Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

You know things are shitty for your country when your best friends are dissing your flag.

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin surprises with a tad bit of balanced commentary:

That won't last. She'll be back to fire breathing shortly, I'm sure. BlackFive, meanwhile, has advice on what Jack Murtha should be saying.

To reiterate what I've said before, this incident is painful on both sides of the AK, as it were. If civilians were killed, their grievances are large and deserve redress. But the stress and strain of this mission on these young Marines is equally overwhelming. Let's hope the commanders are appropriately called to account if in fact they allowed this to happen and then tried to cover it up. Worse, it should be clear to everyone at this point that this war has, in various ways, ruined the military it took a generation after Vietnam to repair, destroyed lives on both sides, and stained the good name of the United States for years to come.

Previous:

• The other side of Haditha
• Worse than Abu Ghraib?

Tags: Kilo Company, Iraq, Politics, War, News, Military, TIME Magazine, Haditha

Tags: Iraq, war, News, Religion, Military, Media, peace

Ahmadinejad: Look here, my views are quite clear. We are saying that if the Holocaust occurred, then Europe must draw the consequences and that it is not Palestine that should pay the price for it. If it did not occur, then the Jews have to go back to where they came from. I believe that the German people today are also prisoners of the Holocaust. Sixty million people died in the Second World War. World War II was a gigantic crime. We condemn it all. We are against bloodshed, regardless of whether a crime was committed against a Muslim or against a Christian or a Jew. But the question is: Why among these 60 million victims are only the Jews the center of attention?

SPIEGEL: That's just not the case. All peoples mourn the victims claimed by the Second World War, Germans and Russians and Poles and others as well. Yet, we as Germans cannot absolve ourselves of a special guilt, namely for the systematic murder of the Jews. But perhaps we should now move on to the next subject.

Ahmadinejad: No, I have a question for you. What kind of a role did today's youth play in World War II?

SPIEGEL: None.

Ahmadinejad: Why should they have feelings of guilt toward Zionists? Why should the costs of the Zionists be paid out of their pockets? If people committed crimes in the past, then they would have to have been tried 60 years ago. End of story! Why must the German people be humiliated today because a group of people committed crimes in the name of the Germans during the course of history?

SPIEGEL: The German people today can't do anything about it. But there is a sort of collective shame for those deeds done in the German name by our fathers or grandfathers.

Ahmadinejad: How can a person who wasn't even alive at the time be held legally responsible?

SPIEGEL: Not legally but morally.

Ahmadinejad: Why is such a burden heaped on the German people? The German people of today bear no guilt. Why are the German people not permitted the right to defend themselves? Why are the crimes of one group emphasized so greatly, instead of highlighting the great German cultural heritage? Why should the Germans not have the right to express their opinion freely? ...

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., May 29 — In this "company town" where everything and everyone caters to the well-being of the Marine Corps, there is no shortage of people, both military and civilian, who are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the troops accused of unjustified killings last November in Haditha, Iraq.

Denial and utter disbelief are the overwhelming reaction to reports of the killings involving marines based here. If there is any truth to the accusations, some say, then the troops must have been acting on direct orders, responding as they were trained to do.

Lawrence Harper, 36, now retired, served in the Marine Corps for more than 15 years, and was in the Persian Gulf war.

"Many times you see a situation the next day and wonder, how did my brain think this was dangerous?" Mr. Harper said, while shopping for gear at G.I. Joe's, a military supply shop in Oceanside.

Mr. Harper expressed doubt that the marines knowingly committed crimes in Haditha, saying that they undoubtedly acted on instinct, as trained, in the heat of battle.

"When a bullet comes at you and you turn around and half your buddy's head is blown off, it changes the way you think forever," he said.

Jerry Alexander, the owner of G.I. Joe's and a Navy man who served with the Marines for a dozen years, had much the same perspective, saying, "If I saw my buddy laying there dead, there is no such thing as too much retaliation."

While Mr. Alexander said "unacceptable kills" should not be covered up, he worried about the unfairness of judging those who were in Haditha.

"In the heat of combat, you cannot hesitate; he who hesitates is lost," he said. "I would not prosecute these young men because they were just doing their jobs."

