MYTH? TRUTH? or a LITTLE OF BOTH?
"Well, it appears to be a troubled story."
--Thomas Ricks, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner for his war correspondence for the Washington Post, author of the bestselling book, FIASCO, The Military Adventure in Iraq, in an e-mail to me, today, October 30, 2006.
Guys, as soon as I posted the piece about 300 supposedly dead American soldiers and Marines from the incident which occurred on October 10, 2006 in Iraq, I was haunted that, if it were true, nothing had been reported from any of the mainstream media outlets, and if it were NOT true, then the nine-page, single-spaced casualty list complete with names, ranks, and units that I had printed up was somehow bogus, either made up or otherwise manipulated, and believe me, there are far more things more reprehensible or despicable.
But before I could do further research, our telephone service went out--we live in a rural area--and since we're working off an ancient dial-up system, I could not get online again for two days.
As soon as I was able to, I sent a fax with the entire article and casualty list to Democratic Congressman John Murtha's office with a request that he look into it and find out the truth of it, and I also sent e-mails to Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post, and Michael Gordon, who is the war correspondent for the New York Times and author of the bestselling book, COBRA II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq. I also contacted Bob Herbert, who is a columnist for the New York Times and the best one I've found for sensitivity to, and sympathy with, the families of our military fighting men and women.
My hope was that these award-winning journalists would have far greater contacts than I would, and I knew that, controversial though Rep. Murtha may be, he is retired after a career spanning more than 30 years in the Marine Reserves, is a long-time Capitol Hill hawk who supported this war in the beginning, and has the ear of many in the Pentagon who would give anything to be able to howl in protest over the way this war is being handled but don't dare unless they're willing to give up their careers immediately afterward, so they tell him, and he takes the flak from well-meaning people who have the unmitigated gall to question the patriotism of a man who fought bravely and with honor in defending our country (but that's another blog.)
Anyway, I only sent my inquiries out this morning, and each of these individuals often receive hundreds of requests every week, but so far, Tom Ricks did get right back to me, and he said that this story was "troubled," and he gave me a URL to click on for further study.
But believe it or not--our phones went out again!!
At any rate, I FINALLY got to check out the URL, and the piece I read seems to be related to a different, but similar, story about under-reporting of military casualties.
If this story is a myth, I absolutely do NOT want to give it any legitimacy or "legs" on my blog. An opinionated loudmouth broad I may be, but I tell truth here, I do not spread rumors and lies.
However, I have still not been able to completely discount this story, and this list of names bothers me a great deal. I could not list for you the names and ranks of all the guys my son serves with in his unit, much less make up an alphabatized list of hundreds that spread out over various units in the Army, Marines, and CIA.
I really don't think anybody could, frankly. And after the way wartime casualty lists were manipulated so grossly during the Vietnam war in order to fool the American people into thinking the war was going well, and with a controversial election coming up...I do think it is absolutely possible to cover-up something like this...for a while. But cover-ups and conspiracy theories always start to fall apart when you realize that it would depend upon a large number of fallible human beings to keep such a secret for any length of time. After all, there was only ONE "Deep Throat."
I am deeply disturbed to think that anyone, anywhere, no matter how much they hate this war and want to see it ended, would actually take a real list of, say, personnel employed on a base, or a list of casualties that covered, say, several months, and combined those numbers into a bogus list, because these are real people with real families. It would be a despicable thing to do.
On the other hand, if this list is real, and these deaths are being covered up, then I would hope that whoever ordered the cover-up burns in hell throughout eternity.
I assure you that I will continue to dig until I find--if not the truth--then a preponderance of evidence that I can present to my readers that will ease their minds one way or the other.
Suffice it to say that the Department of Defense released the names today of more young men who have been killed this bloody horror of a month, bringing the official total to more than 100 for one month alone. If even this pace keeps up, we'll easily have more than 5,000 dead before those who sent them to their deaths finally leave their death-grip on power.
Do pay attention to the news, however, and notice sudden flurries of activity deliberately designed to make it look as if the so-called "war on terror" or the war in Iraq are going better, or that there will be a change in management of the war, or anything that will make it look like things aren't as bad as they really are so that you'll be lulled into thinking it's all going to be all right after all, so why change?
Be careful what you believe, on either side, and vote smart.
--Thomas Ricks, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner for his war correspondence for the Washington Post, author of the bestselling book, FIASCO, The Military Adventure in Iraq, in an e-mail to me, today, October 30, 2006.
Guys, as soon as I posted the piece about 300 supposedly dead American soldiers and Marines from the incident which occurred on October 10, 2006 in Iraq, I was haunted that, if it were true, nothing had been reported from any of the mainstream media outlets, and if it were NOT true, then the nine-page, single-spaced casualty list complete with names, ranks, and units that I had printed up was somehow bogus, either made up or otherwise manipulated, and believe me, there are far more things more reprehensible or despicable.
But before I could do further research, our telephone service went out--we live in a rural area--and since we're working off an ancient dial-up system, I could not get online again for two days.
