[sigh].....US Chopper fires on wedding party. 40+ dead

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@griffen2

Actually, it wasn’t. The thread was definately called “The Religion of Peace Strikes Again” or some very close variant. And I’m certain it was started by Testy, not Hail_Ants. The post you linked too is good too, however

Here you go. From a thread called Well, the fucking religion of peace strikes again.

[griffen2]

Shayna

[quotw]
I don’t wish to hijack this thread further, but someone else paying isn’t your only other option. You could send someone who has a credit card the cash to reimburse them, so you’d be paying, but someone else would handle the logistics of registering. If you want to make that arrangement, I’d be more than happy to make that business transaction for you so that you don’t have to give up posting here for the lack of a credit card. Email me at Shayna61 at yahoo dot com. And if that doesn’t sit well with you, Ed Zotti has offered to handle such transactions for people here, so you can send a money order to the Chicago Reader and register that way, too.

[/quote]

Well thank you very much. That’s a very kind offer. It never even occurred to me to do it that way. I think I’ll e-mail Ed though because, as admin, he probably has some kind of system set up to get it done quickly & easily.

[griffen2]

Diogenes - That’s the one. Evidently, you rock

[griffen2]

Holy moly! I’m a charter member now. I haven’t even e-mailed anyone yet. How did that happen?

[annaplurabelle]

@Shayna

I’m afraid it’s not unrebutted, but in fact, rebutted by themselves! See the link in post #238 by me where supposed eyewitnesses completely contradict statements made later by other supposed eyewitnesses.

There were conflicting accounts in the media, but everyone claiming to be an eyewitness categorically denies that shots were fired (note that the Iraqis interviewed in your cite were not specifically identified as eyewitnesses/survivors). Even so, there is nothing to suggest that celebratory gunfire prompted the attack, which occurred while everyone was asleep, hours after the initial fly-over.

@Shayna

It is entirely plausible that this compound is exactly what the military says it is and that these guys are just dastardly enough to have pre-planned a scheme wherein if they ever got caught and attacked by the U.S. military, they’d concoct this “wedding party” to make us lose even more credibility, with ready video taken long previous (perhaps even during Saddam’s reign, for all we know!) and carted out later as “evidence” to back up their bobbe myse.

It’s not that plausible when you look further. The footage of the dead bodies were taken by AP and al-Arabiya news crews. Most of the dead and injured have been identified by survivors, neighbours, the local police, and doctors who had seen them as patients prior to the attack. The musicians from Baghdad were well known in most of Iraq (they had appeared on television as well). How plausible is it to imagine that the simplest solution is that all these people conspired in a hoax of this magnitude - in advance - just in case their village would be targetted by US forces? Did they blow up their own home to film it as rubble and then rebuild? Killed and maimed their own family and friends? Just to discredit the US? It would be easier to stage and film a phony beheading (I’m just saying is all)…

I have to say I’m with DtC and Aldebaran on this one. The military has lost its credibility in Iraq. IIRC, they also denied that they had seized and closed the hospital in Fallujah, and shot at ambulances, until enough evidence surfaced and forced them into admission. Same with Abu Ghraib. In this case, their story changes every day, and they still haven’t addressed/admitted that children were involved.

From the Sunday Independent:

The footage of flesh, hair and musical instruments was filmed by a video crew that reached the location of what local people say was a wedding party attacked without warning by the Americans, killing women and children. The instruments belonged to the band of Hussein Ali, one of Iraq’s most famous wedding singers, whose relatives buried him in Baghdad last week.

Despite this evidence - and earlier pictures filmed by al-Arabiya television, showing two dead babies wrapped side by side in a blanket, and a headless child lying next to the body of his or her mother - American commanders continue to insist that their strike, on a remote village in the desert close to the Syrian border, was against foreign fighters crossing into Iraq.

“These were more than two dozen military-age males,” scoffed Maj-Gen James Mattis, commander of the US 1st Marine Division. “Let’s not be naive.” What about the video footage? Maj-Gen Mattis said he had not seen it, but added: “Bad things happen in wars. I don’t have to apologise for the conduct of my men.”

More telling, however, was the reaction of the occupation authorities to the damaging video footage. US officials demanded al-Arabiya give them the name of the cameraman who shot the pictures. Al-Arabiya refused.

