JAG Hunter here: Those pesky details...

Lieutenant General James N. Mattis, speaking on the record, publicly to North County Times reporter Mark Walker, said Wednesday, 20 Dec. that he thinks, "We're seeing...an unwitting passing of the enemy's message, uncritical, unwitting passing of the enemy's message because the enemy has successfully denied the Western media access to the battlefields."

Next day Marine Corps spokesman Colonel Navarre announced charges against the Haditha Marines arising first and mostly from press reports issued late last year. Lt. Gen. Mattis voiced one of the central defenses the Haditha Marines are expected to present: Allegations against that Marine group are media creations crafted to disseminate the "enemy's message."

To prevent this sort of thing from occurring again, and responsive to a question put by reporter Walker, Mattis said he'd be "happy to have more Western media out there. We've had Al-Jazeera out with our troops."

In the world of military discipline, demonstrations of personal interest in the advance of a court-martial demotes a person's standing in the course of events rendering them ineligible to participate in that case farther, if at all.

The term "accuser" is applied to those people compromised in this way.

Lt. Gen. Mattis, now an "accuser" in the case against the Haditha Marines, is no longer competent nor allowed to carry on in the role of convening authority.

Here endth the lesson.

The JAG Hunter. Copyright©2006