Posted on 05/24/2004 12:43:07 AM PDT by manwiththeplan
A videotape has been broadcast which purports to show before-and-after footage of a wedding which Iraqis say the US attacked, killing about 40. The film, broadcast by Associated Press Television News, knits together a home movie of a wedding and APTN video of the aftermath of Wednesday's attack.
Some victims and survivors of the air strike appear to be present in the footage of the wedding celebrations.
The US has insisted its target was not a wedding but foreign fighters.
It says that its soldiers were responding to fire and there was no evidence of a wedding.
The incident occurred in the early hours of Wednesday at the village of Makr al-Deeb, in desert near the Syrian border.
Associated Press has stressed that it cannot confirm the authenticity of the video of the wedding celebrations.
'Traditional wedding'
The agency says the material broadcast was taken from several hours of footage allegedly filmed by Yasser Shawkat Abdullah, hired to record the festivities.
He was among those killed, it says.
The film opens with gleaming pick-up trucks - some decorated with ribbons - speeding through the desert apparently en route to the wedding.
They arrive at the celebrations to the sounds of guns being fired in the air - a traditional celebration - and ululating.
The film then shows men dancing along to the music of Hussein al-Ali, a popular wedding singer also hired for the occasion.
Ali and his brother Mohamed were buried in Baghdad on Thursday, mourners said.
Clearly visible on the wedding footage is a man playing electric organ.
The footage is spliced with APTN film of the face of a corpse after the attack. It appears to be the same man, wearing the same shirt.
AP says a reporter and a photographer who interviewed more than a dozen survivors a day after the bombing were able to identify many of them on the wedding party video.
It also says its footage of the scene following the attack shows remnants of musical instruments, pots and pans, and brightly coloured beddings used for celebrations, scattered around a bombed-out tent.
Survivors of the attack have told journalists the wedding party had ended and guests were in bed when bombing began.
When people ran out of their homes, they allege they were shot at by Americans.
They say over 40 people died, including at least 10 children.
But these allegations have been vehemently and repeatedly denied by US forces in Iraq.
'No evidence'
"There was no evidence of a wedding: no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration," Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the chief US military spokesman in Iraq, said on Saturday.
"The men were almost all military-aged, no family elders that one would expect to see at an event of this type," he said.
He has denied any children were killed in the attack.
Gen Kimmitt said the site looked "somewhat of a dormitory. There were more than 300 sets of bedding gear in it and about 100 sets of pre-packaged clothing.
"It's suspected that when foreign fighters come in from other countries they change their clothes into typical Iraqi clothing sets."
He said ID-making machines and "the capability to make exit visas for Iraq" were among suspicious items found.
There has been no specific response as yet to the footage released by APTN.
Don't terrorists have weddings too?
I assume that is one more way they breed.
How out of the range of possiblity that it was "both"? Remember the "human shields"? I would not put it past terrorists to hide behind women and children (even their own families). After all, many terrorist families send their kids on suicide missions anyway.
The military's word is good enough for me. But if we have it, why not show it? Leave the lamestream with egg all over its face. Again.
Not intentionally, but I won't weep for them as collateral damage. Besides, God will take children of the age of innocence to his bosom. The case can be made that they are better off dead before becoming thralls of a false "god".
(Donning Nomex flame retardant suit)
I pinged you to another thread where your suspicions are discussed and verfied as a ploy that is used for cover..
Not a very good wedding planner in my opinion.
Kimmit is not my favorite general. He lost me after Fallujah. His reaction then was tepid. I would not want him in charge of any action I was involved with...
As I recall he said something like, "What could we do that wouldn't just make it worse?" I would really have liked to see US make it a LOT worse for the enemy after that little show!
Get some good communicators who are on OUR side and LOVE their troops, instead of being all too satisfied to leave them dangling mid-mission. The heck with the Clintonoid generals. It's time to win this war, while we still have time -- only a month or so, and running out fast!
AND... I would assume that the site had been guarded 24/7 from the time of the bombing? So that nobody could come back and plant this stuff at the site?
I would be curious about how the film itself happened to survive, if a bomb fell right in the middle of the festivities. Perhaps it was made elsewhere, with the survivors-to-be costumed the same as at the site. But a US press agency saying they found bits of musical instruments at the site when Kimmit says he didn't... that's a whole nother story.
Wasn't there a wedding going on in the chancellory bunkers while the Russians were shelling central Berlin in 1945?
Then he would order the bodies paraded at "official" demonstrations against the evil effects of the embargo.
The Palis regularly report that at least one child is killed in any incident involving the IDF -- the media doesn't even bother to seek proof anymore, they just routinely parrot the mantra.
After years of this fiction, anyone who believes Arabs when it comes to body counts and actual events are those who want to believe Arab fiction. Period.
People who strap mock suicide belts on toddlers, pose them with machine guns rather than teddy bears, and teach them that women are about as valuable as human excrement and that there "god" commands them to kill nonbelievers don't exactly get my vote as parents of the year anyhow -- it's not a stretch to believe they would just as soon shoot their own kids to score a propaganda video for the ever-willing nightly newsies.
The Pali's years ago perfected the art of propaganda. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if there are many of these tapes just laying waiting for the occasion.
The Jenin massacre was phone. They seeded the soil with dead animals so it reeked. The Pali's are well known to notify Al-Jazeera in advance of an incident that they are provoking. They shoot, rocket or what ever the IDF and then when the filming starts the guns are put away and the kids throwing rocks come out. Some of the kids are even prepainted with blood.
These Islamofascists know that the liberal press is on their side and will print any horse hockey they come up with.
i saw plenty of pictures on TV the other night of dead kids. Yeah I'd say there were kids there.
Funniest post I've ever seen here!
I wonder if the nomad-terrorists in Iraq had Elvis marry them!?
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