BRIAN DEPALMA’S REDACTED

I read a very interesting post on Pat Dollard’s web site (http://www.patdollard.com) I will post it here for anyone who wants to read it. Brian Depalma’s new film REDACTED explores the rape of a 14 year-old girl in Iraq by U.S. soldiers. The film is currently making the festival circuit and causing some controversy with graphic violence and ant-war slant. On the right wing blogosphere it is also catching ire for the content. Is telling a story like this too political, who makes the call on what story should be told. The event in question happened, in terms of politics I’m pro-troops 100% and believe there is a purpose right now in Iraq, attacking Depalma for art, I don’t think is the place to start with the argument. Read for yourself. Here it is:

Billionaire Mark Cuban has decided to put all of his weight behind a campaign to smear US troops in Iraq as “monsters’. Cuban has decided that De Palma’s film “Redacted” must be seen as the cornerstone of his and De Palma’s self-declared anti-victory campaign against America and her troops fighing in Iraq. Cuban’s company Magnolia Pictures will be bringing this propganda campaign to a theater near you this winter. According to a source close to Cuban, the decision for Magnolia to develop, finance and distribute the film was personally made by Çuban. Cuban has a full producer credit on the film, and DePalma shot it on HiDef video at Cuban’s request, in order for it to qualify as fodder for Cuban’s hi-def cable channel. So far neither he or DePalma have explained how they can be “bringing the truth of the Iraq war to the American people”, as Louie DePalma has said, when neither of them have ever been to Iraq, filmed any of “Redacted” in Iraq, or spent one minute with any soldier in Iraq. Clearly they are only bringing you their imagined propagandists’ reality of Iraq. Both had the opportunity to go, both declined. They have chosen the coward’s path in a quest for legitimacy as spokesmen for the Iraq war, and as such both have failed in that quest. Indeed, they are left standing as laughingstocks. Their reach has exceeded their grasp. Cuban is a jet-set, armchair “Iraq Truther” who made sure not to have his private jet stop anywhere near Iraq. But he and DePalma are more than anxious to bring you the “reality of the Iraq war”. LMFAO.

DePalma chilling in five star luxury while debuting his film to Europeans, nowhere near Iraq

( In case you haven’t heard of him, billionaire Cuban owns the Dallas Mavericks and supports the campaign against Global Warming by travelling in his private Gulf Stream V jet. He also decided to distribute the 9-11 paranoid conspiracy “Truther” film, “Loose Change”.)

DePalma said that going in it was his intention to make a film that would nauseate the American people, and thereby lead to a US withdrawal from Iraq. Well the only way for him to pull that off is if his film makes the case that the anomolous rape it fictionalizes is not actually an anomoly, but a “typical” snapshot of the US military’s behavior. In short, he would have to make his “troops-as-monsters” conceit appear to be typical of the troops, not atypical. This reveals a desire to create something that is nothing short of a willful and intentional smear built upon a lie. It also means that he decided not to look at Iraq for what it was, but to find something – anything – in it that would allow him to advance his propaganda campaign. Well Louie DePalma gave the game away when he confessed his excitement at his initial discovery of the rape story: “I knew I had a story!”. Now if that doesn’t mean “A story to suit my propaganda interests!”, then what does it mean?

The best defense DePalma has been able to muster about the lack of direct military reality in his film is “I had plenty of real stuff to put in but I didn’t put it in, and can’t show it to you to prove it, because my lawyers won’t let me”. That kind of bullshit pr spin may fly in Hollywood, but it isn’t flying here on earth. If you’ve got the goods, Louie, show them. It would appear quite clear why you haven’t already.

None of the troops in Mr. DePalma’s film are real. They are as imaginary as he and Mr. Cuban’s balls.

Close to a year ago, Daily Kos ran a featured post declaring that it was time to attack the troops if the anti-victory movement was to succeed. Clearly DePalma and Cuban took the cue.

More to follow…

UPDATE: Debbie Schlussel caught this early.:

… Billionaire NBA Owner/Producer Mark Cuban can’t take the heat from Schlussel readers with complaints over this anti-American troops film. Read the comments section on this post, in which Cuban writes that he’s setting his filter to delete all complaints about this movie. Hey, Mark, you know what they say about your promiximity to the kitchen when you can’t take the heat . . . .

