Gullible's Travels

In human social life, the principal object is to communicate our attitudes, and hence it is of the first importance that everyone be truthful in respect of his thoughts, since without that, social intercourse ceases to be of any value.’  (Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics)

It is a well-known truism that the first casualty of war is truth.  But once truth has been slain, social intercourse and politics have themselves been gutted of meaning.  This brief and exemplary review analyses the ludicrousness of that casualty; for ludicrousness is to truth what gruesomeness is to the body. 

In the run-up to the New Crusade, there were numerous and graphic reports of atrocities alleged to have been committed by I.S.I.S (or I.S.L, as it is variously called). These reports alleged mass executions of surrendered soldiers or young men, the beheadings of babies and hostages, the rape of women, the destruction of holy places and so on. 

 

Beyond accusations it has been very difficult, if not impossible, to find proof  of the allegations.  But this raises a preliminary question.  To paraphrase Pontius Pilate, “What is proof?” 

-oOo-

 

Proof is attestation of a fact by word or deed. It consists either of witness testimony or forensic (i.e. physical) evidence.

The first type of proof – that is, testimony – is little different from an accusation. The difference between an indictment (from latin in-dicere or “in words”) and testimony is that the former is a hearsay statement on paper whereas the latter comes viva voce in court. The witness simply puts flesh into the accusatory word. 

How can one tell if the witness is telling the truth? You can't – at least not in any scientifically absolute sort of way. The best one can do, in the Anglo-American system, is to have twelve men look into the eyes of the accusing witness and decide whether or not he or she is telling the truth. Their decision is then labelled a vere-dictum – a “true statement”.
 

How is such a determination arrived at? Who knows. It is supposed that the jury resorts to a combination of experience and intuition. They weigh the probability of what is said – whether it is inherently consistent and non contradictory and whether it accords with the probable laws of nature and the way people normally behave. They compare it with what other witnesses may have said and they set it against their own experiences and prejudices. Lastly, they “look into the witness's eyes” and decide whether his blinking, tone of voice, body gestures, shuffling, twisting or impassivity conform to what they think an honest person ought to look like.
 

When one considers how jurors must come to a decision the medieval preference for trial by ordeal does not seem that unreasonable. At least ordeal provides an incontrovertible physical proof: the accused either sank or he didn't.   The proof is in the deed.

Thanks to the likes of Sir Francis Bacon, Cotton Mather and Lavoisier our methodologies of ordeal have improved much over the last centuries. Experts can explain such things as how the hair found on a hat is “consistent” in colour and size with a hair plucked from the defendant's head or how when blood drawn from the deceased was heated it emitted a gas at a certain rate which turned a piece of paper blue.... and so on. Whereas witness testimony remains mired in thickets of “common sense,” the mumbo jumbo of experts provides a much more certain basis of decision.

Recorded evidence is a hybrid between forensic proof and testimony. Documents are testimonial in that they are simply statements reduced to writing. But they are physical in that they are in ink on paper. Medieval jurists had a certain predilection for documents. They were tangible, sturdy, and didn't change from one moment to the next. No document ever “blushed” as it changed its tune. It was what it was. Can't get more solid than that. In fact, the more ancient the more solid. Thus there was the Ancient Document Rule: any document over 20 years old is presumed correct.

Anyone who is predisposed to think that those medieval people were really stupid, might want to consider the present day “official documents” and “business records” rule, both of which hold that a document generated “in the regular course of business” or which has bears some smudgy imprint of an eagle, bear or buxom woman holding a trident is presumed correct. Not for us the incantations of feathered and claw draped African chieftains. Far more certain and reliable the written mortgage backed securities of Goldman Sachs, generated duly and regularly in the course of their routine business fraud.

 -oOo-

Our predilection for recorded evidence is hard to shake. On a nightly basis people around the world are presented with all sorts of recorded audio and graphic evidence which we simply assume is “the cats meaow” and the “real thing.” Why wouldn't it be? Why would those flames engulfing Yosemite not be true. Why would anyone make it up? And if the broadcaster says that the picture depicts the Yosemite 2014 fire, why should it occur to us that it depicts the 2007 Big Bear fire?

Likewise, if someone tells us that this is a picture of a decapitated James Foley,

Why should we not believe it is true?

Well... there are several reasons. First of all, the cut is very clean for someone who was supposedly decapitated by kitchen knife (shown left). Second, there is no portion of neck attached to the head and virtually none to the shoulders. Human anatomy tends to have more neck, and in this case what would have been a shredded and torn neck. Third, whereas there is blood all over Foley's head, there is a only tidy little pool around the stub-of-neck and virtually no signs of a scuffle in the sand. Even if Foley were trying to be compliant, a human body will not tolerate having its neck slowly cut with out jerking, kicking, and splurting all over the place. Lastly, there are the right hand fingers which stick out from under the head without any intermittent space between the head.

