Posted on 05/20/2004 9:49:49 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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By DONNA BRYSON, Associated Press CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Arab media gave little credence Thursday to to U.S. military claims that a devastating air strike near the border with Syria - in which more than 40 people were reported killed - targeted a safehouse for foreign fighters. The newspapers instead cast the attack as another example of an American campaign against Arabs and universally backed Iraqi claims that a helicopter had attacked a wedding party. Al-Arabiya, a popular Arabic satellite station, quoted witnesses as saying 40 Iraqis were killed "in shelling that hit a wedding party." "At 3 a.m. yesterday, they dropped more than 100 bombs," an unnamed man identified as a witness told Al-Arabiya. He was shown standing with a crowd of other villagers. "A whole house, the man and all his guests, 41 or more, children, most of them are children and women" were killed, the man said. Associated Press Television News footage from the area near the Syrian border showed a truck containing bloodied bodies, many wrapped in blankets, piled one atop the other. Several were children, one of whom was decapitated. The body of a girl who appeared to be less than 5 years of age lay in a white sheet, her legs riddled with wounds and her dress soaked in blood. 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. Al-Arabiya and its rival Al-Jazeera showed video of funerals of the victims. Al-Messa, an Egyptian daily close to the government, declared "a new American massacre against the Iraqis" and quoted unnamed news agencies as saying 60 people, "mostly children and women," were killed. Al-Wafd, an opposition daily in Egypt, said 42 Iraqis were killed "in a savage American attack on a wedding." In Lebanon, As-Safir newspaper's front-page headline read: "The (U.S.) occupation turns an Iraqi wedding party into a funeral: 45 martyrs, including children and women." All Lebanese papers drew parallels between the helicopter strike in Iraq and violence Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, with one, An-Nahar, lamenting in banner headline: "a long bloody day from Gaza to Iraq." In Gaza, eight Palestinians were killed by Israeli tank fire as they demonstrated against the Israel military operation in the Rafah refugee camp near the Egyptian border. Arabs often draw parallels between Israeli attacks on Arabs - seen as supported by the United States - and U.S. actions in Iraq. While the TV stations Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera reported the Iraq strike, their newscasts Thursday were dominated by strong U.N. criticism of the Israeli operation in Gaza. |
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Al-Arabiya, a popular Arabic satellite station, quoted witnesses as saying 40 Iraqis were killed "in shelling that hit a wedding party."I've been to worse weddings. Take my sister's, for example. An artillery strike would have lightened the mood.
Of course, and as always. Islamists have finally figured out that anything they happen to dream up will be reported as fact by much of the U.S. media.
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| Iraqis Say U.S. Attacked Wedding Party (US Miltary denies the report ) ^ |
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| U.S. Defends Desert Air Strike, Iraqis Say Wedding Hit ^ |
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| The Wedding Party ^ |
Yeah sure.
I might be wrong but wasn't this story used before, perhaps in Afghanastan a year or so ago? I even think it was another 3am wedding too.
Right, that was brought up on one of threads I linked to above I believe.
You are right. They did the same in afgan. The US media blames us first before the facts are out. To me the US MEDIA is no differnt then the Arab MEDIA.
Note to Iraqi wedding planners: Next time when you want to fire automatic weapons in the direction of an armed to the teeth helicopter, try the Electric Slide instead...
Yeah sure.
That is exactly what Gen. Kimmitt said yesterday morning. I waited all day yesterday for the transcript to be posted of the briefing I saw and heard yet had to hear the media distort or ignore what had been said. Finally this morning the transcript was put up:
Kimmitt/Senor Briefing, May 20, 2004
Q And on the situation yesterday, you said that you were fairly convinced this was not what some of the Iraqis were saying, a wedding party that was hit, but -- and part of the justification was the weapons and everything else you found. But it sounds like, you know, $1,000, a few weapons are not that unusual here. Do you have other evidence that would suggest this is definite, and will there be an investigation?
GEN. KIMMITT: Well, certainly because of the interest that's been shown by the media we're going to have an investigation. Some of the allegations that have been made would cause us to go back and look at this. But it's important to understand that this operation was not something that just fell out of the sky.
We had significant intelligence which caused us to conduct a military operation into the middle of the desert, 85 kilometers south of Husaybah, al Qaim, and 25 kilometers inside from the Syrian border. Relatively barren area. We had a group of people there, not Bedouin. They were -- would appear to have been town dwellers. You saw 4x4s, jewelry. This is one of those routes that we have watched for a long period of time as a place where foreign fighters and smugglers come into this country.
We have consistently talked inside this forum about the foreign fighter flow. This was clearly, in our -- the intelligence that we had suggested that this was a foreign fighter "rat line," as we call them (I love this phrase and made it my new tagline), one of the way stations. We conducted military operations down there last night. The ground force that swept through the objective found a significant amount of material and intelligence which validated that attack. And we are satisfied at this point that the intelligence that led us there was validated by what we found on the ground, and it was not that there was a wedding party going on.
~SNIP~
(different reporter, with the WaPo)
Q For General Kimmitt, sir. There was footage shown on Associated Press Television Network yesterday that seemed to depict civilians who were purportedly killed in the incident near the Syrian border. Is the military disputing that any civilians were killed? There were graphic images of dead children. Does the military have a position on whether these children were killed in this incident?
GEN. KIMMITT: The persons that we had on the ground did not find -- and they were on the ground for an extensive period of time -- they did not find any dead children among the casualties of that engagement.
~SNIP~
Q Yes, Mike Georgia (sp) from Reuters. There are relatives of a well-known wedding singer who say he and his brother were killed in this incident near the Syrian border. And they brought the bodies back to Baghdad. Are you willing to sort of review your assessment of what happened in terms of civilians and combatants at this point?
GEN. KIMMITT: Oh, absolutely. We said we're going to do an investigation. We're going to take a hard look at that.
Obviously, for operational and security reasons, I can't reveal much of the details of what got us there and what we did while we were there. But I am persuaded that, again, the purposes that caused us to conduct that operation in the middle of the barren desert in the early mornings (sic) of the hour, which is kind of an odd time to be having a wedding, against what we believed to be 34 to 35 men and a number of women, less than a handful of women, which doesn't seem to be numbers that one would associate with a wedding, by a group in their four-by- fours, well away from any town, in a known RAT line (love it!), which is being used by smugglers and foreign fighters frequently, and other intelligence that we found on the ground, pretty well convinces us that what got us there had a valid purpose.
Are we going to take a look at it, are we going to review it, are we going to conduct some measure of investigation based on some of the things that we're hearing here? Of course we are. I think that's the only prudent thing to do. And we may find out new information that we don't have currently. But we are satisfied that the intelligence that we had, the multiple correlated evidence that got us there, and the actions of our forces on the ground, what they found and what they brought back -- foreign passports, money, weapons, satellite communications -- would be inconsistent with a wedding party for sure, and fairly consistent with what we have seen throughout this country time after time after time, which is the flow of foreign fighters to come in to terrorize and kill the Iraqi citizens.
(get a load of the pleading on this next question)
Q Is it possible that you were targeting these fighters and you hit a wedding party next door? Is that possible?
GEN. KIMMITT: Well, I think let's let the investigation bear out. But this was not "next door." This was in the middle of the open desert.
~SNIP~
A fourth reason "lying to an infidel is permissible" should also be added.
http://answering-islam.org.uk/Terrorism/agenda.html
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