On this Memorial Day, in this military community, people will concede that any marine who committed illegal acts must be punished and that the Pentagon must take responsibility.

But conversation quickly returns to emotional and earnest explanations of the need for understanding for what one former marine described as "these 19-year-old kids who get paid 900 bucks a month to put their lives on the line."

The marines and several senior officers assigned to the Third Battalion of the First Marine Division are the focus of criminal investigations looking into the deaths of 24 people who lived in the Subhani district of Haditha, an insurgent stronghold in Iraq.

A preliminary inquiry indicated that the civilians were killed during a four- to five-hour sweep, led by a handful of marines angry over the death of Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20, of El Paso, Tex., who was killed as his patrol drove through the area.

Appearing Monday on the CNN program "American Morning," Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "We want to find out what happened and we'll make it public."

He added, "If the allegations, as they are being portrayed in the newspaper, turn out to be valid, then of course there will be charges. But we don't know yet what the outcome will be."

The family of Corporal Terrazas was interviewed Monday morning on "Morning Edition" on National Public Radio. His uncle, Andy Terrazas, a former marine who is now a border patrol agent, said, "I hope this is over soon so they can just let him rest in peace. I hope these marines come out clean, but I guess it's not looking too good, right?"

None of the active and former marines interviewed for this story knew Corporal Terrazas or the members of the unit at the center of the probe. But most of them had seen combat, recently or in the Gulf war.

"In Iraq, everything you do has to be cleared with a commanding officer," said Cpl. Michael Miller, 25, who has served two tours of duty and fought in Falluja and Ramadi. "You just can't go clearing houses without the permission of higher-ups."

Corporal Miller said he believed that the marines would be vindicated in the inquiry. "I just think the marines did what they had to do," he said. "I don't know why innocent people are dead, but someone must have seen a gun." Several retired senior officers agreed. Col. Ben Mittman of the Air Force, interviewed as he got his regular military buzz cut at the Beachcomber Barber Shop in Oceanside, worried that the young servicemen were being made scapegoats.

"If this thing really happened, they had to radio communication and get the go-ahead," he said. "The frontline grunts these days do not do anything without the commanders knowing, especially something like that."

• Worse than Abu Ghraib?

Tags: Kilo Company, Iraq, Politics, War, News, Military, TIME Magazine, Haditha

• AT&T cold BUSTED
• Why spy?
• The Hayden half-grilling
• Paging Dr. Evil
• Something just ain't right
• Fed up? What we can do now
• Monkey business
• In your face

Two influential legislators who have been briefed on the U.S. military's investigation into the deaths of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians said Sunday that they suspected senior officers were involved in covering up evidence of war crimes by the Marine unit involved.

Neither lawmaker — Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), a former Marine and a leading authority on military issues — said they had direct evidence of top officers trying to suppress information.

But both said the delay in launching a formal investigation into the incident in the western Iraqi town of Haditha led them to suspect that officers up the chain of command were complicit in attempting to keep the incident under wraps. They said they expected that congressional hearings on the killings would focus on the military's reaction to evidence of an atrocity.

The killing of unarmed civilians, including women and children, occurred Nov. 19, but a formal investigation was not launched until reporters from Time magazine handed over video taken by an Iraqi journalist to military authorities in late January. A criminal inquiry was not begun until weeks later.

"It's been six months since this happened," Murtha, who was one of the first congressmen briefed on the incident by Marine officials, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "It's very simple: They went out the next day, they knew there was something wrong. Two or three days later, they decided that these people were murdered….

"It goes right up the chain of command," said Murtha, who has emerged as one of the most vocal critics of the Iraq war. "Who said: 'We're not going to publicize this thing. We're not even going to investigate it'? Until March, there was no serious investigation. There was an investigation right afterward, but then it was stifled."

On the same program, Warner was more cautious in his criticism, but said there were "serious questions" about "what happened and when it happened and what was the immediate reaction of the senior officers in the Marine Corps when they began to gain knowledge of it."

He added that a separate military investigation underway would look into how senior officers reacted when they learned about the killings.

On Saturday, the Los Angeles Times reported that a special unit of Marine intelligence specialists, known as a human intelligence exploitation team, took photographs of the scene shortly after the incident, evidence that was turned over to the military chain of command.

