News US Air Strike on Iraqi Village: Facts & Fiction

[Adam]

US raids Iraqi safe house
From correspondents in Washington
May 20, 2004

PENTAGON officials said they had no information about an air attack that was reported to have killed 40 people celebrating a marriage in a village near the Iraqi-Syrian border.

But US forces raided a suspected safe house for foreign fighters in the open desert near the border, seizing large quantities of currency, foreign passports and sophisticated communications devices, a defence official said.

The official, who asked not to be identified, said the raid occurred at about 3am local time (9am AEST) about 25 kilometres from the Syrian border. The nearest town was Husaybah, the official said.

"During the operation, the coalition forces came under hostile fire, and returned fire," he said.

"Coalition forces on the ground recovered a large amount of Iraqi and Syrian currency, foreign passports and sophisticated communications equipment," he said.

In Dubai, Al Arabiya television said witnesses said an air strike killed 40 Iraqis celebrating a marriage.

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,9611975%255E1702,00.html

Every news agency seems to be carrying this story. Everyone except the USA says it happened. The USA says it never happened.

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/news/051904_nw_US_Iraq_wedding.html
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/20/1084917681299.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1111847.htm
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/85873/1/.html

 

[Adam]

Another story on it:

"US planes dropped more than 100 bombs on us," an unidentified man who said he was from the village said on al-Arabiya.

"They hit two homes where the wedding was being held and then they levelled the whole village. No bullets were fired by us, nothing was happening," he added.

The Dubai-based network also showed those who survived digging graves for the numerous men, women and children that died in the raid.

A local police official told AP news agency between 42 and 45 people had died as a result of the US attack.

The US has said it has no knowledge of the alleged attack but says US forces did conduct a raid on a house in the border area. In Baghdad, a US military spokesman said the allegation was being investigated.

In July 2002, an American air strike on an Afghan wedding party killed 48 civilians.

A report released by the US Central Command said the strike was justified because American planes had come under fire.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/703336CC-8570-4740-8A08-560339A14320.htm

 

[Adam]

US denial over wedding deaths
By Scheherezade Faramarzi in Baghdad
May 20, 2004

US aircraft have fired on a house in the desert near the Syrian border killing more than 40 people who, according to Iraqi officials, were part of a wedding party.

The US military said the target was a suspected safehouse for foreign fighters from Syria, but Iraqis said a helicopter had attacked a wedding party.

Associated Press Television News footage showed a truck containing bloodied bodies, many wrapped in blankets, piled one on top of the other.

Several were children, one of whom was decapitated. The body of a girl who appeared to be less than five years of age lay in a white sheet, her legs riddled with wounds and her dress soaked in blood.

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,9611999%255E31317,00.html

So, there are pictures floating around the AP.

 

[Simon666]

Happened in Afghanistan as well, old habits are hard to break.

 

[Mattius_]

adam, this story, today, May 20th, is one of the big stories on fox news... Just a heads up...

 

[BoulderHead]

I was expecting a story about a pregnant girl, the fellow who put her in such condition, and the girl's angry father. I think I heard about this story recently, but I don't consider the death of innocents any less significant due to what they were attending.

 

[member 5645]

Happened in Afghanistan as well, old habits are hard to break.

I wonder if these people in Iraq were shooting weapons in the air as well.

 

[member 5645]

I was expecting a story about a pregnant girl, the fellow who put her in such condition, and the girl's angry father. I think I heard about this story recently, but I don't consider the death of innocents any less significant due to what they were attending.

agreed, nor I do find them anymore significant than any soldier over there that is killed.

 

[Simon666]

I wonder if these people in Iraq were shooting weapons in the air as well.

Does that matter?

 

[member 5645]

Does that matter?

Such information could lead to avoidance of such events in the future.

 

[Njorl]

From various news sites linked

"The US planes dropped more than 100 bombs on us," an unidentified man who said he was from the village said on Al Arabiya. "They hit two homes where the wedding was being held and then they levelled the whole village. No bullets were fired by us, nothing was happening," he added.

Iraqis interviewed on the videotape said revelers had fired volleys of gunfire into the air in a traditional wedding celebration before the attack took place. American troops have sometimes mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire.

The area, a desolate region populated only by shepherds, is popular with smugglers, including weapons smugglers, and the U.S. military suspects militants use it as a route to slip in from Syria to fight the Americans. It is under constant surveillance by American forces.

Obviously, the Iraqis in the story can not be taken at their word, since they are contradicting each other. Nor should we accept the US version on faith. We should find out what happened.

It is entirely possible that a mission was run against a gun smuggling operation on the day of a wedding. Gun smugglers have families too. The site was kept under observation, any plans for a large event would draw suspicions. A large number of people converging on a smugglers residence might draw a reaction. As soldiers moved in on what they believe to be a well armed hostile enemy force, gunfire erupts. I'm not saying that is what happened, but it is very possible.

Njorl

 

[Simon666]

Such information could lead to avoidance of such events in the future.

How come? It is tradition in the area and US helicopters fire from a distance away that they cannot be heard from, and the US army knows pretty well it is such a tradition. They could have avoided it if they wanted to instead of being trigger happy.

 

[member 5645]

How come? It is tradition in the area and US helicopters fire from a distance away that they cannot be heard from, and the US army knows pretty well it is such a tradition. They could have avoided it if they wanted to instead of being trigger happy.

Fire guns in the air in a war zone, even if it is tradition, is a highly dangerous (and one might argue stupid) thing to do.


they cannot be heard from? The guns they are firing in the air you mean?

Do you really believe that information to the helicopters only comes from the helicopter crew,thus they must hear shots themselves to be aware that someone is firing there?

 

[Simon666]

Fire guns in the air in a war zone, even if it is tradition, is a highly dangerous (and one might argue stupid) thing to do. they cannot be heard from? The guns they are firing in the air you mean?