Well, where is James Foley now? We have no idea. Maybe he was shot. Maybe he is in captivity. Maybe he is in a victim-protection program enjoying life in some south sea island. All we can say is that the photograph of the allegedly “done deed” does not ring true.

Numerous links on the web show a video entitled “Real Video Islamic State beheads U.S. Journalist” beginning with the now famous picture of James Foley kneeling before his alleged executioner. In the video, which bears a “REUTERS” news mark, Foley talks to the camera and states (in so many words) that his fate is the consequence of U.S. military actions in the region. The executioner adds at the end, that ISIS will “retaliate” against the U.S. aggressors.

However, the video we have seen never shows a beheading. The last frame of Foley shows him kneeling alongside his execution whose knife hand is hanging down his left side. The next frame of the video shows captive Michael Sotloff kneeling in the same position at the same place. The video then ends. (Note the position of the slide bar)

 

Whatever the purpose of the video it simply does not show an execution. This is the same video that appeared on numerous news outlets and can be found on You Tube. If there is another video showing the gruesome details, we have not found it.

We have spent a lot of time surfing the net and have not come across anything that unquestionably shows any of ISL's other sensationalised atrocities. News reports and internet videos of these atrocities are invariably accompanied by a [GRAPHIC WARNING ] alerting us to the shocking and nauseating content of the recorded evidence.  Although such warnings are appropriate, the problem has been that when the video is viewed in never shows anything all that graphic or horrible.

We have come across several videos on You Tube which have been removed because they were too graphic and violated some supposed “terms of use”. That struck us as odd, because no warning accompanied,

How odd that we can watch the graphic murder of Bonnie and Clyde (without warning) but that proof an alleged atrocity with geopolitical consequences is withheld from our too tender eyes for our own good. We should just believe the document. How medieval!

So, in desperation we turned to the New York Times – that paragon of reliable journalism and “all the news fit to print.”

 -oOo-

 

On 4 September (2014), the New York Times published another one of its vidi-info's allegedly depicting Islamic State barbarities.   
By way of background, we note that back in March of this year, the Times disseminated another video presentation which depicted the Return of Happy Days to Kiev and in which glowy, twittering, 20-somethings spoke earnestly of the New Dawn descending on the Ukraine.
 

Woodchips analysed the presentation frame by frame for the piece of garbage it was. The omissions in the Times' piece – which contained not even a hint of Svoboda or Pravdi Sektor's role in the coup – were glaring and inexcusable.   Analysis of the Forty Second Street's latest opus shows, once again, that what purports to be a truth is in fact no more than a collection of omissions.

Entitled "Man Survives an ISIS Massacre [WARNING-GRAPHIC VIOLENCE]," the video presented itself as “the improbable [sic] story of Ali Kadhim, an Iraqi army recruit who (it was said) miraculously escaped a massacre by ISIS soldiers alleged to have taken place in Tikrit in June of this year.

This is me” says Kadhim, pointing to a bunch of bodies on the ground which the Times' narrator assures us are recruits who were “massacred” by ISIS.

But the astonishing thing is that the pictures show a massacre without any blood.

What is depicted is prisoners hand-tied and prone on the ground, but not a drop of blood or gore can be seen. This must have been one of the most bloodless massacres in history.

Instead of showing some evidence of killing, the video switches to a picture of Kadhim lighting a cigarette while the narrator explains that “this” is the story of his incredible escape from the massacre.
 

What the Times is doing is perpetrating a sophistry which might be called topical equivocation or, perhaps, issue smudging. The issue we are concerned with is whether ISIS committed a mass-execution of captured belligerents. Such an act, without more, would be a crime under international law.  We are not concerned with whether a man called Kadhim escaped or with whether he had to tread water amid the rushes for three days in order to do so.

Legally and historically, Kadhim's wondrous escape is of no consequence to anything or anyone except his family and friends. The Times understands this. It “wraps” the issue of consequence within the wrapper of triviality so that it can conveniently switch between the two without it being too obvious that it is omitting crucial parts of the issue we are actually concerned about. And so, instead of mounting graphic evidence of killing (gruesome as it might be), the video switches to Kadhim lighting a cigarette.
 

True to form, the story then proceeds to explain how Kadhim was captured along with other recruits and “paraded in public view marching toward their death.”

