thedrifter
06-05-04, 06:53 AM
06-02-2004
Guest Column: The Desert Wedding That Wasn’t
Editor’s Note: The following memorandum was sent by a Pentagon contact to Col. David Hackworth regarding the incident on May 19 in western Iraq where U.S. forces attacked a large group of people at a remote farmhouse. Many news media outlets have prominently reported claims from some Iraqis charging that the group was a wedding party, although CENTCOM has flatly denied that. The officer’s name has been removed for his own protection.
Hack:
CLASSIFICATION: UNCLASSIFIED
“Wedding Party” Details
Just reviewed a classified brief on the supposed wedding - no way it was. Here are some unclass details I can provide (brief had lots of pictures to back up the details):
* Weddings traditionally held on Thursdays in Iraq to take advantage of Friday as a day of rest - raid took place on Tuesday night.
* Only permanent dwelling at the site held large stocks of food, bedding, medical supplies (lots of these - was the wedding going to be a cage match of some sort 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 than that would be just too far for the catering staff to walk carrying all those huge platters of food - against union rules.
* 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 others 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 IDs 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 RPGs (they really suck when you fire them up in the air for celebration), there were also military binoculars (when they separate the men and women they have to look at each other with binos I guess), and IED making material (party favors?).
* Lots of clothing prepackaged in pants and shirt sets (guerranimals for guerrillas).
* 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 scumbags 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 [for intelligence data]. 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.
Thought it was important to get this word out as much as possible as you won’t see any of this on CNN.
Take care,
[Name deleted]
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=DefenseWatch.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=508&rnd=404.0944349559264
Ellie
Guest Column: The Desert Wedding That Wasn’t
Editor’s Note: The following memorandum was sent by a Pentagon contact to Col. David Hackworth regarding the incident on May 19 in western Iraq where U.S. forces attacked a large group of people at a remote farmhouse. Many news media outlets have prominently reported claims from some Iraqis charging that the group was a wedding party, although CENTCOM has flatly denied that. The officer’s name has been removed for his own protection.
Hack:
CLASSIFICATION: UNCLASSIFIED
“Wedding Party” Details
Just reviewed a classified brief on the supposed wedding - no way it was. Here are some unclass details I can provide (brief had lots of pictures to back up the details):
* Weddings traditionally held on Thursdays in Iraq to take advantage of Friday as a day of rest - raid took place on Tuesday night.
* Only permanent dwelling at the site held large stocks of food, bedding, medical supplies (lots of these - was the wedding going to be a cage match of some sort 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 than that would be just too far for the catering staff to walk carrying all those huge platters of food - against union rules.
* 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 others 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 IDs 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 RPGs (they really suck when you fire them up in the air for celebration), there were also military binoculars (when they separate the men and women they have to look at each other with binos I guess), and IED making material (party favors?).
* Lots of clothing prepackaged in pants and shirt sets (guerranimals for guerrillas).
* 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 scumbags 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 [for intelligence data]. 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.
Thought it was important to get this word out as much as possible as you won’t see any of this on CNN.
Take care,
[Name deleted]
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=DefenseWatch.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=508&rnd=404.0944349559264
Ellie