Is this how Marines really see the media? Ya think?

The New York Times excerpts from a memo of "talking points" that Marine officers prepared after a Time Magazine reporter, Tim McGirk, inquired about the killing of 24 Iraqi men, women, and children in Haditha in 2005. The Iraqis were allegedly killed by Marines after a roadside bomb killed an infantryman and wounded two others. At the time they wrote the memo, as the Times writes, the "Marine officers assumed the Iraqi deaths occurred during combat and were justified, if regrettable."

Some excerpts from the memo as it does seem to reveal how the Marines see the American media in Iraq.

McGirk: How many marines were killed and wounded in the I.E.D. attack that morning?

Memo: If it bleeds, it leads. This question is McGirk’s attempt to get good bloody gouge on the situation. He will most likely use the information he gains from this answer as an attention gainer.

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McGirk: Were there any officers?

Memo: By asking if there was an officer on scene the reporter may be trying to identify a point of blame for lack of judgment. If there was an officer involved, then he may be able to have his My Lai massacre pinned on that officer’s shoulders. ...

In the reporter’s eyes, military officers may represent the U.S. government and enlisted marines may represent the American People. Given the current political climate in the U.S. at this time concerning the Iraq war and the current administration’s conduct of the war, the reporter would most likely seek to discredit the U.S. government (one of our officers) and expose victimization of the American people by the hand of the government (the enlisted marines under the haphazard command of our “rogue officer.”) Unfortunately for McGirk, this is not the case.

One common tactic used by reporters is to spin a story in such a way that it is easily recognized and remembered by the general population through its association with an event that the general population is familiar with or can relate to. For example, McGirk’s story will sell if it can be spun as “Iraq’s My Lai massacre.” Since there was not an officer involved, this attempt will not go very far.

We must be on guard, though, of the reporter’s attempt to spin the story to sound like incidents from well-known war movies, like “Platoon.”

In “Platoon,” Sergeant Barnes, the movie’s antihero, is depicted as a no-nonsense, war-haggard platoon sergeant who knows how to get things done in the bloody jungles of Vietnam — and it ain’t always pretty. During one scene, Sergeant Barnes is shown on the verge of committing war crimes in front of his platoon by threatening to kill women and children as a means of interrogation. This is a classic “runaway sergeant” storyline wherein the audience is supposed to be sickened by the sergeant’s brutality and equally sickened by the traumatic effects war has on soldiers. This schema is especially fruitful for Mr. McGirk because if he tries to adapt our situation to this model it simultaneously exposes a “war crime cover-up” and shows the deteriorative (albeit exaggerated) effects of war on U.S. marines (the best of the best), which could be expanded by the general press as a testament for why the U.S. should pull out of Iraq.

[Colonel Chessani later shortened this answer to “No.”]

Eventually the Marine Corps would charge three enlisted men with murder and four officers with dereliction of duty pursuant to the killings. It was in the course of this trial, still ongoing, that this memo surfaced. There's more in the Times article so check it out.