MEDIA LOSES IT'S MIND!
HEAR THE PATRIOT
Posted on 05/23/2004 3:37:58 PM PDT by AntiGuv
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.
The wedding videotape shows a dozen white pickup trucks speeding through the desert escorting the bridal car — decorated with colorful ribbons. The bride wears a Western-style white bridal dress and veil. The camera captures her stepping out of the car but does not show a close-up.
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.
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.
As the musicians played, young men milled about, most dressed in traditional white robes. Young men swayed in tribal dances to the monotonous tones of traditional Arabic music. Two children — a boy and a girl — held hands, dancing and smiling. Women are rarely filmed at such occasions, and they appear only in distant glimpses.
Kimmitt said U.S. troops who swept through the area found rifles, machine guns, foreign passports, bedding, syringes and other items that suggested the site was used by foreigners infiltrating from Syria.
The videotape showed no weapons, although they are common among rural Iraqis.
Kimmitt has denied finding evidence that any children died in the raid although a "handful of women" — perhaps four to six — were "caught up in the engagement."
"They may have died from some of the fire that came from the aircraft," he told reporters Friday.
However, 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.
Four days after the attack, the memories of the survivors remain painful — as are their injuries.
Haleema Shihab, 32, one of the three wives of Rikad Nayef, said that as the first bombs fell, she grabbed her seven-month old son, Yousef, and clutching the hands of her five-year-old son, Hamza, started running. Her 15-year-old son, Ali, sprinted alongside her. They managed to run for several yards when she fell — her leg fractured.
"Hamza was yelling, 'mommy,'" Shihab, recalled. "Ali said he was hurt and that he was bleeding. That's the last time I heard him." Then another shell fell and injured Shihab's left arm.
"Hamza fell from my hand and was gone. Only Yousef stayed in my arms. Ali had been hit and was killed. I couldn't go back," she said from her hospital bed in Ramadi. Her arm was in a cast.
She and her stepdaughter, Iqbal — who had caught up with her — hid in a bomb crater. "We were bleeding from 3 a.m. until sunrise," Shihab said.
Soon American soldiers came. One of them kicked her to see if she was alive, she said.
"I pretended I was dead so he wouldn't kill me," said Shihab. She said the soldier was laughing. When Yousef cried, the soldier said: "No, stop," said Shihab.
Fourteen-year-old Moza, Shihab's stepdaughter, lies on another bed of the hospital room. She was hurt in the leg and cries. Her relatives haven't told her yet that her mother, Sumaya, is dead.
"I fear she's dead," Moza said of her mother. "I'm worried about her."
Moza was sleeping on one side of the porch next to her sisters Siham, Subha and Zohra while her mother slept on the other end. There were many others on the porch, her cousins, stepmothers and other female relatives.
When the first shell fell, Moza and her sisters, Subha, Fatima and Siham ran off together. Moza was holding Subha's hand.
"I don't know where Fatima and my mom were. Siham got hit. She died. I saw Zohra's head gone. I lost consciousness," said Moza, covering her mouth with the end of her headscarf.
Her sister Iqbal, lay in pain on the bed next to her. Her other sister, Subha, was on the upper floor of the hospital, in the same room with two-year-Khoolood. Her small body was bandaged and a tube inserted in her side drained her liver.
Her ankle was bandaged. A red ribbon was tied to her curly hair. Only she and her older brother, Faisal, survived from their immediate family. Her parents and four sisters and brothers were all killed.
In all, 27 members of Rikad Nayef's extended family died — most of them children and women, the family said.
"You need to get a clue, my friend."
I have a clue, the clue I have says I don't really care how many of these people we kill. And even if we kills some innocent ones, I still don't care. I'll start to care when we start targeting and killing innocent people on purpose. The first time we run a car off the road and pump bullets into a pregnant Muslim women and her four daughters then I will become anti-war.
But not until then.
Joe, your impeaching Bush posts are getting old..he had authorization to do so...No, it wasn't a formal declaration of war,but he did go and get approval to proceed from the Congress and the Senate.
It isn't Constitutional in your view, but the Congress would not impeach a President for doing what they authorized him to do..
Trust the military, especially during the war.
1. "About a dozen bodies, one without a head, could be clearly seen"These people aren't stupid. They know that the pictures are doing damage to American opinion. There is no way they can beat us, only we can beat ourselves.
Hmm...this seems like the natural extension of the damage that Abu Ghraib has had. The logic: "If panties on heads does that much damage to PR, then how about a headless body". Hmm, if Nick Berg were only an "innocent" Iraqi, not an innocent American, we might have seen that on the news.
Of course, Kerry, Kennedy, Clinton, and company are happy to obliged the terrorists and fuel their fire further. Someone needs to tell these F*****G IDIOTS to shut their pieholes!
And this AP "reporter" (along with all of the other terrorist sycophants) need to take their pens and stick 'em where the Sun don't shine.
Took them only a few days to piece this story together. Not bad.
My view is that of the Framers of the Constitution. I'm always amazed how many conservatives are quick to stash their principles away when it comes to clinging on to power.
I went through this with Nixon, watching the Republican Party and the conservative movement cling loyally to a man who had betrayed and undermined their every principle, as a man who never deserved our trust took us down in flames. It took us six years to recover.
We may not be the Stupid Party, but we are the Gullible Party.
I don't trust the military to always hit the right people, I know innocents are killed in war...I do know the amount of propaganda coming out of the ME often isn't trustworthy and must be verified. It could have been a wedding at a terror hideout.
If we make an error we have many times owned up to it,paid reparations and said we regretted it.
Those who say we could not make a mistake are mistaken..Those who assume we were wrong before seeing all the evidence are wrong,too. Blame America First gets old.
So lemme get this straight....the camera man was killed but somehow the VIDEO survived....yeahhhhhh....sure
I hope our timing wasn't dreadfully off...
You are fantasizing that Bush could or should be impeached. You don't like the war.
Good God, man, get a hold of yourself.
The Pali's have been known to make videos of alleged attacks, etc. Maybe they helped in the making of this video.
Interesting point. If Iraqi pro photographers are anything like Westerners (as they probably are - human nature and gadget freaks as people are), his first thought during the attack would have been to grab his camera and start filming - "Once in a lifetime opportunity" for footage. Perverse maybe - but that is how photogs think.
The lack of film is a bit odd.
If AP cannot back this story up with hard facts they should be disbanded. This article is pure bias - "oh my poor baby" - no mentions of weapons, passports, etc.
Diva's Husband
This reminds me of the "video" of the Iraqi arsenal we bombed back in the '90s, the one with the signs that said "Baby Milk Factory" - - in English.
See my post at #15. You'll get your investigation, but it was not animal smugglers. It was weapons.
It was a "Rat line".
...Propaganda? I think I'm reading and listening to wwwway too much news. But, If I stop now, I won't know if this is true or false. I'm getting more jaded, minute by minute...
yeah, a lot here tend to immediatley assume that this is a lie, but i realise that we do make mistakes and we need to be realistic when the possibility of one occurs. if you knee-jerk deny everything, its much worse when one of them turns out to be true. its better to take each event seriously and allow it to be proved, disproved by the facts in turn.
from what ive read and seen on tv, these may or may not be weapons/livestock smugglers but they probably had a wedding and some famous bagdhadi wedding singer was killed.
but of course i dont know for sure, it might be some nice propaganda work.
Why not? If the bullet hit the camera-men and not the camera?
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