A picture speaks a thousand lies

Coonass in Texas has caught the London Times out in a blatant case of anti -anything US.

I was shocked that there were photos of victims killed by marines,bound and blindfolded, these guys must be guilty I thought and there must be more photographic evidence. With a heavy heart I searched google images for ‘haditha’, expecting to find the entire massacre photo’d from every angle. Instead I found the same photo in this article in newsweek, with the caption: “Insurgents in Haditha executed 19 Shiite fishermen and National Guardsmen in a sports stadium” I think this goes beyond a slant,this is slander. The times posted a photo that shows “haditha victims” in a story about marines killing people in haditha, when they know they stole the photo from an earlier story about insurgents killing shiites in Haditha. I don’t know what really happened to the marines in Haditha, but I tend to believe their version more than the other side’s version and I’m willing to wait for the court martial for the facts to come out before passing judgement.

Michelle Malkin picks up on the story and suggests readers might like to write to the Times Editor pointing out their feelings on the matter. Michelle herself wrote to him and in an interchange of accusations and excuses said;

If you are left with the impression that the dead bodies on the ground were massacred by our Marines, that is exactly what the Times intends.This is an accurate statement. If the Times did not intend for readers to associate the photograph with the Nov. 19 Haditha incident, why did your newspaper use the photo? I hope the paper provides a full explanation for exactly how it came to characterize and caption an April 2005 AP photo of fishermen murdered by insurgents as “victims of al-Haditha” of the “Massacre Marines blinded by hate” on Nov. 19, 2005.

The Times has withdrawn the photo associated with the article but the article is still slanted very much against the marines as I have mentioned previously all is not as it seems. If the investigation finds against the Marines then they should feel the full force of the law but keep in mind the only information we have at this stage is from the Media and a clever wordsmith can turn any story into a disaster. There are currently thousands of journalists around the world hoping like hell that the Marines are guilty…more gist for the anti-US mill and as always, they will write up the incident day after day for months in the absence of any proof and by the time the investigation report is released it won’t matter what it says. The world will have readily accepted their guilt. Whatever readers may think I’m not an apologist for the US. I don’t feel I have to be as unlike most of my readers, and most probably all of the media, I have worked with the Americans on a soldier-to-soldier basis and know them more than most. Like all large forces they will always have rogues amongst them but no society can absorb this continual media scrutiny with jourmalists sitting on the shoulders of every soldier like vultures waiting for a mistake. The bar has been set as ‘perfect’ only with no allowances made for the horrors of battle or human reactions to being fired on or holding a friend while he dies. No mistakes, not ever. Unless an editor deliberately places a photo in an article to create a false impression of savagery. No emotions, not ever. Unless you hate the Americans so much that you ignore all positives to highlight one negative in a widespread and difficult war.