Where did you pull that out from?
I did not hear or see the briefing today (but I'm going to read the transcript tonight or tomorrow), but I watched it live yesterday. Our forces not only were on the ground, they were there *extensively* afterwards.
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, 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, 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.
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~