Tuesday, March 4, 2008

IVAW: It's Not the Lies, It's the Cover-Up

Well, actually it is the lies AND the cover-up! Only two days ago I posted Is IVAW Keeping Silent on Another Fraud? asking IVAW whether the other fraud alluded to at Sgt. DeWald's site was Jimmy Massey. From Sgt. DeWald:
  • “Have we [IVAW] had problems with credibility before? Oh, hell yes. But that [Jesse MacBeth] incident (and the possibility that there exists another former IVAW member who can be proven to be a fraud) demonstrates only what damage a rogue member can do when he's improperly vetted and unsupervised."
I pointed out that IVAW's founder page had this about Massey:
Jimmy Massey
Jimmy was a career Staff Sergeant and Recruiter in the Marine Corps for 11 years, and is a combat veteran of the Iraq War where he served with the 7th Marines during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There he witnessed US troop involvement in the death of Iraqi civilians including children and felt he could no longer participate in the war. After a hard fight he was discharged and has since been telling people the truth about the war in Iraq. Jimmy lives with his wife in North Carolina.
Considering how thoroughly Massey has been caught in lies, that is an incredible statement. Early last month I posted Will Jimmy Massey Testify, with some detail of Massey's credibility problems. It is pretty substantial when even the AP repudiates your stories!

Well you cannot say that IVAW doesn't pay attention and take action! With zero admission that a founder and globe trotting IVAW salesman for the gross and routine American atrocity tales had been caught fabricating, IVAW has just changed their founders page, and quietly removed the line about telling the truth!

Yes, these are the people who expect to be received with credibility! They are busy like beavers "verifying" their WSI testimonies, and yet for how long have they been saying that Massey had been telling the truth???????? Well, until sometime yesterday, only years after he was exposed!

Of course, the Wayback Machine and my hard drive are our friend.

Here is what their founder page had only a day ago:

Here is how it is now:

It was never just MacBeth. Is IVAW going to repudiate the lies and Massey, or simply try to let it - go away as they whistle past the wreck and hope no one notices?

IVAW, this is not the route to "credibility'!

Massey is unquestionably the preeminent veteran peddler of the widespread and routine American atrocity theme in the world and he is also widely known as a founder and member of IVAW.

IVAW, you have anything to say to the public....something perhaps "credible"?

15 comments:

Thus Spake Ortner said...

I'd love to think that a mere 3 years after Massey was exposed they came to their senses. However, I doubt it.

Robin said...

dang denis - you should change your name to Sherlock Holmes! Great catch Mr. Holmes!

Anonymous said...

Latest [March 01, 2008] on Massey from:

Oneontan's anti-war film to be shown
http://www.thedailystar.com/local/local_story_061040120.html

After Massey became well-known in the anti-war movement, he drew fire from right-wing commentators such as Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin and Bill O'Reilly.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in November 2005 published an article that claimed Massey had given conflicting stories about his experiences in Iraq and fabricated some of the incidents he talked about in interviews and on the lecture circuit.

Massey said in the documentary and in other interviews he stands by the accounts of his experiences.

"My answer to that is hogwash," Massey said in the documentary.

Stillman said the documentary touches on the vilification of Massey, and he considers the former Marine a hero for speaking out against the war and the military industrial complex and not taking money for it.

Anonymous said...

Not only did Ron Harris debunk Massey's story, but the Marines in Massey's unit did, as well.

This scrub operation is PATHETIC. It would be laughable if it didn't involve the honor of the Marines who had the misfortune of serving with this liar.

Jonn Lilyea said...

"...cuz I said so..." is not proof that something happened. Especially when so many other witnesses say it didn't happen. But, I'm pretty sure that we're going to hear a lot more declarations like that in the next few weeks.

Denis Keohane said...

AMY GOODMAN: Jimmy Massey, you are known for saying in different places and in graphic testimony at the Canadian tribunal, probing an asylum claim by Jeremy Hinzman, that you were involved with the killing, your unit killed more than 30 innocent Iraqi civilians in just two days. Do you stand by what you said?

JIMMY MASSEY: No, I actually have to retract that. It wasn't until I sat down and I starting writing the book that I realized that it was actually 30 over a three-month time period. It took me sitting down with counselors and therapists and actually writing the book, which was a form of therapy for me, to recall and to have these flashbacks. So, that was an error on my part.

http://mwcnews.net/content/view/2261/26/1/2/

Anonymous said...

2 items folks should be aware of:

Is Ron Harris Telling the Truth?
http://www.counterpunch.org/massey11102005.html
By JIMMY MASSEY

&

Jimmy Massey, Ron Harris and Ambush Journalism
http://www.counterpunch.org/goff11082005.html
By STAN GOFF

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Anonymous said...

Here's something people should be aware of, anonymous - this is a message from one of the Marines who served with Massey in Iraq. I doubt any of this will come as a suprise to anyone:

I would like to thank you for placing the article about Massey on your website. I was in the same unit, 3RD Battalion 7TH Marines, as Massey. The man was always full of shit and a lousy Marine. He seems not only capable, but excited to stab his fellow Marines in the back.

I will say some inocent people died on our way to Baghdad, this is war and unarmed people will always die in war, but there were no acts of murder in the unit. I will say this as a fact as there is no proof otherwise. Massey is a liar and he is trashing the Marine Corps to line his pockets.