The difficulty with the accompanying picture is that, while it certainly shows people marching, it shows nothing to corroborate the coda “toward their death.”

Instead of proof, the video turns to explaining that the soon to be victims were hauled away in “dozens of trucks, packed so tightly that “some of the men underneath suffocated.”

But once again, the difficulty is that the photos do not depict anyone “underneath.” What is shown is simply prisoners crowded in the bed of the truck. But “crowded” is not the same as “heaped.” The photos are not even suggestive of the allegation made.

At this point, the video depicts two different scenes which are offered as proof of the alleged massacre.

The first of these is a very quick take showing prone bodies in a pit supposedly being shot from behind.   The below still of the trench is one of three frames covering two seconds. What is heard is the sound of two rapports coming from the rifle of the man half covered by the flag. What is simultaneously seen is two bodies in the pit recoiling from the shot.

That certainly looks like a murder, and could probably be one, taken in isolation.  But there  are several problems with this "proof," the first of which is that the scene is entirely unlike the one which Kadhim pointed to as being the massacre he was involved in.    In that scene, the bodies were lying loosely on an even surface.  They were not packed tightly in a dirt trench.  Did Kadhim escape from two different massacres?

If one can remember but a few frames previous, it will also be recalled that the video showed an immense line of captives all of whom were allegedly being led to their deaths. The killing of such a number would represent a equivalently large scale execution.  Instead what is shown is a trench containing perhaps 40 bodies.

If one were to execute a five hundred or a thousand men, one would not do so, a single bullet at a time fired by a single man. Humanity has been here before. The Einsatzgruppen who committed like executions did so by machine gun, for the obvious reason that it is more efficient to do so. At the very least, such a mass execution would be accompanied by a large number of executioners all firing – on automatic – into the pit. But nothing of that sort was depicted. Circumstantially considered the scene is as much suspect as it is proof.

One is left to fill in the missing evidence with the supposition that the sequence is just one piece of the massacre;  surely there must have been more.    But "surely there must have been" is not proof. 

This is precisely how the technique of insinuation works. In support of an assertion, a tit-bit of partial evidence is offered which, at best, corroborates a part of the assertion.   We are left to suppose that the pit was just one of many and, on that basis, our credulous minds supply the missing evidence by simply supposing that more such killing pits must have existed.

What else could the shooting be? It could be a staged shooting with blanks. It could be an actual shooting but of only a random and few victims, leaving the rest to be simply terrorized.   It could be another incident altogether.  But, as they say in law, “speculation is not proof.” Were these three frames proof of “mass murder”? No.  They visually insinuated that more of the same could have taken place but they did not show it.

 

Instead of showing more proof of that (supposed) execution, the Times video switched to Slaughter by the River. Only a Baptist hymn was lacking to this one.

 

According to the Times, “others” were led to the river banks were they were shot in the head and tossed into the water. The frames depicting this atrocity are shown in sequence below

Overall, these frames are designed to show that –- amid pools of blood – people were shot in the head and tossed into the river. But not one of those allegations is actually depicted.

There is a big and obvious splotch of red on the ground and supposedly dripping into the river. Oddly enough, however, there is no – absolutely no – stain of blood in the water. By the plain laws of physics the water should “run with blood” at this point. It doesn't.

The frames also do not show a man being shot in the head. They show a gun being pointed slightly off target at the head. In the next frame the gun is shown as being pointed upwards, supposedly as part of its normal recoil.  Given the recording speed and the motion of the subject it is certainly possible that these two frames depict a shot to the head, in what is the grab-and-kill of a resisting victim. But they are not conclusive  -- not because they do not suggest a killing but  because they do not clearly show one.   They show a motion blur.    

The doubt could have been cleared up by follow-up depictions of a second shooting but none are offered. Instead the video visually suggests that the victim was tossed into the water. But again no such event is shown. The last two frames make clear that the man in the checkered shirt is the assistant executioner. He is shown standing and bending over the edge of the ledge.  Not only is no body being shown falling into the water, the water itself is absolutely undisturbed without the ripples or splashes that would normally accompany an object being tossed in. 

Again, instead of “closing the proof” with actual depictions of the dead and done deed, the video switches to Kazam pointing to his computer and continuing with his narration about how he swam away and spend three days floating in the Tigris.

Some might accuse chipsters of quibbling.  But quibbling is the only known antidote to getting suckered.   


