Lance Cpl. James Crossan permitted an interview with KING-TV in Seattle last night. He was riding in the Humvee that was struck by an IED in Haditha on Nov. 19th, and suffered a broken back, shattered bones, and perforated eardrums.
Watch the video here. And, please watch the video, registration's free -- and the accompanying article does not reflect his memories of the incident.
Briefly, according to what Lance Cpl. James Crossan said in the raw footage of the interview, the Marines had information on the day of the incident there was information that about 20 insurgents were planning a major attack on the command outpost (COP), which he describes as something like a vehicular checkpost. He was driving Iraqi soldiers back from the outpost, when his unit got hit by an IED. The COP sent out a squad of Marines which was attacked by "insurgents right off the bat."
He remembers taking a left, then getting hit ... waking up on the ground, going unconscious, waking up in a helicopter ... and finally regaining consciousness in the hospital.
He did not witness the alleged rampage, the last thing he remembers is the humvee blowing up, and hearing a bunch of Marines say "you're okay -- where's the morphine ..."
Unfortunately, the article written by KING reporter Deborah Feldman ignores most of the facts in the interview made with Corp. Crossan, but she does manage to write:
"...Several are now under investigation for the murder of 24 civilians immediately after the blast, several of them women and children, some of them in their beds.
Crossan said he doesn’t' think much about those who were killed.
"Probably half of them were bad guys and we just never knew, so it really doesn't cross my mind."
Crossan said the guys in his unit were young and that he was often the calming influence.While he doesn't condone the apparent rampage, he says he understands why it happened.
"If you see your friend get killed… you're going to do something irrational and all that stuff and they probably just weren't thinking and they killed a bunch of people," he said.
"I feel bad for the guys because they are going to get in trouble and… but other than that I really don't have any emotions for it," he said.
In short, she's talking about all those mythical young, heartless, stressed Marines -- the journalistic meme that the NYT's and John Murtha are hammering in, and that's not news.
Again, here's a summary of the salient facts that Crossan related:
1) The Marines knew there was going to be an attack on the command outpost, which would explain the high degree of suspicion about the Iraqi's in a taxi that first refused to stop, then ran away from them.
2) There was an IED attack on his humvee, and a squad was sent in
3) Insurgents began firing on the Marines almost immediately.
4) He's not claiming to have witnessed anything.
Let's take a look at that report -- and the video and radio-transmission files.
UPDATE 8:15 pm: During the second half of the tape on, the reporter proceeds to lead Crossan into commenting on speculation about the incident. As a matter of fact, he told her that he didn't know about the (alleged) massacre part of the incident until he saw it on the news, and he denies discussing it with any of the other Marines in the unit. I've presented the things he relates he witnessed in the above article. If you want to hear speculation, by all means, listen to the rest of the tape. Or, read the NYT's. ¶ 10:30 AM
