by Nathaniel R. Helms |
December 15, 2011
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"The 400 pages of interrogations [regarding the
incident in Haditha], once closely guarded as secrets of war, were
supposed to have been destroyed as the last American troops prepare
to leave Iraq. Instead, they were discovered along with reams of
other classified documents...by a reporter for The New York Times
at a junkyard outside Baghdad. An attendant was burning them as fuel
to cook a dinner of smoked carp."--Michael S.
Schmidt, "Junkyard
Gives Up Secret Accounts of Massacre in Iraq", The New York
Times, December 14, 2011
New York Times reporter
Michael S. Schmidt probably never heard the old Texas warning to
“guard against believing your own bullsh-t" when he authored his
December 14th report detailing the story of a carp-cooking Iraqi who
found allegedly secret U.S. documents in a surplus American mobile
home he is selling.
It seems that while looking for
something to heat his fish the Iraqi fellow found bits of the
so-called “Bargewell
Investigation” on the floor of a junked trailer. The documents
detailed the alleged 2005 Haditha massacre that never actually
happened and called The New York Times, Schmidt's report
revealed.
If the Bargewell Report sounds vaguely
familiar it is because 10,000 pages of it were leaked to Washington
Post reporter Josh White back in 2007. TheNew York
Times quickly scrambled for a copy of its own and the two
newspapers had a field day trying to find the most titillating bits of
information to scoop each other with.
The 107-page report with its thousands
of exhibits was billed as one of the eight or nine smoking guns
defining the defining moment of the Iraq War at the time. An Iraqi guy
cooking fish with secret US documents in an abandoned American mobile
home in 2011 sounds like the real defining moment.
White revealed his findings in a April
21, 2007 Washington Post story titled “Report On Haditha
Condemns Marines.”
“Though Bargewell found no specific
cover-up,” White sadly noted, “he concluded that there also was no
interest at any level in investigating allegations of a massacre.”
Schmidt’s new story even managed to
incite enough ire that the publicly somnolent Beltway military lawyer
Neil Puckett was stirred to publish
a press release on his law firm website decrying Schmidt’s foul
deed less than a month before Puckett defends the last Marine standing
in the alleged “Haditha Massacre” investigation. Last time Puckett let
loose a broadside his client Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich spent three
years waiting for the military appeals courts to untie the Gordian
knot Puckett had woven.
It was probably the timing that got
Puckett’s goat this time. Reading about dead civilians in the Times,
especially stories about slaughtered toddlers and old men in
wheelchairs, is obviously not conducive to objectivity at a time when
an open mind is of the essence. Of course The New York Times
always believes its own bullsh*t so that never matters.
Defend Our Marines heard on
pretty good authority that the documents the Times got hold of
weren’t the issue with the brass in Baghdad despite what the newspaper
claims. It was the fact somebody was so careless they failed to
properly dispose of declassified classified documents when the last US
troops began pulling out of Iraq. The Pentagon really hates it when
their folks get caught being stupid, especially since in October--
“before the military had been told about the discovery of the
documents”--an US Army general was assuring journalists Americans
never allow their classified documents to be used for cooking fish.
“We don’t put official paperwork in
the trash,” The New York Times reported Maj. Gen. Thomas
Richardson as saying.
In the culprit’s defense, that person
probably didn’t know it was classified material left on the floor for
carp cooking since anyone can read a lot of the same stuff on
Defend Our Marines. Two months ago the State Department even
asked for
permission to use DOM’s archives for its treaty
negotiations in Baghdad. It seems the officials negotiating a new
Status of Forces Agreement to keep American troops in Iraq couldn’t
get any legal documents from the Pentagon to bolster its case. In
retrospect, maybe the State Department should have sent a couple of
crackerjack investigators to gin up some secret documents from a
Baghdad junk yard the way the enterprising New York Times
reporters did.
The Time’s assertion that
Marine LtGen Johnson was revealing something new when he was
discovered reflecting on the horror that was Iraq in 2005 was utter
nonsense. That part of the story would have served better wrapping the
junkman’s leftover fish. The entire copy of the interview with Johnson
was referred to repeatedly in a series of stories DOM presented
some years ago. At the time Johnson’s “suspected involvement” in the
alleged cover up of the alleged massacre at Haditha that didn’t
actually happen was being analyzed to the nth degree and Johnson’s
third star was being held up while Baghdad burned. He eventually got
his star.
For the record, the interview with
Johnson was conducted by Marine Col. John Ewers, the military lawyer
who investigated the alleged murders at Haditha for Bargewell and then
advised Marine General James Mattis–the convening authority in the
matter–to prosecute eight junior Marines for
a laundry list of heinous crimes he’d help uncover. Johnson was simply
telling Ewers that it was hard to keep track of all the murders,
massacres, and malfeasance being perpetrated in Iraq at the time.
The Beltway reporters were aghast! No
doubt Col. Ewers had never heard that old Texas saying either because
his involvement on Bargewell’s behalf before he counseled the
convening authority later led to the dismissal of all the charges
against Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, the highest ranking Marine to be
prosecuted in the Haditha investigation.
The attendant who found the stash of
classified papers reportedly said he had no idea what any of the
documents were about, only that they were important to the Americans.
Maybe he was looking for instant replay? In early 2006 two Iraqi
insurgents masquerading as journalists said something similar to
Time magazine reporter Tim McGirk when they were pedaling fresh
video purported to be the smoking gun that proved a decimated squad of
ambushed Marines at Haditha, Iraq had gone berserk and slaughtered 24
innocents.
Yesterday’s news, tomorrow’s garbage.
Some things never change.
_________________________________________
Nathaniel R. Helms
Defend Our Marines
15 December 2011
Note: Nat Helms is a Contributing Editor to Defend Our
Marines. He is a Vietnam veteran, former police officer, war
correspondent, and, most recently, author of
My Men Are My Heroes: The Brad Kasal Story (Meredith Books, 2007).