The videos the Times has shown (as well as others that can be found on the net), purport to have been authored by ISIS and appear to show some snippets of an execution.   But the Times' video simply does not show what it claims to show.  Even supposing that the snippets of video depicted two or three killings (and by suggested implication perhaps 40 more) they do nothing to support the far more serious and qualitatively different charge of mass murder of 500 to 1,700 men.

For all its investigative resources, the media offers no corroborating authentication and publishes no more than visual suggestions accompanied by accusatory narrations. They offer a form of visual insinuation which falls short of evidence and which amounts to mere manipulation of public sentiment.

-oOo-

Atrocity propaganda is as old as offfers-to-good-to-be-true; and human kind repeatedly falls for both.

The dastardly Irish rebels, foisted babies on their pitchforks.

As did the Germans on their bayonets.

Certain themes get repeated. In addition to pitchforking babies,

There is casting babies into the fire.

Then there is SOAP.

In 1917, the Times of London ran a report about the German “soap rendering factory” – Kadaververwertungsanstalt –- in which the bodies of slain German soldiers were turned into soap instead of being returned home for decent burial.  That is how dastardly the Kaiser was!

The Kadaververwertungsanstalt story was believed as  absolute historical fact until in 1930, when His Majesty's Government, clarified that it was an untruth.  But untruths always come back. A mere decade later, the soap motif was raised again,

S.S. Soap Making Technique

In addition to which we also got human lamp shades and, of course, mass murders, in which certain numbers seem to recur almost magically.

 

In the Great War, the Allies accused the Austrians of murdering 700,000 Serbians. Why look at the proof,

… and note the superimposed boot and the incorrect angle between riflemen and executed prisoners.

The 700,000 motif recurred again, in the World War (2),

To which was added the marvel of “travelling gas chambers.”

This last article illustrates how fuzzy grammar, ellipsis and disconnected statements are used to blur the lines between truth and fiction.

There is no question that the Germans instituted a policy of mass starvation in Occupied Poland. Rafael Lemkin's seminal work on genocide (1942) written at the time it was occurring cites all the necessary facts. But the number 700,000 is simply pulled from somebody's ear.

Equally dubious is the insinuation that those 700,000 were “slaughtered” in mobile gas chambers. The article does not explicit say that they were, it simply appends the headline “TRAVELLING GAS CHAMBERS” to the phrase MURDER 700,000, leaving it to the human mind to connect the two by virtue of their proximity. This too is how insinuation works.

The article goes on to buttress the insinuation by stating that “in addition” (i.e. in addition to the “slaughter”) a system of starvation is being carried out in which the number of deaths “bids fair to be almost as large.”    “As large” as what?   As the previously mentioned slaughter.  

In sum, the article states that almost as many as 700,000 people are likely to perish from starvation and 700,000 others have been murdered. Travelling Gas Chambers

While there was at least some experimentation with “mobile gas chambers,”  it didn't go anywhere because the idea was as stupid as it was vile. Killing people by diesel fumes is the most inefficient way to go about it.  We are not among those who would question the accomplishment of mass extermination in Nazi occupied territories. But at the same time, we do not forget that captions are not proof.

It is the easiest thing in the world to take a picture of a foreboding looking door and label it “gas chamber” as has been done. That does not prove that that door was the entry to what was in fact a gas chamber. Similarly, the Times has no hesitancy in labeling a line of prisoners as “being led to their deaths.” But allegation is not proof.

 Atrocity propaganda falls into several categories.  The first is use of a "live repeater" where the "confirmation" consists merely in having some alleged "observer" repeat the allegation.   The second is proof by caption, where the allegation is tacked on to something that looks like it might or could be what is alleged

The problem with the above photo is that it does not show captured soldiers, seeing as there is not a single uniform depicted.  Even so it does not show a massacre.  Despite the titillating WARNING, all that is shown is a bunch of prisoners lying on the ground.   Pixelating-out part of a picture which is supposedly "too gruesome" to show falls into this category as well.

The third is misuse of grammar or words, as where a one phrase is appended to another without there being a real syntactical connection or when words are simply misused.   For example,

this photograph (Daily Mail) was used to foster the notion that ISIS is "crucifying" people.  But the caption itself states that the victim was shot beforehand.   Crucifixion is a form of execution where a person is strung up and left to rot to death.  Shooting a person and then stringing up his body is not a "crucifixion."

The fourth and fifth techniques of atrocity propaganda are the faked image (passing off as a "photograph" of the event) and the misplaced photograph, where the picture does show what it purports to show but its location and circumstances are left unclear.

The above photo taken from a Human Rights Watch report, appears to shows what appears to be a pool of blood under the head of the man in a white tank top.   However, since the shooter is further down the line, it is reasonable to suppose that he shot the bodies in the space in between, but no blood appears there.

