said 15 of its 79 homicides last year involved assault weapons. This year, 12 of the 60 homicides have involved the high-power guns.
On Thursday, a gunman opened fire on four Miami-Dade County police officers with an assault rifle during a traffic stop, killing one and injuring the other three. Police killed the suspect hours later.
Officers using the weapons in Miami will shoot "frangible" bullets, which shatter after they've hit something to avoid striking bystanders or other unintended targets.
Not all officers may choose to carry the new weapon. But, said Timoney: "If I was a police officer out there in a tough neighborhood, I would want to have that in the car."
Video game makers should be thrilled now that the stage has been set for Medal of Honor: South Beach, but if I was a resident of Miami, I'd be far less than thrilled with the continuing arms race between the police and criminal elements in their city.
I sympathize entirely with the police officers that sometimes feel outgunned by criminals, but feel compelled to state that by escalating to intermediate caliber weapons, and without adequate training, the Miami Police Department is setting the stage for a much greater risk of collateral damage and potential civilian casualties, and that the casualties that are sustained have the potential of being far more lethal becuase of the ammunition being used.
Two days of training to carry an assault rifle in an urban environment is, in my opinion, unforgivably short.
By way of comparison, Gunsite offers a five-day course for urban rifle training. Frontsight offers a four-day advanced course the focuses on the urban environment, and it requires either a 2-day or 4-day prerequisite skill-builder course focusing on marksmanship. Other dedicated professional shooting schools offer similar courses of similar length. What makes the Miami PD think that two days training is adequate for their officers to carry carbines in a crowded urban environment, when courses designed for already more-qualified special operations soldiers and SWAT teams takes more than twice as long?
The fact that the Miami Police are not (apparently) receiving adequate training will only compound another problem, that of collateral damage to property and civilians when shootouts occur. Despite what Cheif Timoney says, the laws of physics dictate that bullets will go precisely where they are fired; the have no ability to "avoid" striking anyone, and the weapons he has authorized both extend the range at which innocent bystanders can be hit, and potentially increase the severity of the wounds.
It is a well-documented fact that in the overwhelming majority of officer-involved shootouts, the police miss most of the time, even at near-contact ranges. Amadou Diallo was hit 19 times from 41 shots at close range by NYPD officers armed with Glock pistols firing from just yards away. Simple math tells us that 22 shots completely missed Diallo, and of the 19 shots that hit and killed the unfortunate young man, many of those passed through his body completely and kept going before being stopped by the buildings behind him.
Now keep in mind that the pistols used in the Diallo shooting used relatively short range (typically fired at just 7 yards or less) 9mm pistol ammunition. Miami is going to allow their police officers to carry weapons shooting much longer-ranged (300+ meters) 5.56x45 NATO-caliber weapons with a far greater ability to penetrate the body of the suspect and materials. They hope to mitigate the inherent over-penetration risk by requiring officers to fire frangible ammunition.
Frangible ammunition is great in theory: if it hits the suspect or a hard surface, the bullet is designed to fragment into small pieces. But the theory can become something else in practice, when under-trained officers may empty firearms with magazines containing roughly twice the amount of ammunition they typically carry in their handguns, with more than triple the practical range. It is a proven fact that officers miss more than they hit at short range; is there any reason to suspect that this tendency will decrease even as the potential range increases?
And what of those innocents hit with frangible ammunition? There is another aspect of frangibles that the Miami Police will not likely mention in press releases: frangible bullets are by far the most deadly kind of bullet to those struck by them directly.
Purposefully constructed with thin or weakened brass jackets, frangibles blow apart into many small fragments once they hit a target. In a human being, the effect is to make many small wound channels that shred muscle, bone and organs, similar to a contact-range shotgun blast instead of the larger single hole created by typical bullets.
This is great news if the cop firing the weapon hits the armed suspect, as it will almost guarantee the immediate end of the gunfight if he hits the suspect in the head, torso, or the major part of an extremity, such as the upper arm or thigh. The downside of this is that if the officer misses the target and hits a civilian hundreds of yards away, the odds of the civilian surviving the wound are much less.
So is a change in ammunition enough to rectify this potential problem? By no means. Frangible assault rifle ammunition, for all its lethality on soft targets, is still far safer to shoot in an urban environment than hollowpoint or FMJ rounds with will more readily penetrate structures and vehicles. Frangibles will blow apart; FMJ and even hollowpoint loadings can and will blow through multiple buildings, depending on their construction.
So what is the solution?
The "simple" solution is to recognize that American police forces, no matter how bad the neighborhood, are not soldiers engaged in urban combat. Assault rifles chambered for 5.56 and 7.62 rifles are a horrible choice of weapons from the perspective of the great majority of law-abiding civilians that are not engaged in shootouts with police.
If Miami and other police forces would like to provide their patrol officers with a longer-range firearm than their duty pistols, the community at large would be far safer if these officers were armed with patrol carbines, small rifles that greatly extend the officers effective range while still using the exact same ammunition and typically the same magazines as their service pistols. Major manufacturers of police-issue sidearms such as Beretta and Ruger already offer such carbines, which provide police officers more range and potential accuracy than they have with their pistols, but with a significant reduction in the risks associated with firing much more powerful rifle rounds in an urban environment.
The City of Miami fails to mention how the militarization of the Miami police is going to make their officers and citizens safer, and does not seem to address the problems that are inherent to their stated plan of giving their officers higher-velocity, longer-ranged weapons with minimal training.
The police are contributing to the prospect of turning Miami into an urban battlefield, which I somehow suspect was not their original intent.
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