Apparently, cameras are the new WMD. Also, this from the Guardian, gives lie to the assertion that the dead and injured are “unidentified”:

By the time the sun rose on Wednesday over the Rakat family house, the raid had claimed 42 lives, according to Hamdi Noor al-Alusi, manager of the al-Qaim general hospital, the nearest to the village.

Among the dead were 27 members of the extended Rakat family, their wedding guests and even the band of musicians hired to play at the ceremony, among them Hussein al-Ali from Ramadi, one of the most popular singers in western Iraq.

Dr Alusi said 11 of the dead were women and 14 were children. “I want to know why the Americans targeted this small village,” he said by telephone. “These people are my patients. I know each one of them. What has caused this disaster?”

If anyone is still interested, here are more details about the wedding, and the families involved:

The celebration at Mukaradeeb was to be one of the biggest events of the year for a small village of just 25 houses. Haji Rakat, the father, had finally arranged a long-negotiated tribal union that would bring together two halves of one large extended family, the Rakats and the Sabahs.

Haji Rakat’s second son, Ashad, would marry Rutba, a cousin from the Sabahs. In a second ceremony one of Ashad’s female cousins, Sharifa, would marry a young Sabah boy, Munawar.

A large canvas awning had been set up in the garden of the Rakat villa to host the party. A band of musicians was called in, led by Hamid Abdullah, who runs the Music of Arts recording studio in Ramadi, the nearest major town.

He brought his friend Hussein al-Ali, a popular Iraqi singer who performs on Ramadi’s own television channel. A handful of other musicians including the singer’s brother Mohaned, played the drums and the keyboards.

The ceremonies began on Tuesday morning and stretched through until the late evening. “We were happy because of the wedding. People were dancing and making speeches,” said Ma’athi Nawaf, 55, one of the neighbours.

Late in the evening the guests heard the sound of jets overhead. Then in the distance they saw the headlights of what appeared to be a military convoy heading their way across the desert.

The party ended at around 10.30pm and the neighbours left for their homes. At 3am the bombing began. “The first thing they bombed was the tent for the ceremony,” said Mr Nawaf. “We saw the family running out of the house. The bombs were falling, destroying the whole area.”

Armoured military vehicles then drove into the village, firing machine guns and supported by attack helicopters. “They started to shoot at the house and the people outside the house,” he said.

Before dawn two large Chinook helicopters descended and offloaded dozens of troops. They appeared to set explosives in the Rakat house and the building next door and minutes later, just after the Chinooks left again, they exploded into rubble.

“I saw something that nobody ever saw in this world,” said Mr Nawaf. “There were children’s bodies cut into pieces, women cut into pieces, men cut into pieces.”

Among the dead was his daughter Fatima Ma’athi, 25, and her two young boys, Raad, four, and Raed, six. “I found Raad dead in her arms. The other boy was lying beside her. I found only his head,” he said. His sister Simoya, the wife of Haji Rakat, was also killed with her two daughters. “The Americans call these people foreign fighters. It is a lie. I just want one piece of evidence of what they are saying.”

Remarkably among the survivors were the two married couples, who had been staying in tents away from the main house, and Haji Rakat himself, an elderly man who had gone to bed early in a nearby house.

From the mosques of Ramadi volunteers had been called to dig at the graveyard of the tribe, on the southern outskirts of the city.

There lay 27 graves: mounds of dirt each marked with a single square of crudely cut marble, a name scribbled in black paint. Some gave more than one name, and one, belonging to a woman Hamda Suleman, the briefest of explanations: “The American bombing.”

[annaplurabelle]

AP: Video Shows Iraq Wedding Celebration

RAMADI, Iraq - A videotape obtained Sunday by Associated Press Television News captures a wedding party that survivors say was later attacked by U.S. planes early Wednesday, killing up to 45 people. The dead included the cameraman, Yasser Shawkat Abdullah, hired to record the festivities, which ended Tuesday night before the planes struck.

The U.S. military says it is investigating the attack, which took place in the village of Mogr el-Deeb about five miles from the Syrian border, but that all evidence so far indicates the target was a safehouse for foreign fighters.