As soon as I was able to, I sent a fax with the entire article and casualty list to Democratic Congressman John Murtha's office with a request that he look into it and find out the truth of it, and I also sent e-mails to Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post, and Michael Gordon, who is the war correspondent for the New York Times and author of the bestselling book, COBRA II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq. I also contacted Bob Herbert, who is a columnist for the New York Times and the best one I've found for sensitivity to, and sympathy with, the families of our military fighting men and women.
My hope was that these award-winning journalists would have far greater contacts than I would, and I knew that, controversial though Rep. Murtha may be, he is retired after a career spanning more than 30 years in the Marine Reserves, is a long-time Capitol Hill hawk who supported this war in the beginning, and has the ear of many in the Pentagon who would give anything to be able to howl in protest over the way this war is being handled but don't dare unless they're willing to give up their careers immediately afterward, so they tell him, and he takes the flak from well-meaning people who have the unmitigated gall to question the patriotism of a man who fought bravely and with honor in defending our country (but that's another blog.)
Anyway, I only sent my inquiries out this morning, and each of these individuals often receive hundreds of requests every week, but so far, Tom Ricks did get right back to me, and he said that this story was "troubled," and he gave me a URL to click on for further study.
But believe it or not--our phones went out again!!
At any rate, I FINALLY got to check out the URL, and the piece I read seems to be related to a different, but similar, story about under-reporting of military casualties.
If this story is a myth, I absolutely do NOT want to give it any legitimacy or "legs" on my blog. An opinionated loudmouth broad I may be, but I tell truth here, I do not spread rumors and lies.
However, I have still not been able to completely discount this story, and this list of names bothers me a great deal. I could not list for you the names and ranks of all the guys my son serves with in his unit, much less make up an alphabatized list of hundreds that spread out over various units in the Army, Marines, and CIA.
I really don't think anybody could, frankly. And after the way wartime casualty lists were manipulated so grossly during the Vietnam war in order to fool the American people into thinking the war was going well, and with a controversial election coming up...I do think it is absolutely possible to cover-up something like this...for a while. But cover-ups and conspiracy theories always start to fall apart when you realize that it would depend upon a large number of fallible human beings to keep such a secret for any length of time. After all, there was only ONE "Deep Throat."
I am deeply disturbed to think that anyone, anywhere, no matter how much they hate this war and want to see it ended, would actually take a real list of, say, personnel employed on a base, or a list of casualties that covered, say, several months, and combined those numbers into a bogus list, because these are real people with real families. It would be a despicable thing to do.
On the other hand, if this list is real, and these deaths are being covered up, then I would hope that whoever ordered the cover-up burns in hell throughout eternity.
I assure you that I will continue to dig until I find--if not the truth--then a preponderance of evidence that I can present to my readers that will ease their minds one way or the other.
Suffice it to say that the Department of Defense released the names today of more young men who have been killed this bloody horror of a month, bringing the official total to more than 100 for one month alone. If even this pace keeps up, we'll easily have more than 5,000 dead before those who sent them to their deaths finally leave their death-grip on power.
Do pay attention to the news, however, and notice sudden flurries of activity deliberately designed to make it look as if the so-called "war on terror" or the war in Iraq are going better, or that there will be a change in management of the war, or anything that will make it look like things aren't as bad as they really are so that you'll be lulled into thinking it's all going to be all right after all, so why change?
Be careful what you believe, on either side, and vote smart.
posted by Deanie Mills at 3:10 PM
1 Comments:
The video clip that i saw on CNN Clearly showed an Extreme High temp fire. Two likely causes for the color temps i saw on the live un-edited footage. One: Magnesium flares and TWO: Depeleted uranium. the live shots shown on CNN imediatly caused me to start invesigating a DU fire. (All later footage shown is color & content edited). Fron the fire temps and the ballistics of the material thrown clear du is the single plasuable cause for the damage in the photos of the base. The white containments are AC storage for DU rounds. (all have to be cooled in the hot desert climate) This gathering of photos at Rence show the containments severly melted and a white/blueish residue seems to indacate very high temps. These pics show a large amount of ASP falcons DU storage Totaly burned up!.
Both the M1 tank round magazine and the Aircraft cannon shell magazine mag. suffered catatropic hits. This is ONE HUGE mess if this group of photos of the aftermath are legit.
The fire temps confirm DU fire. the photos seem to confirm DU containment fire.
The other bits bogging down this is the mis-interpreting of the video of the blasts.
the final one i say was a Tank deployed over the wall MOAB used Safty Boss like to snuff the spreading fires. The photos show that the conventional storage areas (evidanced by Black sooty ground) was going to suffer a major catastrophic hit from further spread of the damage (2000 Lbers do some nasty things) the trench on the out side of the concrete wall could be where the charge setting tank was driven after the blast seen on the vids. The POL point (Petrol Oil Lube) was prob. cause of the mushroom.
I am not even sort of fuzzy on any of this. This fire was Garganuan messy and i hate to have to say it is going to kill thosands upon thosands world wide.
Can anyone post other photos of the site close up?
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