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6/2/2006
WHEN NEW NEWS IS OLD NEWS
CATEGORY: Media

What the heck is the matter with the BBC?

This story on another “massacre” by US troops in Ishaqi was covered extensively by both the AP and the Middle Eastern press back in March. Here’s the story as it appeared in the Lebanon Daily Star (archived):

Eleven members of an Iraqi family, including five children, were killed in a U.S. raid on Wednesday, police and witnesses said. The U.S. military said two women and a child died during the bid to seize an Al-Qaeda militant from a house. A senior Iraqi police officer said autopsies on the bodies showed each had been shot in the head.

[...]

Associated Press photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered figures arriving at Tikrit General Hospital accompanied by grief-stricken relatives.

The U.S. military said in a statement its troops had attacked a house in Ishaqi, the town 100 kilometers north of Baghdad, to capture a “foreign fighter facilitator for the Al-Qaeda in Iraq network.”

“There was one enemy killed. Two women and one child were also killed in the firefight. The building … [was] destroyed,” the military said, adding the Al-Qaeda suspect had been captured and was being questioned.

Major Ali Ahmad of the Iraqi police said U.S. forces had landed on the roof of the house in the early hours and shot the 11 occupants, including the five children. “After they left the house they blew it up,” he said.

I covered it on this site back on March 15, asking if the incident at Ishaqi could be the Iraq War’s My Lai:

The incident does sound like a tragic repeat of other actions where insurgents or terrorists take cover in houses either sympathetic to them or where they simply barge in and use for shelter, guns being a fairly persuasive argument that they should be invited to stay. And as we’ve also seen in urban warfare, when someone is shooting at you, it becomes an impossibility to be very selective about targets.

The fact that the military evidently got the terrorist and are questioning him lends a little more credence to the story being told by CENCOM. Let us now see how big a deal this becomes on the left over the next 24 hours.

In fact, the AP report was wildly different from what the Daily Star was reporting (no link):

Police Capt. Laith Mohammed, in nearby Samarra, said American warplanes and armor flattened the house and killed the 11 people inside.

An AP reporter in the area said the roof collapsed. Eleven bodies, wrapped in blankets, were taken to the Tikrit General Hospital, relatives said.

Associated Press photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered figures at the hospital accompanied by grieving relatives. The victims were covered in dust and bits of rubble.

Note that the AP was not reporting that the civilians were “shot in the back of the head.”

A few days later, the entire story began to fall apart:

The soldiers’ version differs somewhat in detail. After coming under fire, the troops called in a gunship, which struck the house with rockets. Searching the wreckage, the troops found the Al-Queda shooter still alive, along with four bodies – another man, two women, and a child. A tragedy of war, rather than an atrocity.

By the next morning, the number of bodies in the wreckage had multiplied, appearing to verify the villager’s version. Local police investigated, and it was their report that brought the incident to the attention of the media nearly a week later. Curiously, Coalition headquarters had no idea that anything was out of the ordinary before being quizzed by reporters.

This was a clear case of al Qaeda propaganda as the “added bodies” demonstrates. And then there was this little detail not found in the BBC story:

But at the same time, the Ishaqi scandal had begun to unravel. Quite a few internal contradictions had popped up – the old lady’s age was 75 in one story, 90 in another. The child four months old, or, then again, six months old. One version had the victims tied up, another handcuffed – with neither cuffs nor rope apparent in any of the photos presented as evidence.

The climax came when the still-mystified Coalition staff were hit with an accusation that they had skipped a meeting with local officials to discuss the incident.

“There was no meeting scheduled with any Coalition investigators today,” said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson. “There appears to be a distinct pattern of misinformation surrounding this entire incident.”

The entire incident as an unprovoked, cold blooded massacre by the American military was debunked just days after being reported. This is why it never reached the kind of critical mass that the Haditha massacre has reached.

The BBC purports to have some “new evidence:”

The video tape obtained by the BBC shows a number of dead adults and children at the site with what our world affairs editor John Simpson says were clearly gunshot wounds.

The pictures came from a hardline Sunni group opposed to coalition forces.

It has been cross-checked with other images taken at the time of events and is believed to be genuine, the BBC’s Ian Pannell in Baghdad says.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Needless to say, for the BBC to fall for this only shows how far some people are willing to go to promote an agenda against America and the war.

What happened in Ishaqi was a tragedy of war. If our military retreated every time they were fired on by civilians either trapped by or sympathetic to the insurgents, needless to say we would make very little progress in tamping down the rebels. And if we were to retreat in such situations, incidents where the insurgents used civilians as cover would increase substantially.

The article says the US is investigating the incident. I have little doubt that they will discover that like many other similar reports swallowed hook, line, and sinker by the media and the left, this report has al Qaeda disinformation written all over it.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin links to an ABC News report that confirms a military investigation absolving the troops of wrongdoing:

ABC News has learned, however, that military officials have completed their investigation and have concluded U.S. forces followed the rules of engagement.

A senior Pentagon official told ABC News that the investigation concluded that American forces in this case properly followed the rules of engagement and that allegations of intentional killings of civilians were unfounded.

A statement from the military responding to the allegations of massacre at Ishaqi – for a second time – will be made later today.