Read Schlussel’s February Post

Lt. General James Mattis and The Pendleton 8

As the story continues, as of last week here is the status of the Pendleton 8:

Hospitalman 3rd Class Melson Bacos: Pleaded guilty to kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap and making false official statements. Sentenced to 12 months in the brig, released in March.

Pfc. John Jodka III: Pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Sentenced to 18 months in the brig, released in July.

Lance Cpl. Tyler Jackson: Pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and obstruction of justice. Sentenced to 21 months in the brig, released Monday

Lance Cpl. Robert Pennington: Pleaded guilty to kidnapping and conspiracy to commit premeditated murder and kidnapping. Sentenced to eight years in prison, released from Brig.

Lance Cpl. Jerry Shumate Jr.: Pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Sentenced to 21 months in the brig. Released Monday.

Cpl. Marshall Magincalda: Convicted by a jury Aug. 1 of conspiracy to commit murder and lesser charges. Released from brig Friday by jury’s vote.

Cpl. Trent Thomas: Convicted by a jury July 18 of kidnapping, conspiracy to commit murder and lesser charges. Released from brig July 20 by jury’s vote.

Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III: Squad leader convicted of unpremeditated murder, conspiracy to commit murder and lesser offenses. Jury sentenced him Friday to 15 years in prison.

What will happen to Larry Hutchins and with the release of these Marines, what does this mean in terms of the NCIS investigation. Production on Article 32 continues into September, as I will begn interviewing a select lists of participants in the story. The Marines are released but that isnt the end of the story, PTSD, what really happened that night, and the NCIS as of late has started other investigations into Marines in regards to the Battle of Fallujah. Stay tuned for more updates.

ARTICLE 32 TEASER [Article32film.com]

YOU CAN ALSO VIEW THE TRAILER AT ARTICLE32FILM.COM IN THE ORIGINAL HI-RES VERSION

WHAT’S NEXT-HUTCHINS & THE PENDLETON 8

An interesting read………………..
The fight has just begun’
Hutchins seeking appeal, clemency, friends urge community’s support

August 07, 2007 | Old Colony Memorial
By Rich Harbert, CNC Newspapers

Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III in better times playing with his baby daughter.

PLYMOUTH – The parents of Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III met with the head of Marine Corps forces in the Middle East this week in the wake of their son’s conviction for killing an Iraqi civilian.

Larry and Kathy Hutchins asked Lt. Gen James Mattis to look into inconsistencies that emerged during their son’s recent court martial and consider evidence that never made it to the trial.

According to Tim Harrington, a friend of the Hutchins family, Mattis promised to review the record of the trial and determine if the Manomet native got a fair hearing. Larry and Kathy Hutchins also won permission to visit their son one last time Monday before they returned to the East Coast.

Lawrence Hutchins spent the weekend in solitary confinement in the Camp Pendleton brig following his conviction and sentencing by a military panel last week. He was released from solitary confinement Monday and will remain in a multi-man cell until the government determines where he will serve his 15-year sentence.

A lawyer for Hutchins, meanwhile, is preparing papers seeking clemency for the Marine sergeant. The case was also automatically forwarded to the Navy-Marine Court of Criminal Appeal for review.

Larry and Kathy returned home from California yesterday (Tuesday). Hutchins’ wife, Reyna, will remain in California while her husband remains at Camp Pendleton.

Harrington said Hutchins could serve his sentence at Miramar Naval Air Station, a Marine base in California, or at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

Fort Leavenworth is currently the home of another Massachusetts native convicted of negligent homicide for the deaths of three Iraqi detainees.

The case of SSgt. Ray Girouard, an Army Ranger, offers unusual similarities to Hutchins’. It offers hope to family and friends as well.

Girouard, a Springfield native who moved to a small town in Tennessee to live with his grandparents as a child, was convicted in March of three counts of negligent homicide for the deaths of three detainees after an Army raid in Iraq in May 2006. Like Hutchins, Girouard maintains he was following orders.

The town of Sweetwater, Tenn., has gained national attention for the way its citizens have rallied around their adoptive son.

Joy Oakes, Girouard’s sister, said the cases are practically mirror images of each other, with two sergeants taking a fall for superior officers.