Sorry, I meant the US helicopters can't be heard from the distance they usually fire away from the target so you can't really say the villagers shouldn't be doing it. They were also on some remote place not far from the Syrian border, not a place like Baghdad, Fallujah, or some other hotbed. So the chance terrorists are holding a tupperware party there exchanging AK47s and RPGs is pretty small, they could have checked out before they decided to blow the place to smithereens.

 

[russ_watters]

Every news agency seems to be carrying this story. Everyone except the USA says it happened. The USA says it never happened.

"Everyone," being foreign and domestic news sources as reported by Iraqis. "The US," being the US government, which says not much more than 'we're investigating.' The title of the third report does not correspond to the report: there is no "denial" in the report.

They were also on some remote place not far from the Syrian border, not a place like Baghdad, Fallujah, or some other hotbed. So the chance terrorists are holding a tupperware party there exchanging AK47s and RPGs is pretty small, they could have checked out before they decided to blow the place to smithereens.

The reason it was under investigation in the first place was because it is a place of known terrorist activity.

Anyone considering the possibility that it was both a terrorist safehouse and a wedding (besides Njorl)? Remember, terrorists hide by blending in amongst civilians. Heck, they had a good example in Saddam: he built major military facilities under hospitals and schools, hid tanks in residential neighborhoods and weapons in schools.

Quit it with the rhetoric and look for some real facts before making judgements, guys.

 

[Simon666]

Anyone considering the possibility that it was both a terrorist safehouse and a wedding (besides Njorl)? Remember, terrorists hide by blending in amongst civilians. Heck, they had a good example in Saddam: he built major military facilities under hospitals and schools, hid tanks in residential neighborhoods and weapons in schools.

That happened occasionally, the US occasionally did the same as well, like in a school in Fallujah. When an angry crowd wanted their school back, the US fired in the crowd. I hope you didn't think until now they killed those contractors for no reason or "because they hate freedom" or something like that?

 

[member 5645]

So the chance terrorists are holding a tupperware party there exchanging AK47s and RPGs is pretty small,

WE'll have to wait for the full report, however this cracked me up

 

[ptex]

Come on? Are you kidding me. I don't think the U.S. needs to make stuff up what would be the point.

"U.S. insists strike hit foreign terrorists
No apologies while Iraqis insist victims were from wedding party

Stringer/iraq / al-Arabiya via Reuters
An Iraqi man looks at the bodies of civilians allegedly killed in a U.S. air raid on a wedding party in Ramadi on Wednesday.
May 19: Iraqis said U.S. forces launched the deadly air assault on a joyful family celebration, but U.S. officials said their troops were fired upon first. NBC’s Ned Colt reports.
Nightly News



NBC News and news services
Updated: 1:37 p.m. ET May 20, 2004BAGHDAD, Iraq - While Iraqis at the scene of a U.S. air strike insisted that some 40 innocent people at a wedding were killed, U.S. military officials remained just as adamant Thursday that the strike targeted, and hit, foreign terrorists.

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“How many people go to the middle of the desert 10 miles from the Syrian border to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilization?” Maj. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, told reporters in Fallujah. “These were more than two dozen military-age males. Let’s not be naive.”

Asked about witness testimony and footage of children killed or wounded, Mattis said: “I have not seen the pictures but bad things happen in wars. I don’t have to apologize for the conduct of my men.”

U.S. officials have said in the past that some foreign terrorists enter Iraq with their families to avoid suspicion.

The Iraqi accounts stated that a U.S. helicopter fired on the wedding party Wednesday morning in western Iraq. U.S. officials confirmed a strike in that area, but told NBC News that the incident involved an AC-130 warship — not a helicopter — and that the aircraft returned fire after coming under attack.




Local accounts, TV footage
Arab television identified the scene of Wednesday's attack as the village of Makr al-Deeb.

The area is a desolate region populated only by shepherds. It is also popular with smugglers, and the U.S. military suspects that militants use it as a route to slip in from Syria to fight the Americans. Consequently, it is under constant surveillance by U.S. forces.



Lt. Col. Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of Ramadi, said 42 to 45 people were killed in the attack, which took place about 2:45 a.m. He said the dead included 15 children and 10 women.

Mourners at the Baghdad funeral of a well-known wedding singer and his musician brother said that the two men were among the dead.

And a member of Iraq’s U.S.-appointed Governing Council said he found it hard to believe the U.S. version of events. “Their story does not look very convincing,” said Mahmoud Othman. “I think they have made a mistake.”

People who said they were guests said the wedding party was in full swing — with dinner just finished and the band playing tribal Arab music — when U.S. fighter jets roared overhead and U.S. vehicles started shining their highbeams.

Worried, the hosts ended the party; men stayed in the wedding tent, and women and children went inside the house nearby, the witnesses said.

About five hours later, the first shell hit the tent. Panicked, women clutching their children ran out of the house, they said.

“Mothers died with their children in their arms," said Madhi Nawaf, a shepherd. "One of them was my daughter. I found her a few steps from the house, her 2-year-old Raad in her arm. Her 1-year-old son, Ra’ed, was lying nearby, his head missing,” he said.

“Where are the foreign fighters they claim were hiding there?" asked Nawaf. “Everything they said is a lie.”

“The U.S. planes dropped more than 100 bombs on us,” added an unidentified man who said he was from the village. “They hit two homes where the wedding was being held, and then they leveled the whole village. No bullets were fired by us. Nothing was happening.”

Associated Press Television News obtained videotape showing a truck containing bodies of people who were allegedly killed in the incident. Iraqis interviewed on the tape said partygoers were firing in the air in traditional wedding celebration and said U.S. troops had previously mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire.

Weapons reportedly recovered
But the coalition described the attack as part of “a military operation against a suspected foreign fighter safe house in the open desert.”