But Time reported Sunday the existence of another set of photos, taken by the Marines allegedly involved. It quoted John Sifton, an investigator with Human Rights Watch, an international advocacy group based in New York, as saying a photo a Marine took with his cellphone showed Iraqis kneeling before being shot. Sifton did not return a call seeking comment Sunday.

Other evidence has emerged that paints a troubling picture of members of the Camp Pendleton-based unit's actions after a roadside bomb exploded in Haditha, killing Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas.

Murtha said Sunday that Marine officials had told him of one Iraqi woman "bending over a child, pleading for mercy" when the Marines "shot her in cold blood." He said a man was "asking for mercy" in English before being shot.

The outfit known as Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, wasn't new to Iraq last year when it moved into Haditha, a Euphrates River farming town about 150 miles northwest of Baghdad. Several members of the unit were on their second tour of Iraq; one was on his third. The men in Kilo Company were veterans of ferocious house-to-house fighting in Fallujah. Their combat experience seemed to prepare them for the ordeal of serving in an insurgent stronghold like Haditha, the kind of place where the enemy attacks U.S. troops from the cover of mosques, schools and homes and uses civilians as shields, complicating Marine engagement rules to shoot only when threatened. In Haditha, says a Marine who has been there twice, "you can't tell a bad guy until he shoots you."

But one morning last November, some members of Kilo Company apparently didn't attempt to distinguish between enemies and innocents. Instead, they seem to have gone on the worst rampage by U.S. service members in the Iraq war, killing as many as 24 civilians in cold blood. The details of what happened in Haditha were first disclosed in March by TIME's Tim McGirk and Aparisim Ghosh, and their reporting prompted the military to launch an inquiry into the civilian deaths. The darkest suspicions about the killings were confirmed last week, when members of Congress who were briefed on the two ongoing military investigations disclosed that at least some members of a Marine unit may soon be charged in connection with the deaths of the Iraqis--and that the charges may include murder, which carries the death penalty. "This was a small number of Marines who fired directly on civilians and killed them," said Representative John Kline, a Minnesota Republican and former Marine who was briefed two weeks ago by Marine Corps officials. "This is going to be an ugly story." ...

...A military source in Iraq told TIME that investigators have obtained two sets of photos from Haditha. The first is after-action photos taken by the military as part of the routine procedure that follows any such event. Submitted in the official report on the fighting, the photos do not show any bodies. Investigators have also discovered a second, more damning set of photos, taken by Marines of the Kilo Company immediately after the shootings. The source says it isn't clear if these photos were held back from the after-action report or were personal snapshots taken by the Marines. The source says a Marine e-mailed at least one photo to a friend in the U.S.

Lance Cpl. Roel Ryan Briones says he is tormented by two memories of Nov. 19, 2005, in Haditha, Iraq.

The first is of the body of his best friend and fellow Marine blown apart just after dawn by a roadside bomb. The second is of the lifeless form of a small Iraqi girl, one of two dozen unarmed civilians allegedly killed by members of his Camp Pendleton unit — Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division.

Briones, a wiry, soft-spoken 21-year-old interviewed Sunday at his family home in this Central Valley city, said he was not among the small group of Marines that military investigators have concluded killed the civilians, including children, women and elderly men.

However, Briones, who goes by Ryan, said he took photographs of the victims and helped carry their bodies out of their homes as part of the cleanup crew sent in late in the afternoon on the day of the killings.

"They ranged from little babies to adult males and females. I'll never be able to get that out of my head. I can still smell the blood. This left something in my head and heart," Briones said.

He said he erased the digital photos he took at the scene after first providing them to the Haditha Marine command center. He said Navy investigators later interrogated him about the pictures and confiscated his camera.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, and senior officials and career prosecutors at the Justice Department told associates this week that they were prepared to quit if the White House directed them to relinquish evidence seized in a bitterly disputed search of a House member's office, government officials said Friday.

Mr. Gonzales was joined in raising the possibility of resignation by the deputy attorney general, Paul J. McNulty, the officials said. Mr. Gonzales and Mr. McNulty told associates that they had an obligation to protect evidence in a criminal case and would be unwilling to carry out any White House order to return the material to Congress.