Residents of Sweetwater, a town of 6,000 in eastern Tennessee, held town meetings to discuss Girouard’s situation after the allegations first arose last year, and then rallied in support. A sign hanging in the middle of town may have put it best: “SSgt. Ray Girouard Fought For Us, Now We Fight For Him.”

“This is such a small, close community. He grew up in this community and they just felt responsible for Ray,” Oakes said.

Residents organized fundraisers and donated time and money to hire a private attorney for Girouard and help his family pay expenses. Despite his conviction, the community continues to believe in Girouard’s innocence and supports his ongoing bid for clemency. In the interim, citizens of Sweetwater are paying for Girouard to get a college education while serving 10 years in prison.

Larry Orr, pastor of the First Assembly of God church, said his community tends to be conservative and pro-establishment, but quickly sensed something was amiss, based on the town’s knowledge of Girouard.

“We all felt pretty early on there we were left with plenty of reason to believe that our guy did not out and out murder anybody,” Orr said. The community also took into account the great stress and duress facing troops in war.

“He was no goodie two shoes or squeaky clean. He was probably a pretty typical teen, but a responsible and respectful young man who had been dealt some tough cards,” Orr said.

Orr was one of many in Sweetwater who recently wrote letters of recommendation on behalf of Girouard. The letters will be packaged with Girouard’s clemency appeal.

Harrington said the Plymouth VFW quietly assisted the Hutchins family with travel expenses, and friends have offered support through the sale of “Free Larry” T-shirts. Harrington hopes to expand the effort in the weeks to come. Friends of the family hope to generate support for Hutchins with a town meeting that will take a closer look at the case and the inconsistencies that developed during last week’s court martial.

“The fight has just begun,” Harrington said.

LARRY HUTCHINS-TRIAL

Report on Hutchins and Magincalda coming later today…..and some more interesting news about the NCIS, pattern of misconduct, it’s like a broken record whenever NCIS Agents are called to testify, or when there is any discussion about these witness statements they record. Someone needs to hold the system and someone needs to at least question the practice of not videotaping or recording witness statements, this is 2007, not 1989, it needs to be done.

Hollywood and the IRAQ War

FROM THE DRUDGE REPORT…….
‘WOOD SET TO UNLEASH ANTI-WAR FILMS
Wed Jul 25 2007 19:07:35 ET

Several upcoming Hollywood films use the damaged Iraq veteran to raise questions about an ongoing war, the NEW YORK TIMES is planning to report on Thursday Page Ones, newsroom sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

“Media in general responds much more quickly than ever before. Why shouldn’t movies do the same?” said Scott Rudin, a producer of ‘STOP LOSS,’ which casts Ryan Phillippe as a veteran who defies an order that would send him back to Iraq. The film, he said, was deliberately scheduled to be released in the middle of the presidential election season.

The TIMES’s showbiz reporter Cieply is set to details how in the past, Hollywood usually gave the veteran more breathing space.

William Wyler’s ‘BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES,’ about the travails of those returning from World War II, was released more than a year after the war’s end.

Similarly, Hal Ashby’s ‘COMING HOME’ and Oliver Stone’s ‘BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY,’ both Vietnam stories, came well behind the fall of Saigon.

Developing…

TRENT THOMAS= NO PRISON TIME

FROM MARK WALKER AT THE NC TIMES, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE TWO REMAINING TRIALS OF SGT. LARRY HUTCHINS, AND MARSHALL “MAGIC” MAGINCALDA. WAS IT AWAD THAT WAS ACTUALLY KILLED, WHERE IS THE CLASSIFIED REPORT ON THE ACTIVITIES OF AWAD, WAS HE AN INSURGENT, A SUSPECTED TERRORIST? MORE TO FOLLOW………….

Thomas escapes jail time, given a bad conduct discharge in Hamdania killing

By: MARK WALKER —- Staff Writer

CAMP PENDLETON —- A military jury this morning decided a Marine corporal convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping in the shooting death of Iraqi man last year will be given a bad conduct discharge but no prison time.

The jury deliberated for only about an hour before issuing its decision in the case of Cpl. Trent Thomas, a 25-year-old St. Louis native.

“I believe that we did what we needed to do to save Marines’ lives,” Thomas said after his sentencing hearing on Camp Pendleton. “I was just hoping I could go home to my family. We’ve been through a lot and now we’re going to be together.”