“During the operation, coalition forces came under hostile fire and close air support was provided,” it said. Afterward, “coalition forces on the ground recovered numerous weapons, 2 million Iraqi and Syrian dinar, foreign passports and a (satellite communications) radio.”

Most of the bodies on the APTN videotape were wrapped in blankets and other cloths, but the footage showed at least eight uncovered, bloody bodies, several of them children. One of the children was headless.

“We received about 40 martyrs today, mainly women and children below the age of 12,” Hamdy al-Lousy, the director of Qaim hospital, told the Dubai-based satellite television station Al-Arabiya, which reported that 41 people were killed and 10 injured in the attack. “We also have 11 people wounded, most of them in critical condition.”

Al-Arabiya showed pictures of several shrouded bodies lined up on a dirt road. Men were shown digging graves and lowering bodies, one of a child, into the pits while relatives wept.


‘The pictures ... don’t mesh with what we saw’
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, told NBC News that coalition forces in the vicinity saw no signs of a wedding when they called in the air attack.

“I know the pictures are compelling, but they don’t mesh with what we saw on the ground,” he said.

Kimmitt said Thursday that the strike was "validated by what we found on the ground."

U.S. officials acknowledged that the information was preliminary, however, and they said an investigation was continuing.

Dr. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi, put the death toll at 45. Al-Ani said that people at the wedding were firing weapons in the air and that U.S. troops came to investigate and then left. However, he said, helicopters returned and attacked the area, destroying two houses.

The report is reminiscent of an incident in July 2002, when Afghan officials said 48 civilians at a wedding party were killed and 117 others were wounded by a U.S. airstrike in Uruzgan province. An investigative report released by U.S. Central Command said the airstrike was justified because U.S. planes had come under fire.

More deaths
Elsewhere in Iraq, assailants with hand grenades killed a U.S. soldier and wounded three in Baghdad on Thursday, while Spanish troops in the process of withdrawing from the country came under attack from insurgents.

The name of the slain U.S. soldier was withheld pending notification of next of kin. A total of 790 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq last year. Of those, 576 died as a result of hostile action and 214 died of non-hostile causes.

In the attack on Spanish troops, one insurgent was killed and another seriously wounded and one Spanish soldier was slightly wounded, the spokesman said.

“This morning a Spanish convoy in the process of withdrawing and on its way to Kuwait suffered an ambush by Iraqi insurgents 30 miles south of Diwaniyah. The insurgents were repelled,” the spokesman said.

The Spanish soldiers were among the last remaining in Iraq from a force of up to 1,400 sent by the previous pro-American government. They had been stationed in a largely Shiite Muslim area of south-central Iraq, including the cities of Najaf and Diwaniyah.

Spain’s month-old Socialist government -- elected three days after March 11 train bombings killed 191 people in Madrid -- is withdrawing the troops, fulfilling a campaign promise made before the railway attacks.

Defense Minister Jose Bono has said the withdrawal will be completed by May 26, but officials say it could be over before then.

NBC’s Scott Foster, Jim Miklaszewski and Norah O’Donnell, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this "

 

[Adam]

Quit it with the rhetoric and look for some real facts before making judgements, guys.

Forty-odd dead people. Is that rhetoric?

 

[Stanley_Smith]

I kinda agree with russ_watters.

“How many people go to the middle of the desert 10 miles from the Syrian border to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilization?” Maj. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, told reporters in Fallujah. “These were more than two dozen military-age males. Let’s not be naive.”

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, told NBC News that coalition forces in the vicinity saw no signs of a wedding when they called in the air attack.

I feel extremely sorry for the loss of woman and children and civilians; however let keep in mind that this is guerrilla warfare being used against the US and civilians are often used as human shield, and what about the weapon and foreign passports and Syrian and Iraqi money there? We weren't there so let's not come up with a conclusion that quick...

 

[Adam]

In the middle of nowhere, huh? I guess that means you have not actually looked into this AT ALL! Everyone who HAS looked into it will have seen the bombed town, all those destroyed buildings.

 

[Stanley_Smith]

"The area is a desolate region populated only by shepherds. It is also popular with smugglers, and the U.S. military suspects that militants use it as a route to slip in from Syria to fight the Americans. Consequently, it is under constant surveillance by U.S. forces"

I don't know if we should call that a town...
Again, people died and we weren't there so we don't know what happened... that's a fair judgement, right ?

 

[amp]

Amazingly, unless some surveillance video - tapes/disks - whatever would prove their words. We know unfortunately how deceptively we have been treated.

"..it is under constant surveillance by U.S. forces"

Who is this general to say when, where and how these people should be wed. And that's not the point, the point is the people were easily contained and just as soon as the wedding would have been over they - the US military could have sorted things out. It - the US military appears on the face of it to have acted with arrogance, impatience, possibly conceit.

 

[kat]

An interesting read at the Belmont Club. Towards the end of it, he mentions a few interesting points:

Why was a wedding party in full swing at 02:45 am in the middle of the desert? A glance at the map would show the area in which the wedding took place was 250 kilometers from "Dr. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi," and who "put the death toll at 45." A long way to go for medical treatment or burial when Qusabayah is 50 kilometers away. Under normal circumstances, there are two wounded for every dead. By the normal ratios there should have been at least 90 injured. There was a videotape "showing a truck containing bodies of people who were allegedly killed in the incident. Most of the bodies were wrapped in blankets and other cloths, but the footage showed at least eight uncovered, bloody bodies, several of them children. One of the children was headless." A video of the dead, but where were the wounded?

and

Additionally, one should be able to follow its connections to other related events, people or places. Husabayah, also known as Al-Qaim, has been in the news before. It was the scene of intense fighting between the US Marines and Syrian infiltrators all of last year, as described by Ron Harris of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which was reported once, like a traffic accident, and then forgotten, deprived of any context. Few readers can make the mental connection between the Marine frontier battles and the "wedding party".

