New evidence continues to surface in the Haditha case that shows the Marines didn't do it.
Convincing evidence that corroborates NewsMax.com's accounts of the Haditha insurgent ambush has compelled the prosecution to take extraordinary steps to bolster their crumbling case.
The stunning announcement that all charges are being dropped against Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz, formerly accused of murder in the Haditha incident where 24 Iraqis were killed during an insurgent ambush against the Marines, is indication that the prosecutors have a very weak case against all the defendants, lawyers for the some of the accused say.
There is more evidence of weakness in the case.
The announcement of the deal with Dela Cruz is further evidence that the cases against the Kilo Company Marines and several of their superior officers are in deep trouble. It comes on the heels of postponements of Article 32 hearings slated for Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, the battalion commander and two of the enlisted men charged with murdering civilians in Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005.
Now here is the bombshell:
In a nutshell, the case exploded when an intelligence officer dropped a bombshell on prosecutors during a pre-hearing interview when he revealed the existence of exculpatory evidence that appears to have been obtained by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and withheld from the prosecutors.
This officer, described by senior Marine Corps superiors as one of the best and most dedicated intelligence officers in the entire Marine Corps, was in possession of evidence which provided a minute-by-minute narrative of the entire day's action -- material which he had amassed while monitoring the day's action in his capacity as the battalion's intelligence officer. That material, he says, was also in the hands of the NCIS.
Much of that evidence remains classified, but it includes videos of the entire day's action, including airstrikes against insurgent safe houses. Also included was all of the radio traffic describing the ongoing action between the men on the ground and battalion headquarters, and proof that the Marines were aware that the insurgents conducting the ambush of the Kilo Company troops were videotaping the action -- the same video that after editing ended up in the hands of a gullible anti-war correspondent for Time magazine.
When asked by the prosecution team to give his copies of the evidence to the prosecution, he told NewsMax.com that he was reluctant to do so, fearing it would again be suppressed or misused, but later relented when ordered by his commanding general to do so.
Confronted by the massive mounds of evidence that Marine Corps sources tell NewsMax proves conclusively that the cases against the Haditha Marines are baseless, the prosecutors were forced to postpone the Article 31 against Lt. Col. Chessani and two of the enlisted men in an attempt to regroup.
By granting immunity to the officer on the scene of the house-clearing effort, the prosecution, lawyers say, has further weakened its case.
It is looking more and more like there was no case to begin with. Just some allegations and a movie by our enemies. With Time Magazine taking the side of our enemies.
It is looking more and more like the Haditha Massacre will be put in the same category as the Duke Rape Hoax. Prosecutorial overstretch.
Robert Muise, the Thomas More Law Center attorney who questioned the officer, told NewsMax in a statement, "The intelligence officer is a crucial witness in this case. During his testimony, he effectively described the enemy situation prior to, during, and after the November 19 terrorist attack, providing the necessary context for the decisions that were made as a result. His testimony shows the complexity of the attack this day, the callousness of the terrorists toward the local civilians, whom they use to their advantage, and the error of viewing this incident in a vacuum.
"The officer also showed how the insurgents used allegations of wrongdoing by Marines as propaganda to support their cause. In fact, another witness, who was the assistant intelligence officer during the attack and is now the current intelligence officer for the battalion, testified that since the Haditha incident received so much negative attention, terrorist propaganda alleging law of war violations against American servicemen in Iraq has 'ballooned.'"
So this case is what many had suspected all along. A propaganda effort by our enemy to smear American soldiers. And of course our media lapped it up uncritically. Who's side are they on anyway?
And what about old Stinking Jack Murtha who pressed the Marine Corps to investigate by saying that some of the Marines involved that day were cold blooded killers. Murtha, who used to be a Marine, is a disgrace to the Corps.
Weird stuff. Between this, and the Duke Rape Case, I'm finding it a little disturbing exactly how easy it is for some of these prosecutors to hide disagreeing evidence.
gattsuru · April 26, 2007 10:16 PM
IN regards to the terrorists' use of propaganda, it amazes and saddens me that far too many Americans are willing to believe that the US government is lying to to, but that everything the media prints about US troops committing atrocities in Iraq is true.
The western media, most of whom are claiming inability to get out of the Green Zone as their excuse often relies on reports from local Iraqi stringers to get accounts of events outside the Green Zone. Not all of these stringers are as well versed in objective reporting, nor free from ties to terrorist forces. The sad result of this is that false accounts are reported as fact, and with limited accountability, and an inability to follow-up in proving or disproving a report, western reporters are getting a pass on the ethical issue of reporting using unconfirmed evidence, if not outright falsehood.
I have seen a few reporters during my tours in Iraq, but I am sure far more of the reporters are writing in Baghdad after talking to some source whose veractiy and identity are unconfirmed.
IN regards to your earlier post, Soldiers might write more to refute news reports if not for a few reasons:
1) Lack of easy access to the Internet, and a lack of time to do so. Many Soldiers involved in incidents that are reported don't always have immediate and timely access to the Internet or newspapers, and after pulling 18 hour days in body armor, not all of them want to take the time to compose a coherent chronological refutation of the events. Sure, the military has a Public Affairs Officer who talks to the media, but he might not have first hand knowledge either. It would be nice if Journalists would just do their jobs objectively, and admit that they don't always get their info from reliable sources, Full disclosure lets the reader decide how much to believe.
2) Safeguarding of information, aka "The need to know". Some of us joke that we can't wait for 25 years to pass so we can tell people what we did. 25 years is sort of a default setting for classified material to be declassified. Some things might be revealed sooner, some later. IN any case, it is not necessarily the Soldiers' place to publish things that might be classified. It's not just a guideline for operational security, it is also legally actionable, so most Soldiers are circumspect in what they publish.
3) "Watching your lane/talking above your paygrade". IF I have had a good day on patrol, I would probably tell a reporter that things were going well in Iraq; if I had just returned from a patrol in which we had taken casualties, I'd probably say the situation was bad and getting worse. I don't have the whole picture, and I definitely do not speak for the entire Department of Defense, I try to only speak from what I know, and it would be great if reporters would keep that in mind when they use the comments of 2 or three low ranking troops out of the 160,000 in Iraq as evidence that morale is low and the war is lost.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
Murtha, who used to be a Marine
I think most Marines would agree with how you phrased that.