Filmmaker's Falluja videos stolen

[Frederik]

Further confirmation that chemical weapons and a napalm-like substance were used in Falluja, along with new, horrendous allegations.

http://www.independent.com/cover/Cover956.htm

http://gregoire.gnn.tv/blogs/4913/Report_from_Fallujah

"Manning is perhaps the only American citizen, outside the employ of a major news agency, to have embedded himself in Fallujah for the sake of information."

"He was able to conduct dozens of interviews — videotaped clandestinely — amassing some 25 hours worth of tape. (...) He also heard allegations of wholesale rape of civilians, by both American and Iraqi troops."

"Manning reports that when he returned to the United States, his car and hotel room were broken into, but the only things taken were his friend’s purse (containing the hotel room key) and his video camera and tapes, containing all the interviews he had conducted during his stay in Fallujah."

The picture that is emerging of the atrocities committed in Falluja is one of graver crimes against humanity than those committed by, for instance, the Serbs in Kosovo. When will we see the Falluja tribunal in the Hague? It also appears that some people are doing what they can to stop this information from reaching the public. A fact that may perhaps, by a stretch of the imagination, have some relation to what happened to Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena?

[SoCalDem]

1. Sorry, but if you have videos or documentation like that

and you do not make and SEND multiple copies for safekeeping, it's gonna be hard to convince the doubters that they existed at all..

Dan Rather's fiasco taught us that one :)

[jmcgowanjm]

2. Right SoCalDem, the naivete exposed

Never give orginals to authorities.

And assume you're in a "Three Days of the Condor"
movie, until you get the info out on
the Net.

And just what did the military think this guy was doing,
embedded w/ them in Fallujah?

[Frederik]

8. He wasn't embedded

he went there with an Iraqi aid worker.

"The Marines, he said, greeted him warmly, but with concern. “They said, ‘Who the hell are you, man? What the hell are you doing here?’

Over time, Manning came to regard most of the Marines as his buddies. They interceded on his behalf in disputes with the Iraqi National Guard on more than one occasion, allowing him to make medical deliveries that otherwise would have been blocked. They helped prevent Iraqi National Guardsmen from seizing Manning’s driver. And although Manning said he had a few Marines jam their rifle barrels into his neck when they thought he was an Iraqi, he expressed nothing but sympathy and respect for “the guys with their boots on the ground.” "

He appears credible to me. Not all his footage was stolen, either. He didn't give any of it to any authorities, it was stolen by people who broke into his motel room. He later allegedly met one of the burglars.

[RubyCat]

3. I totally agree with you there. Either the filmmaker is guilty of

mind-numbing negligence, and his stupidity was aptly rewarded, or the footage he got was embarrassingly lacking in the atrocities he sought to document.

It makes you mad because atrocities did occur in Fallujah.

[Frederik]

6. He didn't take footage

of atrocities, and I don't think he went there "to document atrocities". His footages consisted of 25 hours of interviews with Fallujans. He stayed there for some time, after the november offensive. I guess he didn't plan for his motel room to be broken into.

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. Maybe he didn't believe that the administration was capable

of all the things the 'far left radicals' have been saying.

It takes a lot to convince some people.

Think he believes now?

[flordehinojos]

4. LOOK FOR THE BUSHCO COVERT CRIMINAL HAND AND YOU WILL FIND YOUR

TAPES (unless they have incinerated them already).

The thought just struck me that the BUSHES ALL are somewhat related to Tony Perkin's character in PSYCHO...(I forget the character's name).

[Dhalgren]

5. Norman Bates...

[flordehinojos]

9. thanks. yes. i think these bushes are all spawns of norman bates!

[chlamor]

10. Kick

[chlamor]

11. Great Story- Fototage stolen:Here's Why-"Had the Goods on G. Bush"-Falluja

Heres more:
The next day, Manning said, a mysterious man contacted them to arrange a meeting, claiming he had the stolen purse. Manning and Kalustian went to a spot near 6th and Mission as instructed, where they were met by a man who appeared to be a “full-on street bum,” Manning said. After returning the purse, the man pulled Manning to one side, opened his wallet, and flashed what Manning estimated was $5,000 worth of $100 bills. According to Manning, the “bum” winked at him and said, “Look in my eyes. I have the eyes of a former sniper. You thought you had the goods on George Bush, didn’t you? You’ve been sandbagged, boy.”

Manning said he has received more phone calls and mysterious emails from the man since returning to Santa Barbara, but holds out little hope of getting the missing tapes back. He’s most worried, he said, that whoever stole his tapes might seek to make examples of the Fallujans who spoke to him. “I risked my life to get those interviews,” he said, “and I saw the level of fear in the people I talked to.”

<snip>

“There were 500,000 people living in Falluja at the time, not the 250,000 that the media reports. They were given one week to leave home,” Manning said. “After three days, they were told they had to walk out. Then after a week, the U.S. forces sacked the city and killed anyone that was left.” Manning expressed outrage that no provision was made for the mass exodus of refugees. “There were no refugee camps. Families were living in chicken coops, tents, and cars. In Iraq, the winters are very cold and very wet. And these are people who left with pretty much just the clothes on their back.”

Manning said he interviewed doctors who told him that the first target during the second siege was the hospital. That’s because televised images of the casualties incurred during the first assault proved so damaging in the court of international public opinion. “If you were a male between the ages of 14 and 50, you were considered a terrorist. Troops went into the hospital, dragged people out of their beds, and evicted them. The hospital was sealed. No one was allowed in during the four-month seige. If an ambulance went out to pick up the wounded, it was fired on,” Manning said.



Unlike many Iraqis Manning met, this man had no fear about having his picture taken. The man told Manning his house was raided by Marines, that he and his 7-year-old son were shot and then taken to the hospital. Afterwards, the man said his son was detained and he hasn’t seen him since. When he got back home, he found his house had been flattened.