The MSM is jumping all over the
"sounds of gunfire" story, as made a brief foray into the Rec List this morning. As was explored in the comments section of that diary, many Kossacks wonder if this is yet another example of media obfuscation of a larger, more volatile story.
As va dare diaried yesterday and the comments continued into this morning, the New York Times is reporting that the U.S. military is likely to confirm that the deaths of two dozen Iraqi civilians, including a number of women and children, was indeed a sustained and methodical sweep, lasting over several hours, by U.S. Marines.
So I pose the possibility that the Haditha story is one that the administration would love to mute, especially on such a holiday weekend as this one. I propose this as a likely reason for the hype, or at least a fortuitous co-inky-dink, in light of particular statements in the NYT story:
The deaths, and the role of the marines in those deaths, is being viewed with such alarm that senior Marine Corps officers briefed members of Congress last week and again on Wednesday and Thursday.
...such alarm, in fact, that a scary and ambiguous diversion such as the "alleged echoes of the sounds of something loud that might have been gunfire according to anyone familiar with load banging sounds..." would be a dream come true...even if the story will break anyway. Just not until after the Memorial Day weekend.
The briefings were in part an effort to prevent the kind of angry explosion from Capitol Hill that followed news of detainee abuse by American military jailers at Abu Ghraib prison, which had been quietly under investigation for months before details of the abuse were leaked to the news media. "If the accounts a they have been alleged are true, the Haditha incident is likely the most serious war crime that has been reported in Iraq since the beginning of the war," said John Sifton, of Human Rights Watch. "Here we have two dozen civilians being killed -apparently intentionally. This isn't a gray area. This is a massacre."
Angry explosions indeed...so easily drowned out.
As an aside, I couldn't help but notice that the two officials quoted in the NYT piece were both Republicans. I guess Murtha was the only one with the guts to call this matter into question earlier, only to be castigated by the fuckers gleefully bloviating within the RW echo chamber.
Massacre vs. automobile backfire....
Chirp...chirp...chirp....
Happy Memorial Day everyone!
UPDATED title to classify this diary as "not yet another Capitol Hill shooting diary" even though it kinda is...even if it's not. really.