And Alexandra, in her usual demure and understated way, skewers the BBC with a post whose title says it all: “Get Me Another Marine Murder Story In Iraq And Get It Now!”

By: Rick Moran at 11:50 am
17 Responses to “WHEN NEW NEWS IS OLD NEWS”
  1. 1
    Tano Said:
    12:08 pm 

    Rick,

    You are not very persuasive. We all hope your version is the truth. But that remains to be seen. Simply because someone affiliated with the military gives a certain version of a story, that does not mean that the original report is “debunked”.

    The BBC video shows dead bodies, and standing walls. It confirms the original Iraqi report of civilians being killed first, then the building being destroyed later. And that “debunks” the military version that the civilians died when the building came down.

    If the situation were in any way as clear as you pretend, then there would be nothing for the miliarty to investigate. You’ve already “solved” the case. Don’t they read RWNH? Given that they ARE investigating, why not just see what comes of it?

    Oh, btw here is a clue for you. When someone says “orignal reports were the baby was four months old, later reports say six months old, therefore there is a pattern of lying here and you cant believe any of it”, you should sense that they are straining for a certain result, not giving you an accurate rendition.

  2. 2
    Hot Air » Blog Archive » Tuning out: Henninger on Haditha and the anti-war left Pinged With:
    12:09 pm 

    [...] Update: In case you didn’t know, the Ishaqi “massacre” story is several months old and has been reported on by media both foreign and domestic. How incredibly convenient that the BBC would be handed new evidence just as the Haditha story is taking off. [...]

  3. 3
    Ninth State Trackbacked With:
    12:37 pm 

    The Iraq Syndrome

    The press is unbelievable. I wish they would just come out and say “AMERICA IS EVIL. WE OPPOSE EVERYTHING IT DOES. LONG LIVE ISLAMIC FASCISM.” But they won’t. At least they’re as transparent as they are. The left’s …

  4. 4
    Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler » Blog Archive » It’s an Idiotarian Feeding Frenzy Pinged With:
    2:44 pm 

    [...] So desperate are the impeccably credentialed journalists with their eleventeen fabled layers of rigorously fact checking editors that they’re recycling old stories that have already been investigated and debunked thoroughly. [...]

  5. 5
    The Sandbox Trackbacked With:
    3:16 pm 

    Friday Wrap-up

    As I begin looking forward to my weekend, I realize blogging has been pretty light lately. I’m three weeks away from packing up out here in California and heading back home for a little while before I start Officer Training

  6. 6
    The Politburo Diktat » Blog Archive » Ishaqi Pinged With:
    3:22 pm 

    [...] Rick Moran points out that this story was reported six weeks ago and debunked then. He properly calls BBC to task. I share Rick’s frustration, but we better get used to  it, because the “atrocity a day” theme has taken root.   [Permalink] [Trackback URL] [...]

  7. 7
    Polimom Says » Reports from Iraq (breathe, two, three) - Updated Pinged With:
    4:53 pm 

    [...] Rick Moran at Right Wing Nut House has more, and is wondering what the BBC is doing. [...]

  8. 8
    Scrapiron Said:
    6:08 pm 

    Left wingers and traitors (one and the same) who want the U.S. to lose the war even if it means the death of their own families in the future fall for all of these same stupid stories. The terrorists have the leftie cowards on a string and they do the same song and dance every time the string is pulled. All of the massacre stories fall apart as soon as someone with a brain investigates. The latest is that an Iraqi ‘news reporter’ who has been arrested more than once for his connections to terrorism broke the story. Give me a break, everyone with a video camera is now staging ‘massacre’s’. I hope this one falls completely apart and John Murtha is arrested, tried, convicted and shot. I’ll volunteer for the firing squad. I’m sure i could be successful in a kill in 20 or so shots.

  9. 9
    A Blog For All Trackbacked With:
    6:12 pm 

    The Waiting Game

    If you’re in the media, you can’t wait for a story to unfold, especially one as potentially explosive as the Haditha incident. You’ve got to scoop your competition, work your contacts, and hope for leaks that will produce copy… Or making up the ne…

  10. 10
    All Things Beautiful Trackbacked With:
    6:44 pm 

    Get Me Another Marine Murder Story In Iraq And Get It Now!

    It is the absence of these hundreds of stories, which stands as an overwhelming testament for the irreproachable ethical and moral code of conduct by which our finest live and die. And that’s that. No apologies offered and none expected for the thousa…

  11. 11
    MoveOnAndShutUp.org Trackbacked With:
    7:16 pm 

    Friday Random Stuff – And a few things that make me laugh

    The Pandragons are now Pro-American legion and anti-war.
    I don’t think I have to really spend any amount of time explaining to troop spitters currently masturbating to the thought of their new and improved My Lai Massacre that one does not have to b…

  12. 12
    justbarkingmad.com Trackbacked With:
    5:24 am 

    BBC’s Massacre Claims Debunked

    Yesterday the BBC claimed they had evidence of a U.S. atrocity committed back in March.
    BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – A military investigation into allegations that U.S. troops intentionally killed Iraqi civilians in a March raid in a village north of Baghdad h…

  13. 13
    Svenghouli Said:
    5:33 pm 

    Folks just remember innocent until proven guilty only works if you are OJ.

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