 

[Adam]

Apart from those rancid attempts at justification and denial...

Okay, once again, it was not in the middle of nowhere. It was a village. Even CNN admits this. There is no point in complaining about it being in the middle of nowhere, it just makes you look nuffy. The strike was against a desert village.

Wedding parties routinely go until 3 AM or later. There is no point in questioning why it was going on so late.

As for ratios, well, I guess it's just such a shame that the guy who wrote that pure BS wants more dead people. Where were the wounded? Ina remote desert village with little medical care, he wonders why people might have died from injuries? Clever chap...

In short, Kat, your quoted guy mentions not a single fact.

 

[Stanley_Smith]

I think we, the people in this forum, should keep this in mind: From the Iraqi account, there was a wedding which was attacked by the US force. “The U.S. planes dropped more than 100 bombs on us,” added an unidentified man who said he was from the village. “They hit two homes where the wedding was being held, and then they leveled the whole village. No bullets were fired by us. Nothing was happening.” and from the US account, there was no wedding, it was a planned strike, carried out after intelligence gathering, we don't know how accurate the intelligence was, but the US said they found a large amount of money, weapon and telephone/telephone number linked to Syrian militant or whatever they call it as a result of the strike.

also from the US account, it was an AC-130 gunship who carried out the attack and received fire and returned fire, not a helicopter.
Probably you guys don't see/don't care any difference between what was used in the attack, but you guys should know that until last month, AC-130 gunship was only called in for air support when battling insurgents, like in Falluja.
Another thing is that if this was similar in Afghanistan where the wedding took place and the civilian fired shots in the air to celebrate and the US mistakenly returned fire because it thinked it was being attacked; why this time wipe out the whole village, not just a few homes where the wedding supposely occured? why would the US military be willing to wipe out the whole village and not afraid of what is going on right now: news coverage about the event around the world while they are trying to win the heart and mind of the Iraqi people...

 

[Adam]

Mai Lai.

US forces abusing and killing prisoners.

Thousands of civilians dead from this invasion.

And as stated in one of those articles, the same thing happened in Afghanistan.

Really, it's nothing new. We know the US government does this stuff all the time.

 

[studentx]

US forces also kill insurgents and terrorists all the time...

 

[Adam]

That's correct. US forces kill lots of people.

 

[kat]

Syria does this **** all the time. It's the same crap they did in Lebanon, it's the same crap they did to succesfully invade and to this day continue to occupy Lebanone. Get off your Aljazeera kick and stop spreading your one sided fictional accounts.

 

[ptex]

Syria does this **** all the time. It's the same crap they did in Lebanon, it's the same crap they did to succesfully invade and to this day continue to occupy Lebanone. Get off your Aljazeera kick and stop spreading your one sided fictional accounts.

I agree from the backwoods of NH.

 

[Adam]

Syria does this **** all the time.

Mai Lai.

US forces abusing and killing prisoners.

Thousands of civilians dead from this invasion.

And as stated in one of those articles, the same thing happened in Afghanistan.

Then there are Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo.

Chile, El Salvador, Panama...

USA does this **** all the time.

 

[kat]

That doesn't make your view or partial takes from initial reports correct. There is however a strong precedence that shows Syria's and other elements within that area having created events and creatively manipulated stories in the media to fight their war through public opinion and indeed they have done so very succesfully.

 

[Stanley_Smith]

i agree with you Kat
look like we have some people who refuse to look at the fact and fiction and try to think about what happened... It's pretty sad
i agree with you Kat

 

[Adam]

And since the USA also creates events for spin purposes, this means... what? Ignore the pictures of dead people, ignore ALL the news?

Do you have anything substantial which suggests the reports are false? That the village was NOT bombed? All reports so far say it was, and so do the images.

 

[Stanley_Smith]

"Do you have anything substantial which suggests the reports are false? That the village was NOT bombed? All reports so far say it was, and so do the images"

Nobody is saying that the village is still there and was not destroyed, what somem of us are saying is that what caused the whole village to be destroyed ? We are talking about cause, not effect. Just to update the case, according to CNN: "The Pentagon is considering the release of videotapes or a still photograph to bolster its contention that a target attacked Wednesday by the U.S. military in western Iraq was not a wedding party, officials said. A Pentagon official said the photo shows no evidence of any wedding celebration. The Pentagon is not disputing that innocent civilians may have been killed in the airstrike, but officials insist there was intelligence that "foreign fighters" were using the site and it was not a gathering of wedding celebrants"

 

[Adam]

Some more news on the matter:
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=514187&section=news
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/20/i...00&en=5b29e070f73858ee&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~2159497,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/20/i...00&en=dd2aa489cbafb2a8&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/specialreports/iraq/s_195005.html
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/8709007.htm?1c
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-15/1085033747131950.xml
http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/may/21iraq.htm
http://www.freep.com/news/nw/iraq21_20040521.htm
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=5572

 

[Simon666]

“How many people go to the middle of the desert 10 miles from the Syrian border to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilization?”

They lived there. Considering why it was on so late: it wasn't, it was over by that time so it is not like they fired at choppers or it could have been accidentally interpreted as such. Considering the Syrian passports, they regularly smuggle sheep, the http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4138.htm, along with border guards thinking it was Saddam escaping. Considering the guns, everyone in Iraq has, and thanks to the insecurity due to the US invasion, they also need them. Considering the jewelry, it appears the US has been so good not only to kill them, but also rob the dead. Considering Abu Ghraib and a similar disaster at a wedding party in Afghanistan, I wouldn't put it past them.