On Wednesday, the jury of three officers and six enlisted men deliberated for about five hours before finding Thomas guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping in the death of an Iraqi civilian. But the panel acquitted him of the most serious charge he faced, premeditated murder, which carried a mandatory life prison sentence without the possibility of parole.

The prosecution asked the jury to sentence Thomas to 15 years in prison for his role in the April 26, 2006, slaying of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, a 52-year-old retired Iraqi policeman. In the military justice system, a jury and not a judge decides a sentence.

Thomas was the first among the eight Camp Pendleton troops charged in the case to take his case to trial. Five other men pleaded guilty and received sentences ranging from one to eight year in prison.

The lighter sentence for Thomas may be the work of a jury familiar with the pressures of combat, family members of some of the other accused and legal experts said Friday morning. All of the jurors had combat experience.

“The key to the sentence that Trent got is every person (on the jury) had combat experience and understands what happens there,” said Deanna Pennington, whose son, Lance Cpl. Robert Pennington, received an eight-year sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracy and kidnapping — the same crimes for which Thomas received no additional jail time.

Pennington said Thomas’ sentence did not cause her to second-guess her son’s decision to plead guilty.

Pennington’s attorney, Carlsbad’s David Brahms, called Thomas’ decision to go to trial risky and praised the work of his defense team.

“It was a brilliant job by Thomas’ attorneys,” Brahms said. “Great reward comes with great risk.”

Thomas’ attorneys had asked that the married father of two young children not serve any time beyond the 14 months he has been in custody since he was arrested in late April 2006 while still in Iraq.

Former Marine attorney and judge Gary Solis said after the sentencing that juries often play the role of softening verdicts — or toughening them up — through sentencing.

“Juries have always been society’s avenging sword or the means by which society softens the rough edges of the law,” Solis said in a telephone interview Friday morning. Now a professor of military law and Washington’s Georgetown University, Solis said the sentence sent a message that “we can’t have this conduct, so you’re gone,” but at the same time that the panel was sympathetic to the case.

Thomas and seven Kilo Company squad mates from Camp Pendleton’s 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment were charged with the slaying last year.

During his trial, Thomas’ attorneys presented expert medical witnesses who said he suffers from a mild form of post-traumatic stress disorder and was predisposed to agree with anything his leaders wanted, even if that meant breaking the military’s rules of engagement.

Those who pleaded guilty have testified that Awad was picked at random and that the killing was intended to send a message that the Marines were tired of being attacked.

On Wednesday, Thomas had implored the jury to return a sentence that allowed him to stay in the Marine Corps. The service brought stability and purpose to his life, the veteran of three Iraq tours said.

“I came from nothing,” Thomas said, briefly breaking down. “Here, I am at home. It is my all.”

Pennington’s mother said she was happy with Thomas’ sentence.

“We are so pleased for his family and for him,” she said. “These boys were just doing their job and what they were told to do.

It was not immediately clear when Thomas will be released from the brig and dismissed from the service.

Trials for the two remaining co-defendants, Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III and Cpl. Marshall Magincalda, will play out in a base courtroom next week.

Thomas said Friday he is praying for the other defendants and will attend weekend rallies outside the base to show his support for Marines still facing charges.

LARRY HUTCHINS-PTSD

Below find a piece that ran in the Sunday Boston Globe, Hutchins and Marshall Magincalda will both see their trials before August 1st. One prevailing theme as of late in the coverage of these stories is the post-traumatic stress of the Marines that everyone describes. It will be a huge theme that I will address withn the film in the context of this sad story. This article is pretty extensive, a lot of experts weigh in, worth reading to get a perspective on the Hutchins case. The purpose of the blog is to analyze the coverage of the Pendleton 8, and also to keep a moving diary that I can refer back to during the editing of the film. I am trying best to keep my personal thoughts and feelings out of the investigation I am conducting to produce this film. It has been hard as I have seen and heard information that makes me very aware these men are not getting fair trails within the military justice system.

Two portraits of local Marine awaiting trial
Sergeant accused of murder
By Anna Badkhen, Globe Staff | July 15, 2007
PLYMOUTH — They might as well be talking about two different men.

