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October 20, 2005

Ok, time to elaborate. . .

So first, go read this post (it's the one I made a short while ago). I wanted to just give Dan from Riehl World View a link for a good catch, but it's evolved a bit since then. I should also give a HatTip to Richard from HyScience.com for starting the ball rolling. So after a few emails back and forth with Dan, a larger picture emerges, and I want to lay it out as I see it here.

First lets start with the story Dan first turned me onto:

Report: U.S. Soldiers Burned Bodies of Taliban Fighters, Taunted Villagers

And here's an earlier story from the Sydney Morning Herald:

Film rolls as troops burn dead

Now these articles stem from the Australian program Dateline, which aired this segment (Requires Real Player) which is an interview with Stephen Dupont. Go ahead and take the time to watch it. You can find the transcript here.

Now it's important that after you read the articles and you watch the clip to realize that the troops that allegedly burned the bodies (to my knowledge, the actual event video hasn't been released as of this writing) did so because of legitimate hygiene concerns. The Taliban soldiers had been dead for over 24 hours and were begining to become a concern. So in keeping with good battlefield hygiene practices, they disposed the bodies in the most effective and safest means possible, burning. It's quite obvious that soldiers dug in around a position, with enemy forces in the vicinity, cannot be expected to go out and bury the bodies; and the Taliban certainly wasn't going to come out and collect them (this is a war, remember). So we can't really fault them for burning the bodies.

Now the reporter on the scene, Stephen Dupont, who was embedded with the American troops, himself admits that it was later, when a PsyOps unit arrived on the scene, that more was made of the burning than actually took place, IN ORDER TO "smoke out" and "provoke" a fight with other Taliban fighters on the scene. Taken as it is, a separate tactical event, this is not that big a deal. The goal of armies is to find and engage the enemy, to root them out and destroy them. PsyOps has long been considered a legitimate and effective means of waging war. All parties to conflicts use it and it generates the desired effects.

Now what the two articles are doing is trying to CONNECT unrelated dots. The articles, and Stephen Dupont himself, are trying to connect dots that aren't necessarily connected. Their purpose? I can only suppose that the purpose is to make American soldiers look bad and to try to incite Islamic hatred outside of this particular incident. By connecting these two SEPARATE events, the burning of the bodies for legitimate health reasons and the later PsyOps operation, the articles are trying to imply that the Soldiers who burned these bodies did so to "offend" Muslims, when it fact they did not.

Now it IS true that the PsyOps operatives used the burning to enrage or offend the soldiers they were trying to "smoke out" but that's a separate incident entirely and not related to the actual act of burning. I'd suspect that if half of the PsyOps techniques that were used on the battlefield were taken out of true context and broadcast as "representative" of combat soldiers actions, that people would positively FREAK OUT. Let's remember folks, the goal of PsyOps troops IS to freak out the enemy and provoke them into making mistakes that combat troops can capitalize on and destroy the enemy. That's their job!

So IF the bodies were burned for legitimate hygiene reasons, as the reporter on the scene suggests, that's a GOOD THING.

And IF the PsyOps operatives used the event to gain tactical advantage over the battlespace and draw the enemy out, that's ALSO A GOOD THING.

The articles though, try to lead the reader in another direction entirely and are attempting to take the tactical conflict out of it's isolated and local context and apply it to a general interpretation of the continuing war against Taliban remnants and al Queda in Afghanistan.

So let's move on.

Now Dan and I traded some links back and forth and began looking at Stephen Dupont.

This is the photo that Dupont chooses to be his representative image on his bio page on his own website (it's a flash site, so I can't link directly, you'll have to navigate to the bio page). Take a look at it for a second. Photographers ply their trade by taking images that represent something, an ideal, an event, a feeling or just a directed representation of the subject. I'm no expert and I don't pretend to be, but what that image represents to me is that Stephen Dupont is trying to show himself as somehow "connected" to the Afghans and Taliban in general. The garb and manner of the picture may not be exactly representative of Taliban or Afghan attire, but that's the perception that I believe the lay observer will get. Stephen is trying to send a message with that image, and I REALLY REALLY don't think that that message is "I'm an impartial objective observer/journalist". To me, and I suggest, the average lay observer, that image represents that Stephen identifies himself with the Taliban, or at the very least, Afghans.

If you take a surfing trip through Stephen Dupont's website, you'll see that Dupont tends toward supporting an agenda, and that adgenda is somewhat, if not decidely, anti-Western. Furthermore, if you take a look at Dupont's sponsoring agency, Contact Press Images, you'll find that they also aren't necessarily an impartial objective group themselves, they use phrases like "this so called 'war on terror'" and invite the reader to remember the "last Americans in Vietnam were hurriedly evacuated from a Saigon rooftop" [italics mine]. This group obviously starts from a position of opposition to the Global War on Terror and they leave objectivity at the door when they go out to cover a story.

Even the Australian Dateline, takes a particularly biased approach to the story, by leading with:

Since September 11, we've all become uncomfortably familiar with names like Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Fallujah and maybe even Bagram in Afghanistan. They're all places we now associate with human rights violations or worse - military atrocities and possibly potential war crimes. But after our first story tonight, you can add another placename to that list - Gonbaz in southern Afghanistan, about a 100km from the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

Now this paragraph says ALOT. First, they leave out that September 11th was an attack on the United States by al Queda, and that al Queda was sponsored, harbored and protected by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and they jump to associating September 11th, not with the attack on the Twin Towers, Pentagon and the 4th failed attack on another target, but they associate September 11th with Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Fallujah and stretch to include Bagram, labeling all as "human rights violations", "military atrocities" and "possibly potential war crimes".