The potential showdown was averted Thursday when President Bush ordered the evidence to be sealed for 45 days to give Congress and the Justice Department a chance to work out a deal.

The evidence was seized by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents last Saturday night in a search of the office of Representative William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana. The search set off an uproar of protest by House leaders in both parties, who said the intrusion by an executive branch agency into a Congressional office violated the Constitution's separation of powers doctrine. They demanded that the Justice Department return the evidence.

The possibility of resignations underscored the gravity of the crisis that gripped the Justice Department as the administration grappled with how to balance the pressure from its own party on Capitol Hill against the principle that a criminal investigation, especially one involving a member of Congress, should be kept well clear of political considerations.

It is not clear precisely what message Mr. Gonzales delivered to Mr. Bush when they met Thursday morning at the White House, or whether he informed the president of the resignation talk. But hours later, the White House announced that the evidence would be sealed for 45 days in the custody of the solicitor general, the Justice Department official who represents the government before the Supreme Court. That arrangement ended the talk of resignations.

• Bush blinks
• The Jefferson conundrum

Tags: Alberto Gonzales, FBI, Bush, William Jefferson, Corruption, Politics, separation of powers, Bush Administration, Constitution, Congress, Dennis Hastert,

Prime Minister Tony Blair caved in to White House pressure by sharpening language on Iran and softening it on global warming in a speech he delivered Friday at Georgetown University, according to a British press report Sunday that Blair's office immediately denied.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, Blair made "significant" last-minute changes to his major foreign policy address and "objections by President George W. Bush's inner circle played a key role in the alterations." An official at Blair's 10 Downing Street office, speaking on condition of anonymity as is standard practice here, said it was "categorically untrue that any White House objective played any part" in the speech.

Blair is frequently criticized in Britain for his close relationship with Bush, who is extremely unpopular among Britons. The prime minister is particularly faulted for his alliance with Bush in the Iraq war. Critics have complained that Blair seems too eager to please Bush in what many here view as a lopsided relationship that has benefited Bush far more than Britain.

The newspaper, citing anonymous British sources, said aides to Blair told journalists three hours before the speech that Blair intended to say that "change should not be imposed" on Iran in the current dispute over its nuclear ambitions. The newspaper said the line reflected "the British view that bombing or invading Iran is not a realistic option."

Blair eventually used more subtle phrasing: "I emphasize I am not saying we should impose change" -- which the newspaper said was altered to reflect the White House's desire to keep the military option "on the table" to exert maximum negotiating pressure on Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. ...

Blair had also planned to "take a tough line" on global warming and the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which he supports and Bush opposes, the paper reported. In the end, Blair said only that "we must act on climate change," and international negotiations provide "a way forward, building on Kyoto, which can involve America, China and India."

The paper reported that during the climate change section of the speech, a cellphone rang in the audience and Blair quipped, "I hope that isn't the White House telling me they don't agree with that. They act very quickly, these guys."

Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling are trading pinstripe suits for suits of a different stripes. Enron's top two dogs were found guilty yesterday of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading, perjury, and a host of other charges, Prosecutors hope this is the last in a long string of corporate scandals. God, when you thrown in Adelphia, Worldcom, and Tyco, I haven't seen this many white men in court since the jury box in To Kill a Mockingbird..."

Both Lay and Skilling could spend the rest of their lives in jail, with maximum sentences approaching a combined 305 years. Finally! Two people Bush can pardon that don't work for him... Actually, I don't think George w. will pardon his former friends when he leaves office in 2009. He'll turn on them faster than Rumsfeld on the Pentagon press... There's more distance between Bush and Kenny Boy than Bonds and Balco... There's a better chance Lou Dobbs will IM Vicente Fox than those two will ever talk again... -- Left Wing Laughs

• Families: Boot camp medical examiner covered up other deaths
• Use of force routine in boot camp where guards struck teen
• Students Stage Boot Camp Protest Via Phone (we had one of the young men involved in those protests, FAMU student body vice president Phillip Agnew, on the radio show this morning. Very impressive young man.)
• Local NAACP Is Getting Impatient

And here's a link to the full and edited versions of the video of the Martin Anderson beating.

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• Justice for Martin II: Paging Dr. Baden
• Justice for Martin
• About Mr. Siebert...
• Death for joyriding?