Be that as it may, what most gives the picture away, in our opinion, is the supposed cloud of dust in the background, presumably kicked up by the shooting.  On closer look the dust is really photoshop smudging and blurring. One technique (albeit an amateur one) of overcoming signs of super-imposition or tell-tale inconsistencies in perspective is to smudge. Smudging and blurring are visual forms of mumbling aimed at creating a confusion which avoids detection.  If an image contains areas that are  smudged then fakery is involved.

Another tell-tale sign of forgery  is mis-aligned perspective. As art students know, the objects in all pictures align to a “vanishing point.” Our eye instinctively focuses on the alignment even if our drawing hand gets it wrong. In the above picture the rows of executioners and victims are not properly aligned. The focus in the two lines do not match and the knees of the kneeling man in the foreground line up with the knee of the standing man behind him. Unless this victim were levitating before death, the photo is a fake. And yet it was published uncritically by the U.K. Guardian.

The difference between journalism and law is that law puts some discipline into the proof. Before a picture can be admitted into evidence there must be testimony as to who took it under what circumstances. What it purports to show must be vouched for independently.

On top of that foundational requirement, there must then be proof of “chain of custody.” Who took possession of the photograph and who gave it to whom.   This is required because it is always possible that somewhere along the line someone tampered with the evidence  in some manner.

Once admitted into evidence the photograph can then be “cross examined” by expert testimony either proving or disproving its veracity based on technical details. Unfortunately, journalists evidently make no effort to examine critically the images they broadcast as proof.

Last but not least, whereas journalists think that there is no better cat's meaow than a live person saying something, every trial lawyer knows that the worst testimony of anything is eyewitness testimony. The reason for this is that what is called “memory” is not an act of “retrieval” but an act of present mental composition – i.e. re - member - ing. The mind puts things “back” together the way it wants to put them together; and the way it wants to do so is open to suggestion and motive.

 

The lead psychological study in this regard was done by Dr. Elizabeth Loftus (whose Jewish parents perished at Aushwitz) and who testified at the second deportation hearing of John Demanjuk.
 

At his first trial Demnjanjuk was accused of being “Ivan the Terrible” – a gas chamber operator at the Treblinka concentration camp. Numerous aged witness came into court in cracking voices and with shaking fingers pointed to Demjanjuk as being without doubt the man who laughed manically as he “pumped the gas.” They were as certain of it as they were of their own hands. They were all wrong. Demanjuk was never at Treblinka, period.  Nor was he ever ultimately convicted of having been at Treblinka.

It was the disparity between the convinced certainty of the “eye-witness” and the later proved but indisputable contrary facts that led Dr. Loftus to conduct her research into the operation of human memory. The upshot of her research, which has not been called into question, is that the testimony of someone like Kadhim is far from proof certain.

If Kadhim's narration is listened to closely, the listener will detect leaps and lacunae in what he says. The difference between a news report and a trial is that a news report is not cross examined.  It  must be “tested” by the reader himself. The reader will not get answers, but he can raise questions; and if the report itself does not satisfactorily answer those questions within its four corners, then it is not to be trusted.

There is a tremendous amount of propaganda being broadcast concerning Islamic radicalism. Sears and Roebuck's heiress, Nina Rosenwald funds the “Gatestone Institute” a pseudo think-tank, stocked with neo-cons which dedicates itself to churning out anti-Islamic screeds including such tabloid nonsense as the claim that Islamo-radicals are out to reconquer Spain. Of similar ilk is “ICSR” (International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence) co-founded by David Sief.

Many of the atrocity videos are released by less toney outfits with names like “VICE NEWS” or Gateway News or “Shoebat.com.”  Among the more blatant and moronic are

and

But while these programs and videos may be ludicrous and transparent, the two videos we have discussed are slicker and more seductive, in part because they eschew outlandish “soap and lampshade” allegations and in part because they are published by “reputable” news organs and it is taken for granted that the sources have been “checked and verified.”

Neither assumption is really warranted. The voice-over that a column of 500-1700 men was marched to their deaths may not be soap but, unless verified, slips into soap opera.  Nor can it any longer be assumed that paid-for journalists actually verify their sources.  For example, the Guardian begged off responsibility for publishing the photoshopped execution photo by explaining that they had said it was a “screen grab.” But noting that something is a “screen grab” does not alert to a possible problem with authenticity. No one would think, for example, that a “screen grab” from the MacGruder home- movie of Kennedy's assassination was possibly false.   Instead of critically evaluating the photo they published the Guardian begged off with an empty "caveat"

When it comes to the New York Times' piece, no one could possibly think that the cobbling was done in good faith. In fact the Times urges its viewers to take the allegations on faith on their representation that they had consulted Human Rights Watch and looked at their videos of the alleged atrocities. But despite the power-point get-up, the HRW pictures and reports simply do not show a massacre.