I ask you? Is this what September 11th is associated with? I think not, maybe the War on Terror is, but not Septemeber 11th. The media is quick to point out that Iraq is not connected with 9-11 (despite the truth that Iraq WAS associated with al-Queda and merely that there was not an OPERATIONAL link between the specific 9-11 attack and Iraq), so why the mention of Abu Grahib and Fallujah?

The answer can only be that they wish to connect these dots illegitimately as well. September 11th is connected to the attacks on America, and the attacks on America are associated with the Global War on Terror, and the War on Terror is connected to the War in Iraq. However, by jumping over links in the chain and associating events in the manner that the Dateline lead-in does, the bias in the piece that follows is evident from the beginning.

Now I'll leave it to you, the reader to go back and view the articles, video, Dateline website and Stephen Dupont on your own and drag your own conclusions, but to ME, this whole shebang is a "hit piece" of local and separate events, taken out of context and rewoven to convey a wholy different representation of what actually occured.

What can we objectively say happened:

1) That allegedly (the video is still MIA, but I'm sure it will surface) American soldiers did the prudent and militarily accepted thing and burned bodies that were beginning to rot while they laid siege to an area where Taliban fighters were holed up.

2) That PsyOps operatives later arrived on the scene and tried to use localized events to affect a tactical advantage and flush out enemy troops so that they could be engaged and hopefully destroyed.

These two events ARE CONSISTENT with standard military practices and do not represent some grander evil scheme to "offend Islam", they DO NOT represent a "military atrocity" and they do not represent a "human rights abuse" as the articles and the Dateline piece would lead the reader to believe.

I can almost guarantee that this is not going to be the way this story is picked up and run with by the media and it certainly won't be interpreted that way by the anti-war crowd, the anti-American crowd, or the left in general. I'd expect that,unless this video never surfaces,we're in for a long road where unrelated dots are connected over and over again. I expect that this will develop into a media firestorm, and direct accusations will be made against the President, Donald Rumsfeld and the American Military that this is an evil and disrespectful affront to Islam and Muslims everywhere.

The detractors will try to use this incident to incorrectly claim that this was an atrocity, that it was a war crime and that our mission to destroy the forces of al Queda and the Taliban is a war on Islam itself, despite all the real indications to the contrary, this will become the latest marching mantra of the left and the latest call to denounce the War on Terror and a justification to pull out our troops before the mission is done. The left will call for someones head to roll over this even though it's perfectly consistent with the Geneva convention to dispose of battlefield dead and the PsyOps activities were consistent with standard and accepted activities of war.

This will be a firestorm and many half-truths, outright lies and slanders of our troops, their leaders and the goals of the War on Terror will be crafted around this actual non-event.

Thanks for your time.

ADDED NOTE: Hyscience got this ball rolling last night with the initial tip on the backgrounds of the reporters, today they've put up The Media's New Abu Ghraib

--Jason

UPDATE: After checking email, Dan left me one last tip to chase down for the night. While he and I chased down info on Stephen Dupont, we neglected to take a look at John Martinkus, Dupont's apparent co-reporter.

Martinkus is probably best known as the reporter who "googled his way to freedom" when captured by nationalist forces in Iraq.

Thanks to Tim Blair, I learned a little more about Martinkus which I think also points to bias in the reporting of this incident. Martinkus himself has participated in anti-war events and has spoken out against the War on Terror and the American presence in Iraq. Martinkus was a featured speaker at an event organized by the "Stop the War Coalition" and has authored a book, Travels in American Iraq, which is apparently very critical of the American efforts in Iraq and the War on Terror.

Martinkus has also drawn fire from Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer:

Kidnapped Australian journalist John Martinkus was attacked today by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and former hostage Steve Pratt for appearing to say that Iraqi terrorists had a reason to kill some hostages.

Mr Martinkus, who was kidnapped and interrogated for more than 20 hours in Baghdad before being freed last weekend, sparked outrage when he said of his captors:"(From their perspective) there was a reason to kill (British hostage Ken) Bigley, there was a reason to kill the Americans; there was not a reason to kill me (and) luckily I managed to convince them of that."

Mr Downer said today it was pretty much the most appalling thing any Australian had said about the Iraq war.

He accused Mr Martinkus of giving comfort to terrorists by saying that their actions were understandable.

So, not only are Stephen Dupont's "objective journalist" credentials suspect, it appears that "co-reporter" John Martinkus is an anti-war activist and quite possibly a sympathizer with the very enemies that the forces he was embedded with are fighting.

NOTE: The Tim Blair links are from his old site. His current site is timblair.net.

UPDATE 2: Well folks, IT'S ON, as of 5:30 a.m. U.S. central time, Google News is listing 170+ reports on this "event" and just as expected, almost all are playing the "desecration" and "affront to Islam" angles and giving the bias of the reporting a pass. Another MSM "hit piece" on our military is underway.

UPDATE 3: Drudge / Breitbart have picked it up now.

UPDATE 4: The first pictures are showing up on the web now.

UPDATE 5: Checking in on some of the lefty blogs, the meme is already developing that the bodies were intentionally faced west and the PsyOps teams were somehow instrumental in this "symbolic" placement. Nevermind the "reporters" own admission that the Airborne units they were embedded with burned the bodies for hygiene reasons and the PsyOps operatives arrived sometime after the bodies were burned. The accusations and total disregard for the truth have begun.

UPDATE 6: Centcom has issued a statement.

-JC

Posted by JasonColeman at October 20, 2005 01:30 AM

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» Story of US Soldiers “Burning Bodies” - RAISE THE BULLSHIT FLAG from MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
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Posted by: GUYK at October 20, 2005 10:43 AM

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