“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,” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Saturday. “There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too.”

But video that APTN shot a day after the attack shows fragments of musical instruments, pots and pans and brightly colored beddings used for celebrations, scattered around the bombed out tent.

An AP reporter and 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 _ which runs for several hours.

APTN also traveled to Mogr el-Deeb, 250 miles west of Ramadi, the day after the attack to film what the survivors said was the wedding site. A devastated building and remnants of the tent, pots and pans could be seen, along with bits of what appeared to be the remnants of ordnance, one of which bore the marking “ATU-35,” similar to those on U.S. bombs.

A water tanker truck can be seen in both the video shot by APTN and the wedding tape obtained from a cousin of the groom.

[JonScribe]

@Shodan

Thanks for the link, emarkp. An interesting read.

A few highlights -

Interesting gear for a wedding.

Feel free to close your eyes real tight, stick your fingers in your ears, and keep repeating, “The US is always wrong. The US is always wrong.”

Maybe the Blue Fairy will make it all go away.

Regards,
Shodan

The Blue Fairy has some videotape she’d like you to see:

Videos back alleged bombing of wedding party

"The videotape obtained Sunday by Associated Press Television News captures a wedding party that survivors say was later attacked by U.S. planes early Wednesday, killing up to 45 people. The dead included the cameraman, Yasser Shawkat Abdullah, hired to record the festivities, which ended Tuesday night before the planes struck…

“The bride arrives in a white pickup truck and is quickly ushered into a house by a group of women. Outside, men recline on brightly coloured silk pillows, relaxing on the carpeted floor of a large goat-hair tent as boys dance to tribal songs.”

"(V)ideo that APTN shot a day after the attack shows fragments of musical instruments, pots and pans and brightly coloured beddings used for celebrations, scattered around the bombed out tent…

“An AP reporter and 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 — which runs for several hours.”

Jam those fingers in your ears real tight, asshole.

[kanicbird]

What a great f*cken idea, firing a gun in celebration in a war zone. This is about the most intelligent thing man kind could do. To bad they’re dead, it would be good to add their advanced intelligence to the human gene pool, as we need more people doing things like that.

I don’t care
I don’t care
I don’t care
!!!

[John_Carter_of_Mars]

@Diogenes the Cynic

Really? Why don’t you name a “conspiracy” that I’ve bought into, besides Bush lying about WMDs, which is demonstrably true.

Ok:

1. The Diebold(sp?) voting machines will be rigged to guarantee that GWB wins the election in November.

I’m too lazy to search for this, so if you deny that you participated in the subject discussion, don’t bother screaming “cite!”. I’ll take you word for it.

See there, ** Doggy Knees**? I don’t think you are a person of low integrity. “I’ll take your word for it.” You do appear to be somewhat humor-impaired, cursed with an irrational hatred for all things Bush and overly obsessed with politics. Other than that, you may be a prince of a fellow, for all I know.

[Metacom]

Allow me to do some pre-emptive spinning…

@AP

The videotape obtained Sunday by Associated Press Television News captures a wedding party that survivors say was later attacked by U.S. planes early Wednesday, killing up to 45 people. The dead included the cameraman, Yasser Shawkat Abdullah

@Metaspin

A videotape released by the Associated Press Television News captures a meeting of high-level terrorists that observers said was later attacked by U.S. war planes early Wednsday, killing up to 45 terrorists. The dead included a cameraman, hired by the terrorists to record the proceedings for future training manuals and documents.

@AP

The bride arrives in a white pickup truck and is quickly ushered into a house by a group of women.

@Metaspin

A woman, in expensive attire obviously denoting a leadership role of some kind, arrived in a white truck that was capable of carrying weapons that could have been used to attack US servicemen. She was quickly escorted into a portable building that was constructed of natively available materials so as to provide a measure of camoflauge against the desert backdrop.

@AP

Outside, men recline on brightly coloured silk pillows, relaxing on the carpeted floor of a large goat-hair tent as boys dance to tribal songs.

@Metaspin

Outside, possibly armed terrorists sit upon garishly decorated Islamic war-pillows, as a troupe of terrorist trainees mimics local dances in an attempt to disguise the meeting as a traditional wedding.

