The New York Times--Unsubstantiated, Uncorroborated and Blatantly False Reporting
November 14, 2007, 4:15 pm
The Blackwater Gunner’s Account
By Mike Nizza
Tags: blackwater, iraq, security, washington
Hours after The New York Times reported the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s conclusion that Blackwater guards killed 14 Iraqis without cause in Baghdad on Sept. 16, the official account of a turret gunner was leaked to ABC News.
In a sworn statement to State Department investigators made three days after the incident, the gunner, whose given name is Paul (his surname was deleted by censors), said that he faced at least four life-threatening situations in the incident, and he turned the machine gun from target to target to stop them. Here’s how it started, according to the Paul’s account:
As our motorcade pulled into the intersection I noticed a white four door sedan driving directly at our motorcade … I and others were yelling, and using hand signals for the car to stop and the driver looked directly at me and kept moving toward our motorcade. Fearing for my life and the lives of my teammates, I engaged the driver and stopped the threat.
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Dan Rather loses his job for reporting that George Bush ducked his responsibilities while in the Air Force Reserve during the Vietnam war. A ton of bricks fell on Rather, including from the NYT.
Yet they report this 'leaked' and self-serving account by a Blackwater turret-gunner, who killed a bunch of unarmed Iraqis under the false claim of being attacked.
False claim?
There has been NO ONE who has corroborated ANY firing of weaponry at the Blackwater guards. Not one. No shell casings, no bullets, no injuries, no nothing.
Yet the times publishes this drivel without consequence and Rather is out of a job--not only out of a job, but shamed by the profession he served for half a century.
Makes sense only in a NYT world.
* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Iraq War, check out Opinion-Columns.com