Iraqis Drag Four Corpses Through Streets

AP ^ | March 31, 2004 | SAMEER N. YACOUB

[Charles Henrickson]

FALLUJAH, Iraq - Jubilant residents dragged the charred corpses of four foreigners — one a woman, at least one an American — through the streets Wednesday and hanged them from the bridge spanning the Euphrates River. Five American soldiers died in a roadside bombing nearby.

The four foreigners were killed in a rebel ambush of their SUVs in Fallujah, a Sunni Triangle city about 35 miles west of Baghdad and scene of some of the worst violence on both sides of the conflict since the beginning of the American occupation a year ago.

It was reminiscent of the 1993 scene in Somalia, when a mob dragged the corpse of a U.S. soldier through the streets of Mogadishu, eventually leading to the American withdrawal from the African nation.

In one of the bloodiest days for the U.S. military this year, five 1st Infantry Division soldiers died when their military vehicle ran over a bomb in a separate incident 12 miles to the northwest, among the reed-lined roads running through some of Iraq's richest farmland.

Residents said the bomb attack occurred in Malahma, 12 miles northwest of Fallujah, where anti-U.S. insurgents are active. U.S. Marines operate in the area, but it was unclear whether the slain troops were Marines.

Chanting "Fallujah is the graveyard of Americans," residents cheered after the grisly assault on two four-wheel-drive civilian vehicles, which left both in flames. Others chanted, "We sacrifice our blood and souls for Islam."

Associated Press Television News pictures showed one man beating a charred corpse with a metal pole. Others tied a yellow rope to a body, hooked it to a car and dragged it down the main street of town. Two blackened and mangled corpses were hung from a green iron bridge across the Euphrates.

"The people of Fallujah hanged some of the bodies on the old bridge like slaughtered sheep," resident Abdul Aziz Mohammed said. Some of the corpses were dismembered, he said.

Beneath the bodies, a man held a printed sign with a skull and crossbones and the phrase "Fallujah is the cemetery for Americans."

APTN showed the charred remains of three slain men. Some were wearing flak jackets, said resident Safa Mohammedi.

One resident displayed what appeared to be dog tags taken from one body. Residents also said there were weapons in the targeted cars. APTN showed one American passport near a body and a U.S. Department of Defense identification card belonging to another man.

U.S. military officials in Washington said the situation was still confused but they did not think the victims were American soldiers and believed the SUVs were not American military vehicles.

Witnesses said the two vehicles were attacked with small arms fire and rocket propelled grenades.

Hours after the attack, the city was quiet. No U.S. troops or Iraqi police were seen in the area.

Fallujah is in the so-called Sunni Triangle, where support for Saddam Hussein was strong and rebels often carry out attacks against American forces.

In nearby Ramadi, insurgents threw a grenade at a government building and Iraqi security forces returned fire Wednesday, witnesses said. It was not clear if there were casualties.

Also in Ramadi, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. convoy, witnesses said. U.S. officials in Baghdad could not confirm the attack.

On Tuesday in Ramadi, one U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded in a roadside bombing, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt.

Northeast of Baghdad, in the city of Baqouba on Wednesday, a suicide bomber blew up explosives in his car when he was near a convoy of government vehicles, wounding 14 Iraqis and killing himself, officials said.

The attacked convoy is normally used to transport the Diala provincial governor, Abdullah al-Joubori, but he was elsewhere at the time, said police Col. Ali Hossein.

On Tuesday, a suicide bombing outside the house of a police chief in Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, killed the attacker and wounded seven others.

A bomb exploded late Tuesday in a movie theater that had closed for the night. Two bystanders were wounded by flying glass, said its owner, Ghani Mohammed.

The latest violence came two days after Carina Perelli, the head of a U.N. electoral team, said better security is vital if Iraq wants to hold elections by a Jan. 31 deadline. The polls are scheduled to follow a June 30 transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government.

Top U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer said Tuesday he had appointed 21 anti-corruption inspectors general to government departments to try to prevent fraud. More will be named in coming days, he said.

The inspectors will work with two other newly formed, independent agencies. Together, they will "form an integrated approach intended to combat corruption at every level of government across the country," Bremer said.

[RUCKUS INC.]

"The bombing begins at noon Mr Abdul"

[atomic conspiracy]

The four dead were all Americans, employees of Blackwater Security, a North Carolina firm that had been hired to protect food shipments in the Fallujah area.

Just damn

Whiners and media-scum will point out that it is unlawful for us to impose a blockade on food shipments, but what about a self-inflicted blockade?

Let these animals starve or eat each other.

[BlackVeil]

OMG...how can human beings celebrate like that

I think it is human nature. Don't you remember the comic celebrations, on this site, of Rachel Corrie getting "flap jacked" by the bulldozer?

[BlackVeil]

Well your point is very interesting. I remember that I said, early in the war, that I wondered if Iraq (as presently constituted) could be governed by any different methods than those of the Baathist regime. Plenty of people disagreed, but it is something to ponder.

[Lijahsbubbe]

God comfort the families of those slaughtered.

God bless America and Israel.

[Arpege92]

"We liberate them and THAT'S their reaction? Let's get the hell out of that pit and leave it to the wolves."

Not until justice has been served. Otherwise, we risk another Clinton opportunity to cut and run like we did in Somalia.

[Lijahsbubbe]

OMG, do I need wonder if any of these images will make the evening news??

