[antimedia] antimedia: Blockbuster news concerning....

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Posted by antimedia:
Blockbuster news concerning....
http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1179072226.shtml


   ....[1]the Haditha case was revealed today by Bruce Kesler on his
   Democracy Project blog. During an Article 32 hearing (the military
   parallel to a grand jury) secret Marine intelligence reports revealed
   that one-third of the "innocent civilians" killed in Haditha by the
   Marines were identified as armed "insurgents" and that it's not even
   certain who killed the real civilians.

     Eight of the 24 people whom Marines are accused of killing in
     Haditha, Iraq, were described yesterday as insurgents by a defense
     attorney and a Marine liaison officer during a pretrial hearing.
     Randy Stone Defense attorney Charles Gittins said the eight were
     identified by human and electronic intelligence. They were not
     mentioned by name.
     The eight were among five men ordered from a car and shot to death
     and four men killed in a home cleared by Marines of the 3rd
     Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, said Gittins, who is representing
     Capt. Randy Stone at a pretrial hearing at Camp Pendleton. Stone is
     charged with failing to investigate and properly report the
     killings.
     Last week, Capt. Jeffrey Dinsmore, the intelligence officer for the
     battalion, testified that âit's fairly well established through the
     (unmanned aerial vehicle) coverage that there were insurgents in
     those homes,â referring to the homes where civilians were killed.

   Lending support to those facts is the fact that the relatives of those
   dead were never compensated by the US.

     Relatives of four men killed in a third house got no payment
     because those men were believed to be insurgents, Marine Maj. Dana
     Hyatt testified Saturday.
     Hyatt also said no payments were made to relatives of the five men
     killed as they were held at gunpoint when they emerged from a car
     minutes after the bombing. No money went to their survivors because
     of a never-verified report that the car contained weapons
     indicating those men were insurgents.

   Given the fact that we compensate the families of innocent victims in
   Iraq, it seems highly likely that the military has known for quite
   some time that these particular dead were not innocent civilians. It
   also seems highly likely that the military has known for quite some
   time that at least a third of the dead were combatants, and they were
   using the civilians as human shields and fodder for the international
   media circus.
   Yet the case continues.

References

   1. http://www.democracy-project.com/archives/003308.html