palewire / Who broke Haditha?

Who broke Haditha?

Somewhere in between coughing up Matt Cooper’s emails and canning one of the best investigative teams in the history of American journalism, Time magazine managed to do at least one thing it can brag about. Reporter Tim McGurk and Aparisim Ghosh filed a report on the magazine’s Web site on March 19 questioning the U.S. military’s official story on what happened after Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas was killed when his Humvee struck a roadside bomb outside the Iraqi city of Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005. The official military version back then was that the bomb attack also killed 15 civilians and was followed by an ambush of the U.S. convoy by insurgent gunmen. After engaging in battle, the U.S. forces claimed they killed eight insurgents. As we’ve learned in the papers these last few days, U.S. forces no longer make those claims.

McGurk and Ghosh’s reporting, based on a videotape provided by an activist group and interviews with residents and officials in Haditha, gave voice to witnesses and survivors there who say that innocent civilians, including a number of women and young children, were massacred in their homes by rampaging American soldiers. The Time story led to an internal military investigation, the results of which are now leaking out through the newspapers. Three battalion leaders have already been sacked and the more we learn the uglier it gets. The body count has risen. The military is backing away from previous statements. And it looks like we may see a splash in the next few weeks when it all comes out. Who knows where this one ends up, but right now it looks like it has the potential to hit like another Abu Ghraib. Unfortunately, as it still appears to have been the case with Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch, the military’s media machine seems to have been caught twisting the truth, this time covering up for what Congressman John Murtha (D-PA), an initial supporter of the war who has transformed into a vocal critic, is already denouncing as cold-blooded murder.

As constructive as the American reporting has been, it deserves to be mentioned that it might not have happened without a videotape shot the day after the attacks and publicized by an Iraqi branch of Human Rights Watch. I’ve yet to read any reporting on the cameraman, but it’s being credited to an unnamed Iraqi journalism student. After all this reporting, I still don’t know who it was. Has anyone printed the name? I’d think he or she deserves a little attention, at least within the journalism community. Somebody should skype ‘em.

You can watch an edited version of the video at ABCnews.com.