TUESDAY'S LETTERS: On Mitchell, Haditha and the Media

By: E&P Staff In today's letters, readers weigh in on Greg Mitchell's recent column about the alleged U.S. massacre in Haditha, Iraq.


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I read "Was the Media, Like the Military, Slow to Probe Haditha Killings?", and the answer is clearly, "Yes." The media are failing the public in so many ways -- and over the last 10 years it's clearly gotten worse. I don't know whether it's corporate power shutting down aggressive reporting, or if reporters are simply lazy and/or inept, but over and over we see biased reporting, credulous reporting, reporting of counter-factuals as if they were factual, and so on and on.

The media are NOT doing their job.

Michael Ham
Monterey, Calif.



Good column -- and right on the money. Speaking as a vet, I think that the longer one is active in a combat area, especially an urban one -- the more jaded, unfeeling, and cynical you become. Some of these guys are on their third and fourth tour, which is ridiculous. I still remember having a long leather cord on my locker -- every night I tied another knot, and could see the progression of days wind down to "short-timer", and finally that last day. You had that mental goal, and it meant a lot. Psychologically, you need something like this to get you through. When you know that you'll probably be coming right back to the shit, it messes you up in the head, and these guys are trained to kill, after all, in the first place.

I am no expert, but I'd be willing to bet that the phrase "Kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out" has become more of a practical, everyday MO than the generals would ever admit.

Keep up the good work, E&P.

Gary Van Ess
Green Bay, Wis.
U.S. Navy, 1968-72


It seems to me that a number of interesting questions go unasked in [Greg Mitchell's] article.

(1) Given the obvious propaganda value for this story, where was al Jazeera? Is Anbar such a badass province that even their reporters won't go there?

(2) Why did the Iraqi journalism student mail the tape to Time instead of to al Jazeera like bin Laden always does? Did Time pay for the story?

(3) What if the delay in passing this story up the chain of command and the lack of situational awareness of the battlefield is due to incompetence instead of a cover-up? What if there is actually a six month delay for information to filter up the chain? That means we actually could have lost the war today, but won't know it untill December. If the Marine Corps was unaware of this, how accurate is their assessment of who's winning the war?

Dick Griest