-oOo-

The HRW presentation warrants some detailed examination because it shows how suspect the evidence is despite HRW's claim to have verified the Tikrit massacre.    This report cum presentation can be found at http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/06/26/iraq-isis-execution-site-located  [ here ].

First, authentication. -- HRW claims to have gotten the pictures from ISIS websites, but the only active video link simply showed a column of prisoners. What was listed as a web-link “source” was –- cutely enough – illegible.

According to Peter Bouckaert, the Human Rights emergencies director, "The photos and satellite images from Tikrit provide strong evidence of a horrible war crime that needs further investigation." That statement was something less than what the New York Times represented as "verification."

Doing what the Times evidently failed to do, we attempted “further investigation” – first by closely examining HRW power point presentation, the gist of which was that in mid June 2014 ISIS killed between 90 and 160 captured Iraqi prisoners in Tikrit, (Saladin Province), after forcing them to lie in shallow pits at about 100 metres from the Tigris River. According to HRW satellite imagery confirmed the fact and the location of the alleged massacre.

The  problem with this evidence is that the HRW report itself says “There is no indication in the satellite imagery of bodies in shallow trenches as sheen in the photos.”   Well now... in ordinary English “no indication” means “no evidence.”

HRW argues that recent satellite images of the field show no track marks or dirt displacement in the alleged killing field and that therefore the “scuff” marks on the earlier photograph are evidence of a killing. That logic is rather peccable.

We resorted to Google to get a better orientation on the site, and found the following “earth” view.

The above was taken at some time in 2014, whether before or after June is not known. It will be noted however that the image shows three lines of raised dirt at the alleged execution site. A closer view was not more detailed but this photograph does suggest some kind of trench digging at some time at the site.

Google did not provide a dynamic street view of the area, but it did provide the following photo of the so-called “water palace” adjacent to the lake on the right. 

What this photograph reveals is that the location in the background left appears to be some sort staging area for military trucks. What will be observed first is that the wedge-shaped area in the Y of the two roads is an embankment. It is close to certain that no trenches would have been dug there.

HRW places the trenches in narrow area between the top road and the line of trees along the river's edge.    From the perspective given above the area looks narrower than the aerial shot seen immediately below.   More dubiously, the location of trees to the north (left) of the field do not match. 

In HRW's photo (below) there are four trees to the north (left)  of the field.   However, in Google Earth's photo (above) the four trees appear catty-corner to the water palace and before the top road.   No trees are visible between the parking lot (far left) and the supposed killing field.

Worse yet, HRW's pictures of the trenches themselves are not consistent.  In the photo below, HRW places the trenches within the square "L" of what it calls  the “perimeter wall” to the north and east of the field.   The top picture shows a raised dike-like wall.   According to HRW  this dike/wall is at the north of the field; i.e. does not run parallel to the river.

Page/Slide 8 of HRW's presentation

The bottom left photo shows bodies line against another dike/wall to the left (west) of the first.   But HRW's own graphics do not extend the dike/wall around to the west.

Nevertheless, let us suppose that the entire killing field area is a depression inside a square "U" bounded by a perimeter dike.   HRW's graphics offer the following photo as a picture of trench #1 to the north and west.

Page/Slide No. 2 of HRW presentation

This is the same photo as was included in the New York Times opus as evidence of a mass trench killing.    In the HRW presentation it appears at the upper left of Slide/Page 2 and is explicitly designated as trench #1 (note the man in the white shirt at the corner).

A crisper  version of the photo (per RT News) is,

RT News photo = NYT clip = HRW Slide #2

Another photograph of supposedly the same trench appears in HRW's Slide/Page No. 7.

Obviously, these two photographs are taken at opposite angles of what is supposedly the same trench  and, as a result, there is no evidence of a raised and extended perimeter in the top photo.  (See HRW Slide/Page 4.)  Also, the standing guard blocks view of the corner where the white shirt man appears in the top photo.

However, what strikes us as problematic is that  in Slide/Page  8, there is a wide flat area behind (and to the west of) the the alleged first trench whereas in the NYT/RTN and photo from Slide/Page 2, the background appears as an incline.  