All of the sorry pathetic local news stations in Mpls. led with at least five minutes about the U of M girls basketball team. What a twisted world.

[DrPeppa]

Our reaction to this atrocity will be pivotal to America's future security. If we run from a fight like we did in Somalia we'll increase our chances of another 9/11. I saw a disturbing report of Marine patrols being sent through the streets of Fallajuah to "wave at and shake hands with children." (Did anyone else see this?) This is NOT the kind of response that will gain us respect in Iraq and the rest of the Arab world.

I say its time to bring back the B-52 Arclight Missions.

[GEC]

We need to identify and round up all the morons in these pictures and slaughter them.

[helen crump]

Has anyone anywhere seen names of the security personnel murdered today. I leave for church in a few minutes and there is a sweet elderly lady at our church who has a son that I believe was part of this group. Can't find names.

[BulletBobCo]

Nuke 'em til they glow....then nuke 'em again!

[NYC GOP Chick]

Vile savages. I'm getting to the point where I don't believe that they can exist in anything resembling a democracy -- or civilization.

Maybe the best we can hope and aim for is to make sure that it doesn't become a terrorist hellhole haven once again and leave them to their own devices. The pictures I saw (and I did have links to rather gruesome ones) -- especially the celebrations -- reminded me of their brethren so-called palis. Something pathologically wrong with these creatures.

[Irish Eyes]

Powerful post. Thank you for the sensitivity that you showed in not directly posting the pictures. I will never forget the pictures from Somalia, I see them as clearly and with as much horror today as I did at that time. I could not bear to look at these pictures.

[VaGunGuy]

We shouldn't emulate the French Foreign Legion in Viet Nam. They lost.

We should hunt everybody celebrating in the photos down and kill them. These people are longing to meet Allah. We should facilitate their desires by every means available, and consider it a public service.

[txhurl]

The four dead were all Americans, employees of Blackwater Security, a North Carolina firm that had been hired to protect food shipments in the Fallujah area.

Jesus.

[T'wit]

It is always interesting to watch liberal reporters twist a story. Here, bias showed up in the first word of the headline, and in the first words of the report as well. This reporter just couldn't wait to stick in the knife.

Headline: "Iraqis Drag Four Corpses Through Streets." Using the word "Iraqis" tries to convey that all Iraqis were involved or sympathetic. That, of course, is nonsense. This was a small mob in a notoriously dissident area.

Starting the story with "jubilant residents" again tries to convey a general Iraqi anti-Americanism. It avoids having to identify the barbarians as a small minority, many of them adolescents.

[TomasUSMC]

Some say: "Plus, let's not forget the unspoken reasons for going into Iraq:

-- To secure locations for long-term US bases in the heart of the Islamofascists. Nope.
The last thing we want is base in the heart of Isamofascist. What we want is no more Islamofacist. The Islamofascist would love our base in their midst.

-- To put the fear of Allah into the governments of Syria and Iran among others. - The Syrians and Iranians are showing their "FEAR", by sending thousands of Terrorist over their borders into Iraq.

-- To entice the terrorists to wage their battles in Iraq rather than here. -Bali, Madrid, and half a ton of nitrate in Britain. Why go kill Yankees in New York when you can just pick em off, blow em up and burn and hang them right next door in Iraq?

-- To, and this is a tough one, to hopefully develop a democratic Iraqi government that can take hold. Freedom and democracy have a way of spreading over time.

- The reason the Iraqis are loving democracy so much and defending it so little is that they were given it and did not have to do a dang thing for it. They are getting raises from 2 dollars a day to 200 dollars a month! The war was fought for them. We are rebuilding the country for them. We are dying for them. Jesus said, "Turn the other cheek", he didn't say "bend over and spread em!"

You come here and increase the average wage 100 fold, 30,000 to 300,000 a year, or 70,000 to 700,000 a year and people would start praying 10 times a day.

"We all must remember and realize that this war on terror is really a World War that will take years and perhaps decades to wage." Nope.
You wage a war with the intention of winning it as fast as possible. If it takes us years and years to beat a bunch of ragheadtag nations like Iran, and Syria, what will future enemies think of us, when they are armed with Nukes ?

And that stuff about the tendency of Democracy to Spread. Let me tell you that if it wasn't for the stand-fastness of America in the Cold War, democracies would have been submerged like Athens, with the motto "Better Red Than Dead" bubbling from their drowning lips.

Let the enemies of this country rebuild with the sure knowledge that if they build another government belligerent towards the United States, we will not send the Marines again, this time we will send the Mushroom Clouds.
- And we don't have time do it a second time because in a few years all our enemies will have Mushroom Clouds too.

Sooo, lets not worry about what the world will say if we react to forcefully, because we know what our enemies will and have done if don't.

We are the last line of defense, there is no one or place to fall back to.

[atomicpossum]

We should do here what we should have done in Mogadishu-- turn up the next day with bulldozers and flatten everything within a defined radius.

[Irish Eyes]

prayers gladly sent.

[Joe Hadenuf]

Let's get the hell out of that pit and leave it to the wolves.

I fully agree. It will never be democratized. Let our nuclear subs roam the seven seas. Getting involved on the ground in these third world sh*t holes don't cut it. It never will. It's a lose lose.

IRAQ ISN'T WORTH THE LIFE OF ONE SINGLE AMERICAN