@AP

(V)ideo that APTN shot a day after the attack shows fragments of musical instruments, pots and pans and brightly coloured beddings used for celebrations, scattered around the bombed out tent…

@Metaspin

(V)ideo that APTN shot a day after the attack shows fragments of musical instruments that could be used to bludgeon captured American servicement, pots and pans that could have been used to prepare chemical or biologicals agents that could later be used to attack the US homeland, and brightly coloured beddings used for plotting anti-American activities, such as those that occured on 9/11.

@JonScribe

Jam those fingers in your ears real tight, asshole.

@Metaspin

I hate America, and enjoy defecating on the US flag and defacing bibles.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@John Carter of Mars

Ok:

1. The Diebold(sp?) voting machines will be rigged to guarantee that GWB wins the election in November.

I’m too lazy to search for this, so if you deny that you participated in the subject discussion, don’t bother screaming “cite!”. I’ll take you word for it.

See there, ** Doggy Knees**? I don’t think you are a person of low integrity. “I’ll take your word for it.” You do appear to be somewhat humor-impaired, cursed with an irrational hatred for all things Bush and overly obsessed with politics. Other than that, you may be a prince of a fellow, for all I know.

I did a search myself. I had no memory of saying anything like that but I thought it was possible I said something sarcastically. After several different searches, I can’t find a single thing I’ve ever posted about Diebold one way or the other.

I’m not a conspiracy nut. I have never in my life been as cynical and suspicious of an administration as I am now, and I didn’t get this way over night.

[Boo_Boo_Foo]

@Diogenes the Cynic

I’m not a conspiracy nut. I have never in my life been as cynical and suspicious of an administration as I am now, and I didn’t get this way over night.

Indeed my friend, if memory serves me correctly, you’ve actually served quite extensively at the coalface have you not, as a Marine, was it not?

My point here is this… when a former serving member of the military speaks up the way you are these days, yeah, it’s safe to say there’s something rotten in the State of Denmark, as it were.

And yeah, I’m aware that a truckload of fellow Dopers are also former (and current) serving members of the military, (Airman Doors comes to mind) but I honestly don’t think there’s anything innately wrong in questioning the wisdom of the Whitehouse’s current directional policies.

I find myself constantly thinking back to the 3 months immediately after September 11, and basically, every friggin government in the world was America’s side. And then, BAM! The 2002 State of the Union address and the famous “Axis of Evil” remark and I thought to myself… “You fucking fool GWB! You’ve gone and pointed a loaded gun at Iran, and just 6 weeks ago they were publicly offering safe passage to any American servicemen who found themselves on Iranian soil… you fool”.

So what I’m trying to say is that there are smart ways to go about things, and there are fucking dumb ways of going about solving things. And when push comes to shove, it seems to me that fighting Fundamentalist Islam is just another version of fighting all the other “fashionable instant solutions” we’ve seen for the last 100 years. That is, what really counts is actually fighting the root causes of WHY such fashionable causes are allowed to take hold - and quite frankly, sending into Iraq an undermanned military force who are being asked to perform miracles in a matter of years to solve something which took decades to form is just plain stupid. No other way to call it I’m afraid.

And please bear in mind, I’m all for fighting the War on Terror - I simply shake my head in disbelief how quickly the US Administration has been able to squander all the good will she enjoyed just 2 years and 8 months ago.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Boo Boo Foo

Indeed my friend, if memory serves me correctly, you’ve actually served quite extensively at the coalface have you not, as a Marine, was it not?

I was in the Navy, not the Marines but your point still stands.

[threemae]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3741223.stm

Well this just clouds the fucking waters, doesn’t it?

Okay, I’m back to the Iraqi side of the story, and Gen. Kimmitt has some 'splanin to do.

I’m not one for beliveing that the modern US armed forces are the type to create conspiracies or outright lies to cover up the murder of civilians, but then again…

[yojimbo]

I like the way the story has gone from there was no wedding to bad people have parties too :rolleyes:

[Desmostylus]

@threemae

Okay, I’m back to the Iraqi side of the story, and Gen. Kimmitt has some 'splanin to do.