In addition the patch of scrub which appears within the yellow L shaped lines of the bottom image do not appear to match the "corresponding" shrubbery in the top photo.   In the bottom photo there are three rocks and some gravel above and behind the scrub which do not appear in the top image.

Lastly, there is the issue of the structure appearing at the upper left corner and the tree in the background of the top photo.  A comparison with Google Earth and Street views calls into question the visibility of any structure from the angle at which the photograph was supposedly taken.

Even accounting for variations in perspective on account of pictures taken at different angles, in our opinion,  both the identity and actual location of the Trench No. 1 photographs is less than "clear and convincing." 

Even less so, Trench No. 2.   Below is a larger picture of Trench 2  taken from another news source, 

No perimeter wall at all.   ( And in  case anyone might not have noticed not one of these so-called captured soldiers is in uniform. )

Supposedly same Trench No1, as per Times video.

To make matters merrier still,  the HRW report  "identifies" a second, second trench, which it admits is at an "unknown location."

Page/Slide No. 7

Obviously this second second trench is no where near the alleged Tikrit killing filed within the raised perimeter.   It is just "tacked on" on the basis that the two photos are connected by the man in the red beret.

But the placement and identification of the supposed killing trenches is not the only problem with HRW's "analysis."   Unless dead bodies resurrect eo instante into Heaven, there is always the problem of what to do with the remains of the day.

In the absence of any evidence of shallow graves, HRW hypothesizes that the bodies could have been “removed” and “possibly dumped” in the Tigris which is a mere 100 meters away! A stupider statement, at the level of a second grader, can hardly be conceived. Mr. Bouckaert needs to get out from behind his desk.

Ninety to 160 men have just been riddled with bullets. In hours their carcasses will start to swell, stink and swarm with flies – all but in the middle of downtown Tikrit.  ISIS can leave them there for all to see and smell, and for dogs to munch on and carry off. Or, ISIS can bury them, as to which HRW has told us there is no evidence. So corporal Akbar comes up with a great idea for which he will undoubtedly be promoted to colonel. “Let us carry and drag the bloody corpses to the Tigris. It is only 100 yards away!”

So for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening Allah's Warriors are heaving and dragging corpses into the river being careful not to disturb the dirt while they are doing so.

The jury retired and once inside the deliberating room a gale of laughter was heard through the closed door. 

-oOo-

Stated more bluntly, the New York Times has betrayed our trust.  It assured its viewers that it had "confirmed' the allegations with Human Rights Watch.  But the HRW report, on inspection, confirms nothing.   This is the kind of crap cops pull when they lie to get a search warrant, making allegations that Cop No. 2  "confirmed" the allegation in question with Cop No. 1  --- you know as in, "Hey Joe, did you too see this thing go down?"  "Sure did, Frank."

In actuality, Frank (HRW) did not say "sure."  As will be recalled, its statement said that the photographs warranted further investigation.   That is true, particulary with respect to so-called Trench No. 1. But even if that trench was dug (or "staged") at the alleged location, there remains the problem of corpse disposal, non-visible graves and actual images of mass executions themselves.

In addition to analyzing the image itself and the "what, when, where and how" of a photograph, verification (that is, a probabilistic assessment of truth), requires analysis of circumstantial likelihood. At this point, reason and propaganda come into direct conflict; for, as Aristotle points out in his analysis of drama, the purpose of spectacle is to suspend credulity and, by freezing reason, open the mind to "receiving" the play's critical message. 

Assuming that HRW's photographs do show a killing of civilians or supposedly captured soldiers, (albeit in numbers far less than the claimed 1,700), there is the "circumstantial curiosity" of the alleged "trenches."    The pictures do not, in fact, show a "trench" or a "pit".  They show a superficial plowing of dirt.   This makes little sense.

It is certainly possible to capture prisoners, shoot them and leave them to rot on the field of battle without bothering with pits or graves.   It is equally possible to have the victims "dig their graves" and then shoot them into the pit which becomes a mass burial site.    But what sense does it make to plow a little furrow of dirt off to the side which is totally insufficient to cover bodies?    The only sense such a thing makes is to create a dramatic impression.

According to HRW, the photographs it analyzed were posted by ISIS on a since closed twitter account. That being the case it is impossible to verify the actual source of these photos. Let it be assumed, however, that the photos were posted by ISIS. Why would they do so if they weren't bragging about the killing? The question contains its own answer: bragging. 

Conjecture is not proof.   In the absence of definitive forensics and on the assumption of authorship by ISIS, one is left to speculate about motives and manoeuvres. This is a sectarian war in which both sides (or more accurately, all sides) are committing homicides and mayhem, terrorizing their opponents and retaliating or threatening retaliation. In these circumstances, if the photos were posted by ISIS they could have been intended as a threat or a boast in what amounted to propaganda and psychological warfare.