The friends and family of Sergeant Lawrence G. Hutchins III , a 23-year-old Marine squad leader from Plymouth, portray him as a caring friend, a deferential son, and a dedicated Marine, the type of guy who always held the car door open for his mother and who spent his entire first paycheck on a Father’s Day gift of a gas grill.
Six members of his squad have testified under oath that he is a killer who masterminded and led the kidnapping and execution of an Iraqi civilian and afterward, according to one testimony, told his squad members: “Congratulations. We just got away with murder, gents.”
Hutchins’s parents, Kathleen and Lawrence Hutchins Jr., maintain his innocence. But they also say the war had transformed their son from a friendly boy who loved to ride his bicycle at dawn on streets winding along White Horse Beach to buy milk for his mother into a young man haunted by war even in his sleep.
“He wakes up screaming,” said Kathleen Hutchins.
As military experts, specialists on combat trauma, and retired Marines familiar with the case await a court-martial scheduled to begin July 24 at Camp Pendleton to determine whether Hutchins is guilty, they say that the extreme duress of war can impel a person to commit atrocities.
Continuous exposure to violence in a war that has no front lines and the constant fear of attacks by an elusive enemy who wears no uniform can cause troops to act violently even in such a well-trained military as that of the United States, specialists on combat trauma say. Although people with prior history of criminal behavior or behavioral problems are more inclined to breach military discipline, the extreme stress of war sometimes can push people who do not have a history of violent behavior to lose self-control.
“War brings out the best and the beast in people,” said Raymond Scurfield , a sociologist who served as an Army social worker in Vietnam and who has written scientific books about psychological effects of war on veterans in Vietnam and Iraq. “Sometimes it brings out both.”
Marine expects acquittal
In a telephone interview last week from jail at Camp Pendleton, where he is awaiting trial, Hutchins sounded upbeat and said he was expecting to be acquitted.
“I think it’s gonna go well,” Hutchins, who says he is innocent, said about the pending court-martial. Hutchins faces charges that include murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy in the April 26, 2006, death of Hashim Ibrahim Awad , 52, a retired policeman in the Iraqi village of Hamdaniya. If convicted, he faces life in prison.
In court testimony, six squad members said Hutchins had hatched a plan to catch and shoot Saleh Gowad , a suspected terrorist. Frustrated that they could not find Gowad during a predawn raid, Hutchins allegedly ordered his troops to take Awad, a father of 11 living in the same village. According to the testimony, Hutchins then ordered the Marines to bind Awad and take him to a bomb crater half a mile away, where Hutchins and other squad members shot the Iraqi several times in the chest and head. Then they placed a Kalashnikov rifle in Awad’s hands and a shovel in the crater to make it appear that Awad was an insurgent planting explosives.
After the execution, Hutchins congratulated fellow squad members with getting away with murder, testified Navy Corpsman Melson Bacos, the squad medic. Bacos and four other members of Hutchins’ squad have pleaded guilty to lesser charges and received sentences ranging from one to eight years. The court-martial of Hutchins and two other Marines are taking place this month.
This accused murderer is not the Lawrence Hutchins his friends and family know.
“I just can’t see him doing it,” said Seth Lawrence, 32, Hutchins’ friend and the owner of a youth dirt-bike racing team for which the Marine had competed as a teenager.
“Larry is the kind of son every mother dreams of,” said Kathleen Hutchins, who described Hutchins as an adoring father of his 2-year-old daughter, Kylie . Mary Hale , 82, who lives across the street from the Hutchinses’ gray clapboard house, recalled Hutchins as “a sweetheart of the neighborhood” who often helped her around the yard.
Hutchins’ deployment exposed him to a world of brutality and hardship that was nothing like his life in Plymouth.
Hutchins’s parents said their son’s terse, infrequent descriptions of the war painted a picture of relentless violence, a war in which the enemy was often long gone before the roadside bomb went off, it was often impossible to avenge the attacks, and insurgents and friendly civilians looked alike.