I’m not one for beliveing that the modern US armed forces are the type to create conspiracies or outright lies to cover up the murder of civilians, but then again…

Telling the truth just aint part of the Bush game plan. The game plan is:

a) keep it secret

b) if (a) isn’t working, then talk bullshit

c) if (b) does’t work, change the subject and/or attack the motives of the questioners

d) if (c) doesn’t work, blame someone else.

And that’s it. That’s the entirety of the repertoire.

Anyone that doesn’t follow the game plan knows that they’re likely to find themselves on the wrong end of (c) or (d).

It’s a system that naturally selects for people that simply will not tell the truth.

[Aldebaran]

@kanicbird

What a great f*cken idea, firing a gun in celebration in a war zone. This is about the most intelligent thing man kind could do. To bad they’re dead, it would be good to add their advanced intelligence to the human gene pool, as we need more people doing things like that.

I don’t care
I don’t care
I don’t care
!!!

Can someone say something to this arrogant racist bigoted monster who’s murderous mind rejoices at the thought of children with their heads blown off by the US Heros?

I don’t know enough words in English. Thank you.

Salaam. A

[Aldebaran]

Has anyone seen the “proof” shown by the US military to defend their side of the story?

It reminded me at the idiotic “proof” Colin Powell was sent to the UN with.
Some silly pictures of things arranged to “look like s called * dangerous* items” who wer “ready to be used against US’ers”… On a few slides with no indication where these “dangerous items” were found. Just items arranged to get pictured.
Really convincing. Good staging.

And then his comments: There could 300 people sleep there. There were blankets and cloathing there… etc…

Well let me say you this, you arrogant stupid idiot of a US Army General:
300 people is a low figure for having as wedding guests and it is normal that they get blankets and sleeping places when they are staying over.
And at this side of the globe we also tend to change cloathing frequently. Sometimes that even means more then once a day (I most certainly do).

Maybe you idiot of a US Army general do not have family, no sleeping place and not cloathing and maybe you can’t even dream of a woman wanting to marry you ever.
Leave your issues with that at home an deal with the culture you occupy.

I am curious now what they are going to find out next to get away with this mass murder.
We already know that the US sadists who tortured and murderedget are declared to be “immune” for the local law and as we know: They claim also te be immune for International Law Tribunals.

Side note: It seems the arrogant idiots are very close at hitting the 'Ali Shrine with their innocent killing weaponry.
I do hope people in the USA understand what it means if they ever touch it.
All the outrage the murdering and destruction Iraq caused so so far will be nothing in comparison with the world wide outrage following such a “shock and awe” attack.
I think you people should bombard your lunatical president with mails to wake him up.

Salaam. A

[Shayna]

@annaplurabelle

How plausible is it to imagine that the simplest solution is that all these people conspired in a hoax of this magnitude - in advance - just in case their village would be targetted by US forces? Did they blow up their own home to film it as rubble and then rebuild? Killed and maimed their own family and friends? Just to discredit the US? It would be easier to stage and film a phony beheading (I’m just saying is all)…

First of all, make no mistake, I’m not taking one side over another here. If I’ve learned anything during this fucking mess, it’s that nothing can be taken for granted or automatically assumed to be true. I put forth the possibility that a band of possible insurgents are capable of setting up elaborate plots to cover a multitude of eventualities, including getting caught and shot up by coalition forces. Given that terrorists spent years devising a plot to get into the U.S. on student visas, enroll in flight schools, learn how to crash planes, hijack several at once and fly straight into buildings, yes, I think it’s plausible that the most obvious answer might not always be the actual answer. Do I believe it in this case? No. But I’m not ruling it out, either. One day it looks more and more like a wedding, the next it looks more and more like we destroyed a terrorist compound, wash, rinse, repeat.

As I’ve said several times in this thread, if this was indeed a wedding, someone, somewhere, somehow completely and utterly FUCKED UP in a major way, and I would love to know how and why. Obviously we’ve managed to avoid killing everyone and anyone who’s been shooting off celebratory fire over there, since this is the first (publicized) incident of this magnitude since this unholy nightmare started. So what was different this time?!

This whole thing sickens me.

[Shayna]

Oh, and griffen2, I’m glad to see one of the admins got you squared away with your membership. Welcome aboard, it’s nice to have you here!