Iraqis Say U.S. Attacked Wedding Party

May 20, 8:31 PM (ET)

By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI

RAMADI, Iraq (AP) - As survivors tell it, the wedding party was in full swing. The band was playing tribal music and the guests had just finished eating dinner when, at about 9 p.m., they heard the roar of U.S. warplanes. Fearing trouble, the revelers ended the festivities and went to bed. About six hours later, the first bomb struck the tent.[/color]

"Mothers died with their children in their arms," said Madhi Nawaf, who survived the attack Wednesday in Mogr el-Deeb on the Syrian border. Up to 45 people died - mostly women and children from the Bou Fahad tribe. "One of them was my daughter," Nawaf told The Associated Press. "I found her a few steps from the house, her 2-year-old son Raad in her arms. Her 1-year-old son, Raed, was lying nearby, missing his head."

In Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, coalition deputy chief of operations, said Thursday the U.S. military would investigate after Iraqi officials reported the survivors' story. However, Kimmitt said the military maintains the target was a safehouse for infiltrators slipping across the border to fight coalition soldiers in Iraq. Kimmitt said several shotguns, handguns, Kalashnikov rifles and machine guns were found at the site. And he said soldiers also found jewelry and vehicles that indicated the people were not wandering Bedouin but "town dwellers."

"Ten miles from the Syrian border and 80 miles from the nearest city and a wedding party? Don't be naive," Marine Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis told reporters in Fallujah. "Plus, they had 30 males of military age with them. How many people go to the middle of the desert to have a wedding party?" But members of the Bou Fahad tribe say they consider the border area part of their territory and follow their goats, sheep and cattle there to graze. They leave spacious homes in Ramadi and roam the desert, as far as 250 miles to the west, in the springtime.

Smuggling livestock into Syria is also part of a herdsman's life[/color] - although no one in the tribe admitted to that. Weddings are often marked in Iraq with celebratory gunfire. However, survivors insisted no weapons were fired Wednesday, despite speculation by Iraqi officials that this drew a mistaken American attack.[/color] The survivors insist the Americans were wrong to target them.

"They're lying," Nawaf said. "They have to show us evidence that we fired a shot or were hiding foreign fighters. Where are the foreign fighters then? Why kill and dismember innocent children?" Nawaf and more than a dozen men from the Bou Fahad tribe transported the dead to Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, which includes Mogr el-Deeb. Twenty-eight graves were dug in the tribe's cemetery outside Ramadi, each containing one to three bodies. A wake was held Thursday at a home in Ramadi.

Nawaf's brother, Taleb, lost his wife, Amal, and two daughters, 2-year-old Anoud and 1-year-old Kholood. His wife's body was found clutching the two children, survivors said. All the men interviewed insisted there were no foreign fighters in Mogr el-Deeb, a desolate area popular with smugglers. The U.S. military suspects militants cross the area from Syria to fight the Americans, and it is under constant surveillance by American forces.

"We would know if any outsider comes to our area," said Hamed Abdul-Razaq, another survivor. Sheik Dahan Haraj, the tribe's chief who was also at the wedding, said that if the Americans suspected terrorists, "why not seal off the area and make sure they were indeed foreign fighters?" Survivors said they became fearful when they heard aircraft overhead about 9 p.m. Tuesday. Then came military vehicles, which stopped about two miles away from the village and switched off their headlights. The planes were still overhead at 11 p.m.

"We began to expect some kind of catastrophe," Nawaf said. They decided to end the celebration, and the bride and groom, Azhar Rikad and Rutba Sabah, went into their tent. About 25 male guests who came from Ramadi for the wedding and five band members from Baghdad stayed in the main tent. All the women went to bed in an adjacent one-story stone house. Many men, including Nawaf, drifted away to their nearby homes.

The first bomb struck the main tent at about 2:45 a.m., the survivors said. Among those who died was Hussein al-Ali, a prominent wedding singer from Baghdad. The second bomb struck the stone house, killing everyone inside. "They didn't even spare one child, one elderly," said the 54-year-old Nawaf. Survivors said shells rained down until nearly sunrise.

Two helicopters landed and about 40 soldiers searched the house where the women had stayed and a second, vacant house. Soon after, the two houses were blown up - although witnesses offered differing accounts of how. Some said the houses were attacked by helicopters. Others said the Americans detonated them with explosives.

"They asked us no questions," said Adel Awdeh. Some of the men tried to approach the Americans but were driven back by gunshots, the survivors said. The troops took money and jewelry the dead women had brought for the party,[/color] survivors said. At the cemetery outside Ramadi, Taleb Nawaf pointed to a fresh grave with a headstone marked "Amal Rikab and Kholood."

"This is my daughter," he said. Mourners displayed photographs of six children and their parents, Mohammed and Morifa Rikad, saying all had died in the bombing. The U.S. occupation has never been popular in Anbar, a Sunni Muslim province which includes Fallujah, Khaldiyah and other centers of resistance. "For each one in those graves, we will get 10 Americans," Ahmed Saleh warned.

 

[member 5645]

U.S.: No evidence of wedding at attack site

Saturday, May 22, 2004 Posted: 3:25 PM EDT (1925 GMT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Dozens of people killed in a U.S. attack in the Iraqi desert Wednesday were attending a high-level meeting of foreign fighters, not a wedding, and photos shown to reporters in Baghdad support that belief, according to the senior coalition military spokesman.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said six women were among the dead, but there is no evidence any children died in the raid early Wednesday near the Syrian border.

Coalition officials have said that as many as 40 people were killed in the attack.

He said that video showing dead children killed was actually recorded in Ramadi, far from the attack scene.

An Iraqi man interviewed by The Associated Press as the bodies of women and children were unloaded from a truck for burial said they had gathered for a wedding celebration when they were attacked.

"There may have been some kind of celebration," Kimmitt said. "Bad people have celebrations too. Bad people have parties too."

Kimmitt said that troops did not find anything -- such as a wedding tent, gifts, musical instruments, decorations or leftover food -- that would indicate that a wedding had been held.

