Iraq wedding massacre

The mowing down last Wednesday of 45 people in a wedding party, including many women and children, is yet another sickening episode that has become all too routine in American military operations. But perhaps most sickening are the outrageous falsehoods issued by a US military spokesman to cover ass in the incident.

'Contrary to media reports, there was no wedding tent and no nuptial tent in the area', Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations director for Multinational Force Iraq said during a Baghdad news conference... 'But there are still not reports of any children being killed'.

Kimmitt said a videotape distributed to the media showing at least a dozen bodies, including small children, wrapped in blankets for burial, being unloaded from a truck doesn't look like the video taken at the site of the attack....

...Bad people have parties too....

A new AP release on the incident, however, describes a lengthy video of the scene attacked by the Americans:

The singing and dancing seems to go on forever at the all-male tent set up in the garden of the host, Rikad Nayef, for the wedding of his son, Azhad, and the bride Rutbah Sabah. The men later move to the porch when darkness falls, apparently taking advantage of the cool night weather. Children, mainly boys, sit on their fathers' laps; men smoke an Arab water pipe, finger worry beads and chat with one another. It looks like a typical, gender-segregated tribal desert wedding.

As expected, women are out of sight — but according to survivors, they danced to the music of Hussein al-Ali, a popular Baghdad wedding singer hired for the festivities. Al-Ali was buried in Baghdad on Thursday.

Prominently displayed on the videotape was a stocky man with close-cropped hair playing an electric organ. Another tape, filmed a day later in Ramadi and obtained by APTN, showed the musician lying dead in a burial shroud — his face clearly visible and wearing the same tan shirt as he wore when he performed....

...an AP reporter obtained names of at least 10 children who relatives said had died. Bodies of five of them were filmed by APTN when the survivors took them to Ramadi for burial Wednesday. Iraqi officials said at least 13 children were killed.

Emphasis is added above to show where key aspects of the incident are reported to be at direct variance with the tale Kimmitt has chosen to spin.

The US apparently feels the need to justify its heavy-handed killings through mythic "intelligence" concerning foreign fighters and safe houses. Ordinary Iraqis celebrating have become the "bad" people. If this method of extermination of these dehumanized people continues, America should not be surprised if the insurgency against it in Iraq grows.