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WAB Bartender
Defense Professional
Military Professional
Join Date: 11-24-04
Location: Vacaville, CA.
Country: 
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Time to bring this one back. From Power Line:
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The New York Times had a lot invested in Haditha. Gateway Pundit reviews the Times' coverage of the sad story, culminating in the paper's mourning for an atrocity lost:
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Last year, when accounts of the killing of 24 Iraqis in Haditha by a group of marines came to light, it seemed that the Iraq war had produced its defining atrocity, just as the conflict in Vietnam had spawned the My Lai massacre a generation ago.
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That sentence led the paper's coverage of the collapse of the Haditha prosecutions:
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[O]n Thursday, a senior military investigator recommended dropping murder charges against the ranking enlisted marine accused in the 2005 killings, just as he had done earlier in the cases of two other marines charged in the case. The recommendation may well have ended prosecutors’ chances of winning any murder convictions in the killings of the apparently unarmed men, women and children.
In the recent case, against Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, the investigator recommended that he be charged with negligent homicide if the case moved ahead to court-martial. In the other two cases, the investigator recommended dropping all charges.
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This development could have prompted an apology from the newspaper for jumping to the conclusion that the accused Marines were guilty. (We're still waiting to hear from Mad Jack Murtha.) Or, at least, the theme of the Times' coverage could have been that the Marines weren't guilty after all. But no: the paper undertakes to explain how the Marines, still presumed guilty, could have gotten off.
The apparent miscarriage of justice is explained by "several factors having to do with the quality of the evidence, including a delayed investigation and the decision to conduct hearings in the United States, far from the scene of the killings and possible Iraqi witnesses."
In addition, the Times criticizes Lt. Col. Paul Ware, who recommended the dismissals:
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The cases also reflect the particular views of Lt. Col. Paul J. Ware, who presided over the hearings and concluded that all three cases lacked sufficient evidence. He made clear in his recommendations to the commander who ultimately decides the cases that he felt that the killings should be considered in context — that of a war zone where the enemy ruthlessly employed civilians as cover.
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Well, that's a "particular" view, I guess, but isn't it obviously a correct one? In some respects, the Times' critique of Col. Ware's work is almost humorous:
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[Gary D. Solis, a former Marine judge] added: “He’s aggressive, and he seems to make his judgments without regard for anything but the law. He must know that people — civilians, primarily — are going to howl about this, but that doesn’t seem to be a concern.”
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This can only have been intended as a compliment, but it is far from clear that the Times sees it that way. On the contrary:
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Other military law experts also noted that in his two reports on the charges against Lance Corporals Sharratt and Tatum, Colonel Ware revealed a willingness to give the men the benefit of the doubt, and to consider the impact of the prosecutions on the morale of troops still fighting in Iraq.
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"Giving the men the benefit of the doubt" is also known as the presumption of innocence, a bedrock principle of our system of justice which the Times selectively supports.
Actually, the Times cites just one expert who voices what is evidently the paper's own disappointment at the collapse of the case against the Marines: Eugene R. Fidell, who is identified as "an expert in military law in Washington." Mr. Fidell has the article's money quote:
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“It does surprise me to see that the killing of seven women and children by grenades and rifles, for the purposes of clearing structures, is being treated the way this investigating officer has treated it."
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Where did the Times go to find an expert who would articulate the house view of the Haditha killings? Well, to be fair, I think Mr. Fidell is indeed an expert on military law. He is also, however, married to Linda Greenhouse, the hyper-liberal reporter who covers the Supreme Court for the Times--a fact that the paper did not consider it necessary to mention. So the Times didn't have to look far for an expert whose opinion would give the right conclusion to an article on how guilty Marines beat the rap.
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__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell
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