Most of the men there were of military age, and there were no elders present to indicate a family event, he said.

What was found, he said, indicated the building was used as a waypoint for foreign fighters crossing into Iraq from Syria to battle the coalition.

"The building seemed to be somewhat of a dormitory," Kimmitt said. "You had over 300 sets of bedding gear in it. You had a tremendous number of pre-packaged clothing -- apparently about a hundred sets of pre-packaged clothing; (It is) expected that when foreign fighters come in from other countries, they come to this location, they change their clothes into typical Iraqi clothing sets."

At Saturday's briefing for reporters in Baghdad, Kimmitt showed photos of what he said were binoculars designed for adjusting artillery fire, battery packs suitable for improvised explosive devices, several terrorist training manuals, medical gear, fake ID cards and ID card-making machines, passports and telephone numbers to other countries, including Afghanistan and Sudan.

None of the men killed in the raid carried ID cards or wallets, he said. "We feel that that was an indicator that this was a high risk meeting of high level anti-coalition forces. There was a tremendous number of incriminating pocket litter, a lot of telephone numbers to foreign countries, Afghanistan, Sudan and a number of others."

Kimmitt said while the location was purported to be a sheep ranch, there was no evidence of ranching activities and no livestock.

He said that the coalition would continue to have an open mind about what might have happened, and he conceded there were some inconsistencies still to be worked out.

"The more that we look at intelligence, more we dig in, more we are persuaded no wedding," Kimmitt said.

"We had significant, multiple sources of intelligence" before ordering the raid, he said.

 

[Adam]

The USA, in the midst of a huge PR crisis, denies it? Well, duh.

Iraq: The Wedding Party Massacre


By Neil Mackay


THE bombing started at 3am on Wednesday. The villagers from the tiny desert community of Makr al-Deeb were fast asleep, exhausted after a day spent celebrating a wedding. By the time the bombing had stopped and the advancing GIs had finished marauding and shooting their way through the remains of the village, the Americans had killed at least 42 innocent people.

Among the dead were 27 members of the Rakat family who were celebrating a double family wedding. Many of their guests died as well, as did the band of musicians who played throughout the wedding and one of Iraq’s most popular singers, Hussein al-Ali from Ramadi.

One of the few people to live through the night was Haleema Shihab, the sister-in-law of the groom. She described to reporters from her hospital bed how she was sleeping in bed with her husband and children in the Rakat family villa when the bombs started to fall.

“We went out of the house and American soldiers started to shoot at us,” she said. “They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one.”

Picking up her youngest child in her arms, with two of her sons running at her side, she was hit by shrapnel from a shell that landed nearby fracturing her legs.

Her two boys were dead on the ground beside her and as she lay next to them she was wounded again when another round hit her in the arm. One of her children had been decapitated.

“I fell into the mud and an American soldier came and kicked me,” she said. “I pretended to be dead so he wouldn’t kill me. My youngest child was alive next to me.”

Not long before daybreak, Shihab saw GIs reduce the home of the Rakat family and the house next door to a pile of rubble. When a relative carried her and her surviving child to hospital, she learned that her husband Mohammed, had also died. Mohammed was the eldest son of the Rakat family.

One witness, Dahham Harraj, said: “This was a wedding and the planes came and attacked the people at a house. Is this the democracy and freedom that Bush has brought us?”

An unnamed witness said that bombs fell on the village one after another and three houses with the guests inside were hit. “They fired as if there were an armoured brigade inside not a wedding party.”

A third witness said: “The US military planes came and started killing everyone in the house.” One of the causes for the mass killings is likely to have been the failure by US forces to understand Iraqi culture.

At weddings, many Iraqis fire guns into the air as a sign of celebration. The Americans may have misinterpreted what was happening and sent in their bombers and infantry without pausing for thought.

If they had stopped to think they might have remembered an incident two years ago when 48 innocent Afghanis celebrating a wedding were blown to bits by US jets. Another 100 were injured. That time too, the guests had fired guns into the air to celebrate the bride and groom.

Ma’athi Nawaaf, a neighbour of the Rakats whose daughter and grand children died in the attack, said: “We were happy because of the wedding. People were dancing and making speeches.” After the ceremony, guests heard jets and saw a military convoy approaching.

“The first thing they bombed was the tent for the ceremony,” Nawaf said. “We saw the family running out of the house. The bombs were falling destroying the whole area.”

Armoured personnel carriers then drove into Makr al-Deeb, firing machine guns and backed up by helicopters. “They started to shoot at the house and the people outside the house,” Nawaf added.

Chinooks later landed and dozens of troops charged out. Explosives were set in the Rakat house and minutes later it and a neighbouring home were a pile of smouldering rubble.

“I saw something that nobody ever saw in this world,” Nawaf went on. “There were children’s bodies cut into pieces, women cut into pieces, men cut into pieces.”

Nawaf found his grandson dead in his daughter’s arms. “The other boy was lying beside her,” he said. “I found only his head. The Americans call these people foreign fighters. It is a lie. I just want one piece of evidence of what they are saying.”

In the al-Qaim general hospital, Dr Hamdi Noor al-Alusi said 11 of the dead were women and 14 were children. “I want to know why the Americans targeted this small village. These people are my patients. I know each one of them. What has caused this disaster?”

In the face of such overwhelming evidence that they had killed innocent revellers, the US stubbornly insisted that the raid was against a “suspected foreign fighter safe house”. A statement even claimed that “during the operation, coalition forces came under hostile fire and close air support was provided.”

Brigadier Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the US military in Iraq, said: “We took ground fire and we returned fire. We estimate that around 40 were killed. But we operated within our rules of engagement.”