Tags: Martin Lee Anderson, Florida, Juvenile Justice, Cover-ups

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris had weak support in a poll released Thursday that includes the three little-known entries in the Republican U.S. Senate primary.

Only 37 percent of respondents said they favored Harris, compared to 13 percent for Will McBride, 4 percent for LeRoy Collins Jr. and 2 percent for Peter Monroe. Her three opponents all entered the race May 12, which was the last day to get on the Sept. 5 primary ballot.

More respondents - 43 percent - didn't choose a candidate. In a head-to-head with Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson, Harris trailed Nelson 58-25.

The poll was conducted by Quinnipiac University May 12-22. It surveyed 1,086 registered voters and had an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The poll surveyed 424 Republican voters about the primary, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.8 percentage points.

"Given how well known Congresswoman Harris is among Republicans and how well thought of she has been by them, it is somewhat surprising that she would only get 37 percent support," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the school's polling institute. "The fact that 63 percent of Republicans say they prefer either the other three or are undecided is remarkable."

• When you've lost Ed Rollins
• Katherine Harris' battle plan
• The great Katherine Harris crack-up...
• Broke... or not broke
• God, the devil and Katherine Harris
• The persistent Ms. Harris

Tags: Katherine Harris, Republicans, Florida, Elections, 2006, polls

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush stepped into the Justice Department's constitutional confrontation with Congress on Thursday and ordered that documents seized in an FBI raid on a congressman's office be sealed for 45 days.

The president directed that no one involved in the investigation have access to the documents taken last weekend from the office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-Louisiana, and that they remain in the custody of the solicitor general.

Bush's move was described as an attempt to cool off a heated confrontation between his administration and leaders of the House and Senate. (Watch Bush intervenes in criminal probe -- 2:08)

"This period will provide both parties more time to resolve the issues in a way that ensures that materials relevant to the ongoing criminal investigation are made available to prosecutors in a manner that respects the interests of a coequal branch of government," Bush said.

In a statement, Bush said he recognized that Republican and Democratic leaders in the House had "deeply held views" that the search on Jefferson's Capitol Hill office violated the Constitution's separation of powers principles. But he stopped short of saying he agreed with them.

And while many pundits on the left and right have shrugged off the Jefferson raid (because many people have written him off as corrupt -- which he very likely is) to me, the Constitutional issue is clear: the executive branch cannot turn the legislative branch into a subordinate that it can sick the FBI on at will. Clearly, this was a bridge too far for members of Congress, many of whom, including possibly Hastert, clearly have self-serving reasons for finally standing up to the president, given that many of them cuold face Abramoff-releated corruption probes of their own that could put them in the crosshairs of an overly muscular Justice Department. They stood up. Bush stood down. It's a first for this administration. Unfortunately, I have no illusions that this signals the dawn of a Congress newly awakened to its Constitutional oversight role, when it comes to our civil liberties, as opposed to theirs.

But a girl can dream.

Previous:

• The Jefferson conundrum

Tags: William Jefferson, Corruption, Politics, separation of powers, Bush Administration, Constitution, Congress, Dennis Hastert,

"I never dreamed about being president. When I was growing up, I wanted to be Willie Mays."George W. Bush on his official Web site

One brother longs to be baseball commissioner and shows little interest in politics (at least, not when he's sober...) yet he is whisked by fate (and the Supreme Court) into the presidency of the United States. The other brother dreams of being president from the time he is a child, but after his father and brother screw the office up royally, that dream seems all-but lost to him. And then, he is quietly approached about becoming the commissioner of the NFL.

The ironies never cease.

Tags: Bush, Jeb Bush, George Bush, Florida, Politics, Baseball, Football, Sports

• AT&T cold BUSTED
• Why spy?

Tags: AT&T, Domestic spying, NSA, Bush, Politics, War on Terror, Congress, FISA, wiretapping, surveillance, spying, Privacy, eavesdropping

• Pat Robertson trips the light fantastic
• (Crazy) people are talking
• Evangelicals: Pat Robertson makes us look...
• ReidReport Podcast #6: An offer he can't refuse
• When a televangelist calls

Tags: Pat Robertson, crazy people

A file detailing aspects of AT&T's alleged participation in the