“He’s talked to me about being pinned down, about being shot at, about when people set the dogs on you. Seeing people dead and blown up,” said Lawrence Hutchins Jr., a retired Marine who has never seen combat. “He’s said people were killed on different missions he was on.”
Hutchins had spent four months in Iraq before the alleged killing, searching for insurgents in dusty villages west of Baghdad. He would leave the base with his squad for five days at a time, riding in an armored vehicle through hamlets scattered across the desert, eating military-issue, flavorless ready-to-eat meals and often sleeping on the floor in abandoned houses, said his younger brother, Kurt Hutchins. They would return to base for two days and go back out into the sinister desert again.
In his short phone calls home over a satellite phone from Iraq, Hutchins had complained of physical deprivations.
” ‘It’s freezing here at night, please send me socks. And hungry, very hungry,’ ” his mother recalled Hutchins as saying. His lips were chapped from the dry desert wind. His eyes hurt from frequent dust storms and blinding sun.
The court-martial of Hutchins and his seven squad members is one of several high-profile trials examining alleged war crimes by American troops since the war in Iraq began in 2003. So far, at least 21 US servicemen have been convicted and at least 22 servicemen are under investigation in criminal cases stemming from deaths of Iraqis.
The cases include the alleged 2006 massacre of 24 civilians in Haditha and the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl later that year. Last month, military prosecutors charged two soldiers with premeditated murder in connection with the deaths of three Iraqis between April and June.
The reported incidents of alleged war crimes by US troops in Iraq are less than previous American military campaigns. For example, the Army is currently investigating five cases of soldiers shooting and killing civilians, compared with at least 320 such alleged incidents during the Vietnam War — not including the 1968 My Lai massacre, in which US troops killed more than 300 Vietnamese civilians in three hours. That massacre became a turning point in Americans’ perception of the Vietnam War.
‘Atrocities on all sides’
It is possible that many atrocities in Iraq are unreported, said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org , a military think-tank in Alexandria, Va., citing a recent study by the Army’s Mental Health Advisory Team.
Only 40 percent of Marines and 55 percent of soldiers surveyed in the study said they would report a member of their unit for killing or wounding a civilian in Iraq.
While not commenting about the Hutchins case specifically, Army Colonel Kathy Platoni , a clinical psychologist, linked mistreatment of civilians to psychological changes caused by exposure to violence, saying that the grueling stress of war sometimes provokes violent reactions “that are totally out of character.”
“Sometimes that rage just takes over,” said Platoni, who has traveled in Iraq extensively as the leader of a unit helping US troops on the battlefield manage combat stress.
“War brutalizes and therefore it’s natural that there should be atrocities on all sides,” said Robert Rotberg , a specialist on conflict and conflict resolution at Harvard University. “We do what we are not supposed to do, which is retaliate in kind, often targeting innocents.”
“Somebody starts shooting at me and they’re hiding behind women and children, I’ll shoot back,” said retired Marine captain Donald Greenlaw , a veteran of the war in Korea who had led Hutchins’s fiancée, Reyna Griffin , down the aisle at the couple’s wedding last fall at Camp Pendleton.
Whatever the outcome of Hutchins’s court-martial, he will never be the same young man who went to war last year, his parents said.
“He doesn’t want to go over there killing people but that’s what you have to do. It obviously takes a burden on you,” said Lawrence Hutchins Jr.
Ambitiousness described
Before he went to Iraq, Hutchins was going to spend his life in the Marine Corps, like his father and grandfather, Lawrence Hutchins Sr. He was an ambitious young man who “always strives to be the best at what he does,” said Kurt Hutchins . Now he no longer wants to become a career Marine. He takes medication to subdue his nightmares.
“All I want to do,” Hutchins said over the phone, “is be a father to my daughter and a husband to my wife.”
Badkhen can be reached at abadkhen@globe.com.