Television footage showed a truck filled with bodies killed in the attack. Men were seen lifting the bodies from the truck, wrapped in blankets, and taking them to the desert for burial in deep pits. The corpse of a little girl of six was seen wrapped in a white shawl. Other bodies were shown with horrific injuries.

Showing an astonishing arrogance and lack of understanding for the culture or geography of the country his men are occupying, Major-General James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, mocked anyone who claimed his troops had massacred innocent Iraqis.

“How many people go into the middle of desert to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilisation?” he said. “These were more than two dozen military-aged males. ”

Makr al-Deeb has been a village for a long time. Before the attack it had around two dozen homes. When Mattis was asked about TV images of a dead child, he said he had not seen the pictures and did not have to justify the actions of his men.

Deputy police chief Lieutenant Colonel Ziyad al-Jbouri said American helicopters attacked the village at around 2.45am on Wednesday morning.

The wedding party was the biggest celebration in the village for years. It marked the moment when two local families – the Rakats and Sabahs – came together with the long-negotiated marriage of Ashad Rakat and his cousin Rutba Sabah. There was also a second ceremony this time between a Rakat girl and a Sabah man. Much of the party took place under canvas in the gardens of the Rakat villa. The leader of the musicians was Hamid Abdullah, who runs the Music of Arts recording studio in Ramadi, the nearest big town.

Incredibly, the survivors included the two married couples and the patriarch of the extended family who owns the Rakat villa. Some of the graves of those who died were marked with this sole epitaph: “The American Bombing.”

Inevitably, the massacre at Makr al-Deeb – taken with the US onslaught at Fallujah which claimed hundreds of Iraqi lives and the on-going horror of the torture, rape and killing of prisoners in US custody in jails like Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib – erodes the moral foundations of the US invasion down to next to nothing. The Arab media completely discounted the US version of events, describing it as a “savage massacre”.

And the suffering of the people of Makr al-Deeb will only fuel the resistance against the occupying forces. Not far from where the victims lay buried, Ahmed Saleh said: “For each one of those graves, we will get 10 Americans.”

lOur View and Iain Macwhirter: Seven Days

23 May 2004

http://www.sundayherald.com/42229

 

[Adam]

US military concedes women may have died in airstrike in western Iraq

BAGHDAD (AFP) May 21, 2004

The US military conceded Friday that four to six women may have died in a US air strike that targeted foreign fighters in western Iraq earlier this week.

http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040521183133.dbperbg3.html

I wonder why people didn't just sit back and believe the NAZIs at Nuremberg when they said "It wasn't me". I mean, if the one under scrutiny says they didn't do it, surely they must be telling the truth...

 

[member 5645]

well adam, since you have moved to the Stalinistic approach of guilty until proven innocent...did you also know we are blocking muslims from heaven?

ULTIMATE REVENGE: Sealing the Gates to Islam’s Heaven
Jack Wheeler
May 21, 2004

Sit down and sit tight, folks, or else this is going to totally blow you away.

Over a drink at The Cosmos Club in downtown Washington the other day, one of the Pentagon’s key intel guys – let’s call him Larry Johansen – ran something by me.

“Suppose – purely hypothetically, you understand,” said Larry, “that there was a number of people where I work who became determined to exact an ultimate revenge for Islam perpetrating September 11 upon America, for dancing on the streets from Cairo to Damascus to Ramallah in celebration of the slaughter of 3,000 Americans and the destruction of the Twin Towers, for creating and tolerating Al Qaeda, for waging war on Western Civilization?”

“Ultimate revenge? Sounds intriguing,” I responded. “What might that be?”

“Well, this is just supposition, right?” Larry responded. “But if there were this group where I work, they would call it Project Jahannam.”


My eyebrows shot up. “Project Jahannam?”

“Yes – Jahannam, as you know, is the Arabic word for Islam’s Hell. If a Moslem doesn’t go to Jannah – Heaven, the Paradise with the virgins and all – when he dies, he burns in Jahannam. The goal of Project Jahannam would be to seal off the Gates of Paradise to every single Moslem in the entire Middle East – or even the entire world. Although – since we’re only speaking hypothetically here – I might have used the wrong tense. It might be that Project Jahannam has already been completed. It might be that no Moslem alive today has a chance to live in the Paradise of Jannah when they die. They all, just like every Moslem who has died of whatever cause for the past year or so, are doomed to spend eternity in Jahannam – the fires of Hell.”

There was the look of deepest satisfaction in Larry’s eyes.

I stared at the ice cubes in my glass of Glen Morangie for a moment to let this all sink in. “So,” I asked, “just how might one go about consigning all Moslems to Hell?”

“I have this nephew,” Larry said. “He’s all into enviro causes and such. Lives in Oregon. He’s normal and thinks ok for the most part. But every time he sees a jet plane’s contrail in the sky, he’s convinced the government is spraying chemicals in some nefarious experiment on us.”

We sipped our Scotch. He was enjoying this.

“Have you ever heard of biodiesel fuel? Just last night (May 11), the Senate passed a federal excise tax credit for biodiesel. It was Grassley’s thing (Sen Chuck Grassley, R-IA). He bills biodiesel as a “cleaner-burning alternative” to pure petroleum diesel, and also as a “renewable resource” since biodiesel contains an additive made from soybean oil. There are a lot of soybeans grown in Iowa.”

Larry continued. “The chemistry involved is pretty simple, a process called trans-esterification. Soybean oil is cooked with an alcohol like methanol and a catalyst like sodium methoxide. You distill out the water and glycerin. This “esterifies” the oil, turning it into a “mono-alkyl ester” derived from the long-chain fatty acids of the oil. This is fuel-grade biodiesel, which can be added up to 20% to petroleum diesel. With me so far?”

I nodded, waiting for the punch line.

“This transesterification process works with most any kind of vegetable oil, or animal fat…” He let those last two words float in the air.

“Animal fat?” I asked. “You mean like…?”

