Hunting For The Truth…

Earlier today, I posted a blog. The news in it, in my opinion, was pretty shocking. The report gave out a number of key operational details that our troops exercise over in Iraq. In addition, it listed the names of the soldiers involved in the Sgrena shooting that occurred on March 4th. In an attempt to actually narrow down who is covering this, I started to do some searching.

AOL News had nothing regarding the release, on the Internet, of this non-redacted report.

Google News had this in a single report.

The U.S. report released Saturday found that the car Calipari was riding in as he headed to Baghdad airport with the ex-hostage did not slow down as it approached the checkpoint, and the soldiers who fired at it acted in accordance with American military rules of engagement. It also found that the killing may have been prevented by better coordination between the Italian government and U.S. forces in Iraq.

The U.S. report contained many blacked-out portions, including the names of the sole soldier who fired at the Italians and other soldiers at the checkpoint as well as their units. But due to an apparent error, the blacked-out portions could be read in some versions downloaded from the Internet. The U.S. military said they were looking into how that happened.

I should hope so. Our troops lives are at stake now. Thanks. Leave it to the US government to frell this up.

Yahoo News had the same report that Google printed. Same everything (unlike the LA Times ad their reports regarding the details of this issue). And a quick check of the blogosphere shows that now Austin Bay has picked up on this. His analysis is excellent. And trust me when I say that Austin Bay knows what he's talking about. Read his thoughts on this.

http://austinbay.net/blog/index.php?p=293

Everything looks like it is on the up and up for this report. And worse, it is our foul-up. I don’t care. I want heads. Yes, Austin Bay is correct, and after further checking of the report, there is really nothing in it that the enemy wouldn’t already know had they had surveillance over almost every attack on Route Irish. Further tactics, such as information regarding the transport of Embassy VIPs, proper tactics at a TCP, and the rules of engagement have me a tad worried. Chalk it up to me; even an idiot can get lucky, and the last thing I want to see is one getting lucky on our troops.

But I still contend that the most heinous crime committed is allowing the names of those troops our into the public. Now, like my other half pointed out, I’m afraid for any sort of retaliation against the family, whether it be violent or non-violent matters not. Those in their families that have decided to take up the challenge, and defend this nation. Their families deserve nothing but our respect and our support.

I’m sure that no one meant to do this, but the mistake cannot be forgiven. I don’t want a head mounted on my wall, like my other half, but I do want who is responsible removed from their post. If they are military, put them in the clerical pool, and let them sort files. But to handle sensitive material, and forget the redaction is dangerous. Loose lips sink ships. Anyone remember that from World War II?

Needless to say, we need to watch what we do, when we do it, and if at all possible, double check one another to make sure we’re doing the job right. Men could die over mistakes like this. As for my earlier indications that the Italians were responsible for this, I apologize. I was incorrect. I still don’t trust them, but they have ZERO culpability in this issue. This was a report we issued on Saturday.

UPDATE: The Washington Times had this in the paper earlier today. (I can't believe I missed this. Must be the lack of sleep. LOL.)

Large sections of the report were blacked out in the version released to the press yesterday.

Again, if this was released to the press, why hasn't the press reported on it more extensively? Why is this being left to the bloggers? Earlier today, my other half pointed out a clear-cut case of journalistic suppression from the LA Times. The media not covering this report, after hyping the hell out of this, is a journalistic felony that is beyond unforgivable.

UPDATE 2: It seems that we may have a forgery on our hands. riehlworldview.com has part of the story there, but yes, it looks like we have another forgery.

http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2005/05/the_segrena_rep.html

http://www.blogsofwar.com/archives/2005/05/01/italian-blogger-reveals-classified-us-document/
http://www.macchianera.net/archives/2005/05/il_rapporto_cal.html
(Sorry about the Macchinera link. It is in Italian. The only English post seems to have been made by Michelle Malkin. I 'm not sure on that, but if you scroll down, her name appears in the only English post.)

Michele Malkin links to Blogs of War who links to Italian Blog Macchianera, who claims to have been the first source for revealing the hidden information in the report. From that, it can clearly be determined that there is at least one forgery involved in this now.
While the Macchianera doc lists the same author, Lt Col Richard Thelin, that document was made with a different version of Acrobat than the one on the original Italian media site linked by Kevin Drum. Also the times of creation are highly suspect. The media copy of the documents creation times are listed above. The document from the Italian blog was created at 12:46 PM on the 30th but purportedly revised at 11:32 PM on the 30th - that's virtually impossible. Likely this blogger took the file from the media site in the afternoon and republished it later after reformatting.

Also the table of contents is not in the document on the Italian media website. They could have removed it, but that would not account for the document retaining Thelin as author, while changing the cersion of Acrobat used to create it.

This can all be seen by downloading the pdf's, and clicking on "file" document info - general.

The document is also formatted differently than the one from Drum's link and is 3 pages longer - 45 versus 42. It matches with the unredacted document from the media site.

Then this popped up shortly after the previous update, also from the above site.

Just checked the time of the post on Macchianera. It jibes with that blog being behind the media site as the post time is 11:44. Assuming that's PM, it would also fit with their reformatting the pdf after the media site had it up.

Whoops, sounds like someone has some serious 'splaining to do, and it isn't the four bloggers that picked this up.

Publius II