Posted on 06/01/2004 6:08:53 AM PDT by pabianice
Just reviewed a classified brief on the supposed wedding - no way it was.
Here are some unclass details I can provide (brief had lots of pictures to back up the details): > > >
- Weddings traditionally held on Thursdays in Iraq to take advantage of Friday as a day of rest - raid took place on Tuesday night.
- Only permanent dwelling at the site held large stocks of food, bedding, medical supplies (lots of these - was the wedding going to be a cage match of some sort or were the caterers just bad cooks?), ammunition and weapons, as well as an apparent document forging set up.
Meat was still frozen solid - not prepared for a wedding feast and there were no Stocks of dishes, plates, etc.
- Contrary to "media reports," no "Nuptial Tent" was found and a 1KM area around the site was searched - any further away than that would be just too far for the catering staff to walk carrying all those huge platters of food - against union rules.
- No evidence of any means of support for the house (like sheep farming which is most common in that area).
All evidence pointed to a smuggler way station - fit perfectly the description of several Other found in the past.
- "Wedding guests" (deceased of course) were almost all men of military age, only a couple of women, no elders at all and only one child (wounded) noted. All dressed as city dwellers, not bedouins who would hold a wedding at such a location. All of the deceased were sterilized, as in none had any form of ID on them at all. Only ID's found were in a nice neat stack inside the house - and then quite a few less of those than there were people at the site.
- Weapons were varied and included RPG's (they really suck when you fire them up in the air for celebration), there were also military binoculars (when they separate the men and women they have to look at each other with bino's I guess), and IED making material (party favors?).
- Lots of clothing prepackaged in pants and shirt sets (guerranimals for guerrilla's).
- There were also no gifts, no decorations, no food set out or left over, and the good bit of money recovered was all in the pockets of the "guests" (maybe they were just cheap guests). > > >
I strongly suspect that after their Foreign Fighter way station got whacked, they tried to set it up to look like what happened in Afghanistan when a wedding was actually hit due to celebratory firing being taken for ground fire by orbiting aircraft. I also would not put it past the scum bags to sweep a local village for approriately aged "guests" to kill and display for the TV cameras. Our BDA assessment was made by people on the site just after the schwacking and they took their time to count and exploit the site. This is just speculation on my part.
> > >
Bottom line assessment: Good hit - no wedding. These were foreign fighters that had just crossed into Iraq and got an early trip to paradise and the martyrdom hall of fame.
> > > Thought it was important to get this word out as much as possible as you won't see any of this on CNN. > > >
Take care, > > >
LtCol Bill Mullen, USMC
Executive Assistant
J-3, Deputy Director for Regional Operations
they say it was a wedding, but never who was getting married, if it was a wedding, then they would be saying poor mohammed and ishtar, they are dead now. no names though - no wedding.
It appears as though Scheherezade Faramarzi of the AP is a fraud. She knows what the traditional wedding day in Iraq is, and she refused to "report" it.
Perhaps someone can ferret out her email address, and ask her about it.
0300 hrs
I would just like to know why we HAVE to allow these people
to keep their AK's for "celebrations", when the local police
here will come around and threaten to arrest me if I should
happen to shoot off some FIRECRACKERS to celebrate Independence
Day?
Why would anybody question the Iraqis? Didn't they establish their credibility when we bombed the baby milk factory?
ROFLMAO!!
Did they have any ricin, er uh rice to throw at the newlyweds?
Longbows just don't have the same report, and there's rarely that flame thing when they're discharged after dark!
Rather than take the AK's away from possibly freedom-loving Iraqis, sounds like you ought to get one of your own.
D'OH!
Operation The Destruction of Sodom and Gommorah
Seriously though I knew this was so fake right when I heard this "story" reported because it sounded like that faked "Afghan" wedding party story.
Axis Sally, Tokyo Rose, Hanoi Jane, and now Scheherezade, the Shriek of Araby.
No, it's only when thou takest a wife. When thou takest a goat is a much more solemn and holy rite, and besides, you have to put your AK-47 down because you'll need both hands free to please thyself and the goat.
So come up with some circumstantial evidence to support this assertion.
The media dogs were way too eager to call this one a wedding for me to believe it. If they wait for facts to come out, it's much less damaging.
I wasn't making any kind of argument-- just throwing out the possibility that it was both.
Yes, but I've seen very little evidence to support the theory that a wedding was going on at all. That belated, suspect video is about all I can think of right now.
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