Thank you,
Phill

Read the whole article while you're at it:

"The Lies of Jimmy Massey"
http://www.floppingaces.net/2005/11/06/the-lies-of-jimmy-massey/


Well, what do we have here?? Someone confirming Phill's suspicions that Massey is the second coming of John "Christmas in Cambodia" Kerry?

"Some journalists who bothered to investigate Massey discovered he even lied about his life after returning from Iraq. For instance, he told reporters that he lost his civilian job because his superiors didn't much care for his antiwar grandstanding. It was later discovered that Massey quit his job in order to devote more time to antiwar activities and his pursuit of celebrity. Some observers suspected that, like Senator John Kerry, Massey wished to use his stories of Iraq in order to begin a political career."

"Outing a Liar: Hero Marine Gets Caught Pulling a John Kerry"

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/3591

If you care to read Ron Harris' article, you can find it here:

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/marine-told-tales-for-fame

Still think Massey's credible?

Of all of Jimmy Massey's lies, this one is by far my personal favorite:

"We are committing genocide in Iraq, and that is the intention."

World Socialist Web Site
November 11, 2004

Would this "genocide" be anything like the one in Armenia? Nazi-Occupied Europe? Rwanda? Bosnia? Darfur?

What say you, anonymous? Still got that hook stuck in your lip?

Anonymous said...

From:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112707R.shtml

Iraq Has Only Militants, No Civilians: "Tactical Perception Management"

26 November 2007

At the time of this writing, the group Just Foreign Policy has offered an estimate of Iraqis killed since the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. Their number: 1,118,846. Consider that possibility in the context of the latest round of news from Iraq about lessening violence.

The estimate is based on figures from a study conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. and al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, and published in October 2006 in the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, which found 655,000 Iraqis had died as a direct result of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation. The report methodology has been called "robust" and "close to best practice" by Sir Roy Anderson, the chief scientific advisor to Britain's Ministry of Defense. Since that time, in addition to Just Foreign Policy, the British research polling agency Opinion Research Business has extrapolated a figure of 1.2 million deaths in Iraq. Based on this, veteran Australian born journalist John Pilger wrote recently, "The scale of death caused by the British and U.S. governments may well have surpassed that of the Rwanda genocide, making it the biggest single act of mass murder of the late 20th century and the 21st century."

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Anonymous said...

The Lancet survey has already been proven to have used faulty methodology to arrive at its numbers - welcome to last week.

Counterpunch, TruthOut - totally unobjective, hyper-politicized Moonbat propaganda resources. Not long ago TruthOut repeated Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky's decades-old denials of the Communist genocide/democide in Cambodia - not exactly what any discerning researcher would consider a reliable source of information.

NAMedic said...

anonymous,
If you can cut and paste your comments from one thread to another, I guess I can do the same:

anonymous,

I love the spin always put on this topic. So the much touted "civil war", al Queda in Iraq, foreign fighters sponsored by Syria and Iran and Saudi Arabians, and just plain criminal elements out for profit from kidnapping and extortion - none of these killed anyone? And of those actually killed in coalition military ops, all were civilians - no bad guys at all? All the US casualties were what - friendly fire?

And the Lancet study was discredited anyway as to actual numbers.

Come back with something like an attribution chart of who the actual KIAs are by affiliation, and who did the killing, and maybe you'll have something factual to talk about.

And don't tell me it never would have happend at all but for us. That "direct result" argument is as intellectually dishonest as that gets. How many casualties, civilian and military, killed by the Nazis and the allies combined, were the "direct result" of D-Day, 1944? If we had minded our own business and stayed in England, or better yet the USA, none of them would have died.

You make the argument you do because - and only because - you do not agree with the national policy of three administrations towards Iraq. You oppose the war. Or maybe all war. You are entitled to that opinion.

But you are not entitled to your own version of facts.

Anonymous said...

Welcome to today:

The Myth of the Surge

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18722376/the_myth_of_the_surge

Hoping to turn enemies into allies, U.S. forces are arming Iraqis who fought with the insurgents. But it's already starting to backfire. A report from the front lines of the new Iraq

by NIR ROSEN
Mar 06, 2008

.

NAMedic said...

anonymous,
So when you have no answers for the criticisms of your previous garbage, you change the subject?

Anonymous said...

Yeah, when I want information on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, I turn to a music magazine. WTF is up with that?

If I want news on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I turn to - brace yourself! - a publication written by WAR CORRESPONDENTS, like The Long War Journal - I don't pick-up Guitar World.

I bet you have never even heard of Bill Roggio, Michael Yon and Michael J. Totten, have you, anonymous? Well, now you don't have any excuses:


Bill Roggio
The Long War Journal
http://www.longwarjournal.org/

Michael Yon
Michael Yon: Online Magazine
http://michaelyon-online.com/

Michael Totten
Michael J. Totten's Middle East Journal
http://www.michaeltotten.com/

If I want news on terrorism, do I turn to Kerrang? Er, no - I read a news source written by counterterrorism experts:

The Counterterrorism Blog
http://counterterrorismblog.org/

What a concept!

Anonymous said...

re: Iraqi Genocide

Holocaust Denial, American Style
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/68568/

The Iraqi Genocide
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts10162007.html

The forgotten fallen
http://www.newstatesman.com/200711150033

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