Iraqi Witness Exposes Reasons For US Targeting Village Wedding

The background to American bombing raid on a village wedding party on May 18 that killed the bridegroom along with over 40 other villagers has remained largely a mystery in the international media. After the bomb raid, which the Pentagon claimed was an attempted assault on Resistance fighters in the area of al-Qa’im on the Syrian border, the AP broadcast video of the wedding contradicted the official US storey.

Now an Iraqi resident of the area has come forward with information, published by Quds Press and carried on Mafkarat al-Islam’s website, indicating that the real reason for the US attack had been to strike at a village and its elders who were involved not in fighting the occupation, but in helping US troops escape from military service in Iraq.

“The American occupation forces knew full well that we were having a wedding party. They intentionally bombed the wedding because the guests included several tribal chiefs and prominent persons from the western part of Iraq. The occupation forces hated the people of this region because they have been helping occupation soldiers to escape from Iraq,” said the uncle of the martyred bridegroom, a local Iraqi resident who gave his name as Abu ‘Azzam.

“The village of Makr adh-Dhib,” Abu ‘Azzam explained, “is between ar-Rabtah and al-Qa’im, and is 125km from Husaybah on the Iraqi Syrian border. The people who live in the village are of the al-Bu Fahd tribes, a part of the large Arab Dulaym tribal federation in Iraq. They have played a big role in providing the Resistance with supplies, equipment, weapons, everything.”

The American forces came to the village lots of times,” Abu ‘Azzam said, “searching for weapons and Arab Resistance fighters. But they never found anything. But the thing that caused matters to come to a head was that we in Makr adh-Dhib were carrying out organized operations to smuggle American soldiers who wanted to flee the hell in Iraq out of the country. We were able to smuggle large numbers of those soldiers through our ‘windows’, windows that only a small number of people in the village know about. We would smuggle them for a price, that could go as high as $10,000 in some cases, plus the equipment that the soldier carried,” Abu ‘Azzam explained.

Abu ‘Azzam told QudsPress, “we were able to smuggle a number of US Army officers who were fleeing from Iraq out of the country. The last operation we carried out was just a few days before the Americans bombed the wedding. In that operation we smuggled 13 American soldiers out of Iraq. But apparently the American forces got wind of what we were doing. They encircled the village and took people in for questioning. It was then that we came to understand that they meant to do us harm, because they were very angry.”

“After that smuggling operation and the interrogations, we realized that they were planning something against us. We became wary and started to make preparations to confront them. But we didn’t know that they would respond in such a cowardly way,” Abu ‘Azzam explained.

“It was on the night of the wedding of my nephew Muhammad Rakad al-Fahdawi, and after the invited guests had come – people of the village and the surrounding area including tribal shaykhs and prominent personalities. During the afternoon the bride was brought from ar-Ramadi and it was after that that the American forces showed up with their Jeeps and tanks and helicopters and closed off the area. They pounded the wedding with 10 rockets of various types and also fired automatic weapons,” Abu ‘Azzam recounted.

The AP video, released days after the US attack, showed the wedding in progress before the US attack on May 18 that left more than 40 Iraqi wedding guests dead.

Here's a synopsis of the Battle Damage Assessment(generally done on site on the ground soon after attack by Recon Marines) of the site by someone more knowledgeable than most.

The Wedding in Question

- Weddings traditionally held on Thursdays in Iraq to take advantage of Friday as a day of rest - raid took place on Tuesday night.

- Dwelling at the site held large stocks of food, bedding, medical supplies (lots of these - was the wedding going to hold a cage match or were the caterers just bad cooks?), ammunition and weapons, as well as an apparent document forging set up. Meat was still frozen solid

- Not prepared for a wedding feast and there were no stocks of dishes, plates, etc.

- Contrary to media reports, no "Nuptial Tent" was found and a 1KM area around the site was searched - any further away would be just too far for the catering staff to walk carrying all those huge platters of food.

- No evidence of any means of support for the house (like sheep farming which is most common in that area). All evidence pointed to a smuggler way station - fit perfectly the description of several other found in the past.

- "Wedding guests" (deceased of course) were almost all men of military age, only a couple of women, no elders at all and only one child (wounded) noted. All dressed as city dwellers, not Bedouins who would hold a wedding at such a location. All of the deceased were sterilized, as in none had any form of ID on them at all. Only ID's found were in a nice neat stack inside the house - and then quite a few less of those than there were people at the site.

- Weapons were varied and included RPG's, there were also military binoculars (when they separate the men and women they have to look at each other with bino's I guess), and IED making material (party favors?).

- Lots of clothing prepackaged in pants and shirt sets.

- There were also no gifts, no decorations, no food set out or left over, and the good bit of money recovered was all in the pockets of the "guests" (maybe they were just cheap guests).

I strongly suspect that after their Foreign Fighter way station got whacked, they tried to set it up to look like what happened in Afghanistan when a wedding was actually hit due to celebratory firing being taken
for ground fire by orbiting aircraft. I also would not put it past the scum bags to sweep a local village for appropriately aged "guests" to kill and display for the TV cameras. Our BDA assessment was made by people on the site just after the schwacking and they took their time to count and exploit the site. This is just speculation on my part.

Bottom line assessment: Good hit - no wedding. These were foreign fighters that had just crossed into Iraq and got an early trip to paradise and the martyrdom hall of fame.

LtCol Bill Mullen, USMC
Executive Assistant
J-3, Deputy Director for Regional Operations
2D921, The Pentagon

Peace through superior fire power!
God Bless America!
Sgt Grit

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"Of course, we know this story is BS, but if the person telling the BS story is really a relative of the groom it just convinces me even more that this was no innocent "wedding" but a gathering of really bad characters."

Many people in that area smuggle livestock across the Syrian border for a living. Of course smuggling US troops out of Iraq is absurd. More likely is that this particular family had gone into the business of smuggling "resistance fighters" across the Iraqi/Syrian border. It probably pays better than goat smuggling even if it is more dangerous.

These are family run operations and can be quite well supplied with satellite phones, water tankers, GPS systems etc.

Very likely US troops had been watching them for weeks and knew what they were up to but had not yet spotted a large number of foreign troops at their compound yet. The night of the wedding since men and women are segregated US troops saw a large number of men only and assumed a meeting of resistance fighters was taking place instead of a wedding.

Oops....oh well, one of the dangers of going into the resistance fighter smuggling business is having a large chunk of your family massacred by the US. Hope the money they made was worth it.

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