“Yes,” he answered, “like lard, pig fat.”

Larry leaned forward. “Biofuel can be made with pig fat just as easily as with soybean oil. You can add it to any kind of petroleum fuel – gasoline for cars, diesel for trucks, jet fuel for airplanes. If – if, remember – the Project Jahannam people arranged for the manufacture of large quantities of pig fat biofuel, and further arranged for it to be mixed into the jet fuel supplies used by most of the world’s airlines, then…” He paused for me to get the picture.

“Then the world’s breathable atmosphere,” I said, “would be permeated with molecules of pig fat.”

“Precisely” he said. “Now, pig fat molecules are virtually indistinguishable from human fat molecules, so there’s no physical harm. The molecules would be absorbed through the lungs and incorporated into the fat cells of one’s body. Harmless to us, but for any Moslem, his body would be ineradicably, irretrievably polluted with pigs. The gates of heaven are forever closed to him. Mohammed himself would spit at them if they tried to enter. Remember the Sepoy Rebellion in 19th century India?”

“Yeah – that’s when the Sepoys, the native troops in British India, mutinied against the Brits,” I answered. “A lot of the Sepoys were Moslem, and this rumor started that their bullet cartridges were greased with pig fat. Since you had to bite off the paper wrapping of the cartridge, your mouth would come in contact with the alleged pig grease. Also, any fellow Moslems that were shot had pig grease in their body with the bullet, so they could kiss heaven goodbye. The Sepoys rebelled. Happened in the 1850s, I think.”

“Right – 1857-1859 to be exact. The thing was, it wasn’t true – Brits never used pig fat to grease the cartridges. Just the rumor itself sparked the revolt, which almost ended the British Raj.” Larry had an odd look in his eye.

“But surely the intention of Project Jahannam wouldn’t be to set off a worldwide Islamic revolt against the US – that’s Al Qaeda’s goal,” I stammered.

Larry’s hands went up in the air. “Of course not. The difference is that the Sepoys were trying to accomplish something by rebelling – no more pig grease on the cartridges. There wouldn’t be anything to accomplish by rebelling against Project Jahannam – because if it did happen, it’s already happened. The stuff would already be in the air, and would have been for over a year now. There’s nothing that can be done about it. Any action or protest or riot or whatever is useless. No Moslem can enter heaven now and that’s the end of it.”

My brain was exploding with so many thoughts I couldn’t say a word. Larry continued.

“Understand that the people who are capable of such a project are seriously clever. They would have made deals with various oil refineries to use a “special experimental” biofuel, paying them well for adding it to their refined fuel products and never revealing of course the biofuel was from pig fat. They would even have charcoal-filtered the pig fat biofuel to take out any aroma. This would have lasted only for less than a year, but enough time for the thousands of airliners flying across the planet every day to permeate the troposphere with pig fat particles everywhere in the world except the Arctic and Antarctica – and there aren’t many Moslems in either.”

“The troposphere?” I asked.

“That’s the air we breathe, the layer of air from the ground to 24-28,000 feet,” he replied. “Above that is the stratosphere. The JPs – the Jahannam Particles – would stay suspended in the stratosphere for months, in the troposphere for weeks or less wherever there was lots of rain to wash them out. So you could figure that within eight to ten months or so, the cumulative effect of hundreds of thousands of airplanes spraying pig fat exhaust into the world’s air would be that there isn’t a Moslem alive today anywhere in the world that doesn’t have JPs lodged in his fat cells. Oh – with one exception.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Infants, anyone born within the last few months since the project hypothetically would have ceased. Maybe when they grow up, they can create an Islam that actually lives at peace with the world.”

“OK,” I said. “This is all very cool, albeit hypothetically cool. But what’s the point? Such a project would have cost a lot of money. What would it accomplish?”

“Total demoralization of the enemy,” came his reply. “No more shahid (martyr) suicide bombers blowing themselves up as a ticket to whorehouse heaven. Using the enemy’s beliefs as a weapon against him – using the strengths of those beliefs to destroy him. The enemy knowing we can do this to him, kick him right in the balls of his soul and not blink an eye – knowing that we’ve already done it and there is not a damned thing he can do about it. He’s damned, he’s no longer a Moslem, his soul is unclean and polluted beyond retrieval, it’s over, it’s finished, for in a sense there are no Moslems – no true and unpolluted Moslems – in the whole world any longer.”

“But, Larry,” I objected, “there’s still no point if no one knows about this.”

A malicious smile broke over his face. “Not for much longer. The word is starting to seep out. Do you have any idea how many Moslems are like my nephew in Oregon? They’ll convince themselves they are haram (polluted) because the paranoia of their beliefs won’t let them think otherwise.”

Larry leaned forward again. “Jack, remember the pictures of people leaping to their deaths from the burning Trade Towers? These evil radical Moslem sons-of-*****es attacked us. They want to kill all of us. They’ll nuke us if they get the chance. Well, we’ve nuked them first – nuked them spiritually. Their fellow Moslems have hardly lifted a finger to help us get rid of them, to cure the disease that’s infected their religion. So sayonara to all of their souls.”

“You know, Larry,” I said, “if this were true, if Project Jahannam really did happen, it would be the greatest Psy-Ops in history. After all, the War on Terrorism is essentially a psychological war.”

“If is an interesting word, Jack – especially when it comes to religion, where there is no difference in effect between what is true and what people think is true.” Larry raised his glass. I raised mine.

“To Ultimate Revenge,” Larry said. “And to my nephew.”

 

[Adam]

The stance is: We've all seen the pictures. The alleged perpetrator of the crime is claiming innocence.

 

[Adam]

The TV news here (Channel 10, for Australians) just showed moer film from the attack. They show the wedding video, the celebrations and such, then they showed film of the wreckage and corpses. The organ-player from the wedding appears in both. Same buildings, same people.