Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Iraq War: Wedding at Mukaradeeb

In response to Marigolds' question in the comments to the last post, I'm posting a few links to some of the more recent articles I've seen on the village where a wedding party was shot up.

My impression is that the Army planned a raid on the village because they had intelligence (of what quality, who knows?) that it was being used as a way-station for infiltration of outside fighters through Syria.  But it sounds like they essentially came in and shot up the village, and made not a lot of effort to discriminate between unarmed civilians, children, armed fighters, or anyone else.

Initial news reports included speculation about whether guns were being fired into the air as part of a wedding party celebration.  That allowed Defense Department spokespeople to ask why they were celebrating at 3am, when the attack took place.  But they weren't celebrating, they were asleep when the Army launched an air and ground assault on the village.

One incident like this doesn't much damage the credibility of the military.  For better or worse, the public is willing to give the military the benefit of the doubt, especially if a story isn't heavily covered.  But now that reports like this have accumulated over years now, since the start of the Afghan War, it's not the same.  Plus, Pentagon spokespeople both civilian and uniformed have given the world and the US public reason to question their credibility time and again.

With this incident, the military officially claimed that the US soldiers on the ground reported on children among the dead.  But Western journalists got there in time before the burials to see that there were numerous children among the dead.  (Muslim burial custom, like the Jewish one, normally has the burial within 24 hours of the death.)

Wedding party video casts doubt on American version of attack that killed 42 Guardian (UK) 05/25/04

'US soldiers started to shoot us, one by one' Guardian (UK) 05/21/04

Atrios has some relevant comments and links on the Wedding Massacre (05/23/04).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

thank you, Bruce.  i am afraid i am a member of the public who deeply doubts the official word that comes from military mouthpieces.  i read the description of the video in several places, and quotes from survivors.  it does seem that most women and children were sleeping, but i don't see anything incredible about people being awake and celebrating at 3 a.m. at a big celebration where people may have traveled some distance to come together for a large tribal occasion.  also the firing of guns in the air at celebrations is something i am long used to, from living surrounded by Hispanic people for whom this is also a tradition, albeit an annoying and dangerous one.