Bombing the Wedding

The Independent claims to have proof that the US military bombed a wedding and not a “smuggler safe house on a rat line:”

Fresh allegations of American abuse of prisoners continue to appall the world. But now ‘The Independent on Sunday’ has uncovered proof of US troops deliberately and indiscriminately shooting civilians. Here we examine new evidence that suggests the lawlessness in the American military was never confined to the prison camps and torture rooms but extended to the streets and homes of Iraq.

Amid the welter of ugly pictures from Iraq last week were images worse than those of the humiliation and torture of detainees in Abu Ghraib prison. These show chunks of flesh and hanks of women’s hair scattered across a scene of devastation. Among the few recognisable objects are musical instruments.

This is the scene of an incident that has divided Iraqis from their occupiers like few others. It has highlighted an issue more significant, yet far less discussed, than mistreatment in prisons: the degree to which indiscriminate use of American firepower has made enemies of the Iraqi population. According to independent estimates – none are available from the coalition – about 11,500 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the start of the war in March last year.

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..

Read the rest…

As Juan Cole said, “Can’t they just say that they are deeply sorry for the Iraqis’ loss, and that they are not sure what went wrong, and will investigate? If they did kill so many women and children, surely that is a mistake no matter how you parse it, and they may as well admit it. It is this arrogance and instistence that the US is always right that has caused almost 90% of the Iraqis to come to view the Americans as occupiers rather than liberators.

Update 5/20: I just saw Gen. Kimmit on television denying that US forces saw any children at the site that was hit. But video and Arab television and press reports clearly show women and children casualties! This way lies a further erosion of the credibility of the US military in Iraq.

Back to Iraq

Christopher Albritton is Back to Iraq and describes his return trip in “Greetings from Baghdad,” along with comments about the raids on Ahmed Chalabi’s house and INC offices, as well as the wedding deaths in “Chalabi to CPA.”

And Riverbend, the Iraqi girl blogger, also comments on Chalabi and the attack on the wedding party in her posting En Kint Tedri…

    In the end, America had to know that Chalabi was virtually useless…. Could the decision-makers currently mulling over the Iraq situation be so ridiculously optimistic? Or could they have really been so wrong in the past? We have a saying in Arabic, “En kint tedri, fe tilk musseeba… in kint la tedri, fa il musseebatu a’adham” which means, “If you knew, then that was a catastrophe… and if you didn’t know, then the catastrophe is greater.”

Saturday Blog Tour

Nikolai at Lenin’s Tomb points out another American Cultural Ignorance faux pas committed in renaming their infamous Iraqi torture center:

At the behest of the IGC, Abu Graibh prison has been renamed , Camp Redemption. I shit you not. Hmmm. Where can they have got that idea from?

Could it be a reference to the old regime, which was, after all the Ba’ath (Redemption) Socialist Party of Iraq?

Remember Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL)?

Abu Aardvark posts a development I had missed and points out an interesting aspect of al-Jazeera.

Following the American lead in attacking al Jazeera and cracking down on press freedom, “Saudi Arabia’s highest religious authority issued a “fatwa” or religious edict Thursday banning Muslims from watching Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV.” Now, the Bush administration might object to al Jazeera because it sees it as an anti-American force in the region, while the Saudis see it as “”Zionist television,” but really… you say tomayto, I say tomahto.

Anyway, the real point of the Saudi edict – and the crippling blind spot of the Bush administration – comes here: the fatwa bitterly attacks al Jazeera because it “hosts “so-called reformists who have a podium for airing their poisonous ideas.”” This is the side of al Jazeera which the Bush administration always misses: as much as it challenges American foreign policy in the region, it challenges the repressive status quo in the Arab world far more. If the Bush administration were serious about promoting Arab reform – which I don’t believe that they are in the slightest – then they would recognize al Jazeera’s power in mobilizing pressures for change from within.

Emphasis mine. So, the Bush administration and the most repressive country on the planet’s highest religious hardliner both hate al Jazeera, think it interferes with their agendas, and want to ban it.

Stuart Hughes on Ahmed Chalabi passing American intel to Iran:

CBS is reporting tonight that Ahmed Chalabi is accused of passing highly-classified US intelligence to Iran. Newsweek has already reported as much. If the information Chalabi gave Tehran is on a par with the “intelligence” he fed to the Pentagon, the US has nothing to worry about.

Oh, and for anyone in the market for Right-Wing Stuff, Stuart has a link, in case your “Peace Through Superior Firepower” bumper sticker is getting tatty. I hear they’re having a Discontinued Items sale on this one.

Eli at Left I highlights the hypocrisy of the New York Times reporting on Chalabi’s disinfo while never mentioning Judith “Kneepads” Miller, NYT’s very own Chalabi Receptacle.

Alan at Southerly Buster also weighs in on the Times’ hypocrisy and the Iran-Chalabi connection, “Perhaps these genius intellectuals should go back to the boring art of fact-checking. Perhaps, if one member of the axis of evil could use the Cabal’s intellectual prejudices to get them to attack another member of the axis of evil then the whole axis was not all that, well, axial.”

A new entry in the Iraq: I’m Lovin It series: (Part IX: Muppet Government) at The Decadent West.

The posters at Rafah Kid Rambles have been working hard to keep us apprised of events in Gaza. There are too many excellent posts and unique photos to list them all, just read the entire thing. Don’t miss the bit about the Rabbi Dov Lior ruling which Lawrence of Cyberia slices and dices here.

Christopher Albritton of Back to Iraq is back in Iraq, reporting from Baghdad.

Jim Henley reminds me that none of us AntiWar.com bloggers (Not even Matt!) have blogged congratulations for Matt Barganier’s selection as the new editor at AntiWar.com. Congratulations also to the AntiWar staff for acquiring such talent!

Micah Holmquist figures the US troops in Iraq are ahead of the Afghanistan troops in the Wedding Bombing competition.

Readers of prominent political blogs may have noticed a survey going on the past week or so by blogads. The results are interesting and include some surprises, such as the fact that according to blogads’ survey of 17,159 blog readers, 79% of all blog readers are men. Thanks to Tim Dunlop at the road to surfdom for posting the link to the survey results.

Patriotboy is looking for a second wife at Single Republican.com. Also, Republican Jesus weighs in on the Iraq torture photos.

Iraq Postmortem

Steve LaTulippe over at LewRockwell.com does an “autopsy” of the Mess in Potamia. Even though the specifics all relate to the Iraq war, the conclusion is applicable to all Imperial adventures:

    It was a geopolitical felony, committed with malice aforethought, perpetrated by a small band of admittedly cunning fanatics. They had a large mob of accessories who participated “for the cheap thrill of it.” Numerous bystanders saw what was going on, but failed to intervene because they feared the risks involved. And those few citizens who did stand up to stop it were utterly ineffective in their efforts.
    It is not a pretty picture…but post-mortems seldom are.