Hashim Ibrahim Awad

Two things in this post, has the autopsy ever been made public, will it be examined in the trial of any of the Marines? It has been reported that AWAD was flown to Dover Air Force Base for the autopsy. Secondly, was AWAD the Iraqi killed that night? Read below, and one final question has any physical evidence ever been presented in any of the ARTICLE 32 hearings or will physical evidence be presented by the prosecution in the THOMAS trial? Thank You to Tim Harrington for finding this article.

UNION-TRIBUNE
July 12, 2007
CAMP PENDLETON: In a technical decision that could come into play later, the military judge in the Hamdaniya trial ruled yesterday that the government hasn’t established the identity of the Iraqi man that Marines are accused of murdering.

Lt. Col. David M. Jones ruled that prosecutors can refer to the man 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment members are accused of killing as Hashim Ibrahim Awad.
But Jones said Marine prosecutors have not proved to his satisfaction that the man who Marines shot to death April 26, 2006, in Hamdaniya was indeed Awad.

This decision could come into play during sentencing if there is a guilty verdict. In that scenario, the prosecution could not use statements from Awad’s family to get a stiffer sentence.

Typically, prosecutors attempt to show the jury how a death has affected a victim’s family in angling for a tough sentence.

The death of Awad, 52, allegedly left 11 children without a father and a wife without a husband. Unless prosecutors can prove that the man killed by Marines was Awad, that information will never reach the military jury. –R.R.

THE NCIS, THE TRIAL OF THOMAS, CONFLICTING STORIES

This article ran in the SAN DIEGO KGTV 10NEWS.com web site, there are a few interesting points to take notice on, NCIS AGENT James Connolly did not read Thomas his rights in the initial interview, he stated that he felt that Thomas had not committed a crime. In another passage, Thomas tells NCIS Agents that he was scared or intimidated by Hutchins. It appears on the surface that this article was the only coverage out of the courtroom on Thursday July 12th. That raises another question and something I am waiting on. The NC TIMES has been very diligent on covering the trials, the news and anything having to do with the HAMDANIA story, there has been no reporting done in the last two days, I am waiting to hear the perspective of the NC TIMES and what they will cover.

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — A government investigator who testified Thursday at a Marine’s murder trial said he didn’t read the corporal his legal rights during an initial interview because he didn’t suspect the Marine of a crime.
The credibility of agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service took center stage on the fourth day of the court-martial of Cpl. Trent Thomas, who is accused in the April 26, 2006, shooting death of Iraqi civilian Hashim Ibrahim Awad in Hamdania.
Thomas faces life in prison if convicted of the premeditated murder of Awad, a disabled 52-year-old retired policeman and father of 11. He is also charged with kidnapping, conspiracy and other offenses.

NCIS Special Agent James Connolly testified that he spoke with Thomas for more than three hours at Abu Ghraib on May 8, 2006, but didn’t read him his legal rights because “I didn’t suspect him of a crime.”
During the interview, Thomas said his eight-member squad from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment spotted an Iraqi walking down a road with an AK-47 rifle and a shovel late at night, according to Connolly.
He said the corporal told him that squad leader Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins — who is accused of hatching the plan to kidnap and kill a suspected Iraqi insurgent — got on a radio and heard “engage.”
Connolly said Thomas told him that “the Iraqi dropped the shovel — basically started firing back at them. Eventually, the Iraqi was taken out.”
Thomas raised his right hand and swore to the statement, the agent said.
“It appears on the surface it was a good shoot,” Connolly testified. “I thought Thomas was being totally truthful and up front” at the time.
The agent said the case took a turn when squad member Melson Bacos, a Navy corpsman, came forward on May 10 and told a different version of what took place.
Connolly said he told Marine superior officers of the situation and knew “a big ball was gonna start rolling and decisions were going to be made I had no control over.”
NCIS agent Stan Garland testified that he read Thomas his rights on May 16.
Garland testified the corporal told him that Awad was a terrorist and that it was a good shoot.
But Garland said once he told Thomas that evidence came out showing Hutchins was to blame, Thomas agreed to tell the agent what really happened, with one request.
“You’ve gotta protect me from Sergeant Hutchins because he’s a nut,” Thomas said, according to Garland.
The agent said he didn’t promise the corporal any protection.
It was the most contentious day so far in the trial, with the judge, Lt. Col. David Jones, dismissing the military jury several times to confer with attorneys on both sides.
Emotions ran high when both sides argued over whether an autopsied body was that of Awad and whether people interviewed in Hamdania were really his family members.
Thomas and seven other members of his squad are accused of plotting to kidnap a suspected insurgent, kill him and make it look like he was digging a hole to plant a roadside bomb.
When the family of the man originally targeted foiled the plan, the squad allegedly dragged Awad from his home next door and killed him.
Five squad members have pleaded guilty and been sentenced in connection with Awad’s death.
Hutchins and Cpl. Marshall Magincalda are scheduled for court-martial later this month.