It is also possible that the videos (if there were videos) from which the photos were taken did in fact depict a mass killing. But again, without examining the entire video, possibility is not proof. We are not concerned with exonerating or white-washing ISIS or any other party in this immensely cruel and stupid war. What we are concerned about is lies and propaganda used to whip up a war hysteria and justify further aggressive action by the United States in a pandemonium of its own creation.

We are also concerned about the New York Times and outfits like Human Rights Watch uncritically allowing themselves to be used by interested parties as organs of disinformation. It is a truism that NGO's and the press serve as guardians of political morality and honesty. In a supposed democracy that it is a necessary and worthy functions. Tyranny happens when the press becomes the runner, capper and agent of the government it is supposed to watch.

-oOo-

Let us return to basics. War involves killing. There is no dirth of videos on the web depicting dead Iraqi soldiers and dead civilians in one or another setting. Nasty and gruesome as they may be, that is what war does and that is why decent people should avoid going to war.

In our quest for verification we did come across a video, purportedly by ISIS, which did show captured government forces being executed.  

The above stills were taken from a video which unquestionably depicted an execution of captured government soldiers earlier in the year.  There is nothing staged or fake or dubious about what the video shows. Kneeling soldiers with their hands tied behind their backs are intoning their last prayers before being shot in the head one by one. The bodies recoil forward from the impact and the floor immediately is covered in pools of blood. Unless arranged by Spielberg or Coppola, what is seen was not staged.  When ISIS wants to show an execution it knows exactly how to film and show it.

Was the above shown execution a war crime?   Whether a particular killing – or massacre – is a war crime depends on its circumstances and context. The conventional norms of war allow one party to take reprisal against the other in retaliation for the other parties prior violation of the rules of war. Reprisal is self-help retribution and whether a reprisal was proper or was itself unjustified and illegal is something subject to argument and later litigation in the international criminal court. 

There appears to be little doubt that Iraqi government forces (the side the U.S. supports), committed an atrocity in June of this year.

The video from,which the above still was taken, showed a mass of dead and bloodied bodies but no actual killing. According to Amnesty International,

What this report demonstrates is that there is some basis – confirmed by non-belligerent observers – that Iraqi government forces engaged in prior “reprisals” against Sunni muslims. One gathers from the context of Amnesty's statement that it actually meant “revenge” rarther than reprisal in the technical and legal sense.

Accordingly, when ISIS says it is executing soldiers by way of reprisal, its claim is not beyond the pale of credibility.

The problem with reprisals is that the tit for tat quickly degenerates into mutual recriminations and retributions over who started what first. The legally intended purpose of reprisals was to keep the warfare honest by allowing the parties to “penalize” one another for “cheats and fouls.” The reader should hold on to his seat when he hears that under the law of reprisal, the party reprised against is supposed to accept the penalty in sporting good nature and not retaliate back. Of course it does not work that way. Reprisals instead of keeping warfare “honest” in actual fact only open the gate of hell.

That is the situation that exists in the Iraq at the present and who started what first is beyond fathoming at this point.  Whether part of "normal" or "illegal" war,  ISL has engaged in atrocious killings as have all sides.   We do not say that in order to "relativize" the horror but, on the contrary, to drive home that all war is wholly vile.   But propaganda, and atrocity propaganda in particular, is its own villany.  It inflames the soul and introduces a fever into the body politic.

There appears to be a childish part of the human psyche that enjoys being spooked; and, enjoying it, wants to believe in the bogeyman, without whose existence one cannot get spooked.  It is this propensity that atrocity propaganda preys upon.   To this end, the reports are blazoned with repeated [GRAPHIC WARNINGS] as a sort of overture to spooking. 

But the killings actually and allegedly depicted are  not gruesome – at least no more so than what can be ordered on a DVD or seen in a video game. What is actually gruesome is the absence of what we call “human feeling.”   The horror in the actual execution by ISIS which we did find, did not lie in the blood and gore but in the cold-bloodedness of the killing.   This is what war is about and it is no less awful when it is done antiseptically by drone while the commander in chief watches from a remote control room. 

Urbama I has now launched us on Crusade III. Once again, it is billed as the crusade to end all barbarity and once again it will only result in more of the same.

Eleven years ago on morrow of the Iraq invasion we lamented that the whirlwind would sweep the land. We were right, and we lament it again.

©WoodchipGazette, 2014