Massacre in Samarra: US lies and self-delusion

[Aidoneus]

Massacre in Samarra: US lies and self-delusion
By David Walsh
3 December 2003

The US military’s initial account of Sunday’s firefight in the central Iraqi city of Samarra, uncritically relayed to the American people by a servile media, has proven to be a tissue of lies. It turns out that the “major victory” over the Iraqi resistance consisted of American forces blasting away indiscriminately in Samarra’s city center, killing innocent men, women and children, damaging property and buildings—including a mosque and a kindergarten—and further enraging the local population.

The Samarra incident in its various aspects—the battle itself, the military’s claims, the media’s role—is a microcosm of the US occupation of Iraq.

American military spokesmen first declared that US forces had defeated a “massive attack,” inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy. The Pentagon claimed that 46 Iraqi guerrillas had been killed, and later increased that figure to 54.

The US media passed on the “good news,” repeating the military’s assertion that dozens of Iraqi fighters had been slain. As Editor & Publisher Online noted December 2: “Neither the New York Times, New York Post, the Boston Globe, USA Today, the Washington Post, or Knight Ridder included any civilian witnesses or Iraqi hospital accounts in their initial reports Monday. Many flatly reported the death tally and account of the battle without noting this was ‘according to military officials.’ The Times topped its front page with the declarative headline: ‘46 Iraqis Die in Fierce Fight Between Rebels and GIs,’ and this was common treatment.”

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post predictably ran the most depraved headline: “GIs Blow Away 46 Saddam Fanatics.”

The story, however, evaporated almost as soon as it was told. On-the- scene reporting by journalists made clear that the claim of dozens of guerrilla fatalities was absurd, an invention of the US military command in Iraq. Local residents told reporters that eight to ten people had been killed—most, if not all of them, civilians.

--snip--

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/iraq-d03.shtml

[stopthegop]

1. need to be careful

remember the 'Jenin massacre' that never happened...

[pansypoo53219]

2. anybody else

think they have just moved to the shores of the Rheine?

[dae]

3. Dah!

[mmm]

4. All that we feared is coming true

“some residents went to their homes to retrieve their guns and began firing at the US troops. ‘These were normal people who were not involved in the resistance,’ said. ‘But they saw how the Americans were firing their machine guns and tanks in every direction, and they wanted to fight back.’”

[PSU84]

5. Iraqis dispute death toll in clash

Chicago Tribune December 2, 2003

Iraqis dispute death toll in clash
Accounts differ over key details

Mike Dorning and Christine Spolar, Tribune correspondents

A day after some of the fiercest fighting between armed Iraqis and U.S. soldiers since the fall of Baghdad, American forces and Iraqi residents of this loyalist stronghold sharply disagreed Monday over the death toll and other key details of the clash. U.S. military officials said American forces killed 54 Iraqi fighters who had launched coordinated ambushes on two armored convoys delivering truckloads of newly printed Iraqi dinars to the branches of the Rasheed Bank in Samarra. An estimated 22 other fighters were injured and one man detained, U.S. officials said.

Those numbers contrasted with accounts from Iraqi police and hospital officials in Samarra who counted no more than eight bodies- -including a child, a woman and a 72-year-old Iranian man visiting a religious shrine--that had been recovered from the conflict. At least 54 people were treated for injuries, including six children, according to Iraqi hospital officials.

But Iraqi officials also were cautious Monday in assessing the death toll in the small Samarra hospital, still edged with cars burned during the attack. Maj. Saadoon Ahmed, an Iraqi police liaison for the hospital, said some injured people were sent to neighboring towns because Samarra Public Hospital was overwhelmed. Ahmed added that many families who recovered dead relatives from the scene may have decided to forgo medical authorities. There was no way, Ahmed said, for hospital officials to readily classify any of the dead as civilians or fighters.

More...
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0312020134dec02,1,287127.story