MASSACRE IN SAMARRA: US LIES AND SELF-DELUSION

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

World Socialist Web Site    3 December 2003
        By David Walsh

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 Taccording to military officials.' The Times 
topped its front page with the declarative headline: T46 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.

On Tuesday, the military's version of events continued to unravel, as even 
major US media outlets acknowledged widespread doubts about a major 
American military triumph and provided certain information about civilian 
casualties.

The San Francisco Chronicle's Vivienne Walt reported from Samarra's 
hospital: "In a mix of rage and grief, residents lashed out at the 
brigade's soldiers, accusing them of firing randomly into crowded market 
areas in the center of the city, killing civilians, including two Iranians 
believed to be pilgrims visiting a Shiite mosque in town. TAll the people 
in town today are asking for revenge,' said Majid Fadel al-Samarai, 50, an 
emergency-room worker at the Samarra General Hospital. TThey want to kill 
the Americans like they killed our civilians. Give me a gun, and I will 
also fight.'

"Residents also charged that American soldiers showed little regard for 
the safety of civilians during the gun battle. TI saw a man running across 
the street to get his small son, who was stuck in the middle,' said Abdul 
Satar, 47, who owns a bakery a block from one of the two banks to which 
the convoys had driven. TSo the Americans shot the man,' he said."

Similar reports and comments from Samarra residents appeared in other 
major newspapers and even on US television. The New York Times cited the 
comments of a 52-year-old ambulance driver at the city's morgue, Adnan 
Sahib Dafar, who pointed to a dead woman and demanded, "Is this woman 
shooting a rocket-propelled grenade?... Is she fighting?" The Times also 
quoted a shopkeeper, Satar Nasiaf, 47, who had watched two Iraqi civilians 
die at the hands of US troops, "If I had a gun, I would have attacked the 
Americans myself.... The Americans were shooting in every direction."

New York Newsday correspondent Mohammed Bazzi commented: "Some witnesses 
said US forces began firing at random after they were attacked. TThey just 
started shooting in all directions,' said Akil al-Janabi, 43, who said his 
brother was wounded in the crossfire. TThey have no regard for civilians. 
We were not the ones attacking them, but now we want revenge for our dead 
and injured.'"

Reporters from Britain's Guardian spoke to local officials who "questioned 
the high body count and said there were non-combatants among the dead. TWe 
think that at most eight or nine people died,' said Khaled Mohammed, an 
admissions clerk in the hospital's emergency ward, but added that some of 
the dead might have been taken straight to the town morgue.

"A Samarra policeman, Captain Sabti Awad, said American troops had opened 
fire at random in response to the ambush, killing and wounding civilians. 
Ahmed al-Samarai, another police officer, said: TNot more than 10 people 
were killed and some of those were not involved in the fighting.'... Jihad 
Hussein, a student, said he had seen passersby running for cover. TThey 
were spraying the whole street,' he said. TI don't know who fired the 
first shot, the Americans or the Fedayeen, but I saw at least one young 
woman hit by a bullet as she lay on the ground.'

A US soldier, a "combat leader," writing on the Soldiers For The Truth web 
site, who claims to have participated in the Samarra battle, explained 
that "most of the casualties were civilians, not insurgents or criminals 
as [is] being reported. During the ambushes the tanks, brads [Bradley 
Fighting Vehicles] and armored HUMVEES hosed down houses, buildings, and 
cars while using reflexive fire against the attackers."

Agence France Presse (AFP) reporters spoke with residents who had not seen 
any militants' bodies after the firefight. An ambulance driver, 
Abdelmoneim Mohammed, said he had not transported any fighters. "If I had 
seen bodies, I would have picked them up. It's not like the Americans 
would have done it. If the death toll had reached that announced by the 
Americans, the atmosphere in Samarra would be quite different."

The owner of a grocery store located 60 yards from the scene of one of the 
attacks told AFP, "After the firing, I went out of my shop. There were no 
wounded, no killed on the streets. Where could they have disappeared?"

(Whatever lessons the battle of Samarra may have taught the Pentagon, one 
must be prominent in many minds: the need to prevent journalists from 
being in a position to debunk the American version of events. The military 
may resort once again to the killing of reporters, a policy already put 
into effect early in the Iraqi war, in order to intimidate and silence 
journalists not inclined to parrot the official line.)

In the face of considerable evidence, Pentagon officials stood firm 
Tuesday, continuing to claim a great victory. In Brussels, Gen. Peter 
Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters, "They 
attacked, and they were killed. So I think it will be instructive to 
them."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asserted that the continuing 
insurgency was being conducted by "a limited number of people who are 
determined to kill innocent men, women and children." According to 
Rumsfeld, they are "being rounded up, captured, killed, wounded and 
interrogated." A senior military official told the New York Times, "They 
[the Iraqi resistance] got whacked, and won't try that again."

As for accounts of civilian casualties, which appeared in virtually every 
news outlet worldwide, US Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told a Baghdad press 
conference, "We have no such reports, whether from medical authorities or 
police."

American military officials attempted to brazen their way through the 
thorny issue of the missing corpses of the Iraqi fighters. Kimmitt told 
the media, "I would suspect that the enemy would have carried them away 
and brought them back to where their initial base was." Col. Fredrik 
Rudesheim, when asked about the same issue, responded: "Are you asking me 
to produce [them, i.e., the dead bodies]?" He continued, "This is a good 
question and I think perhaps if you can interview the Fedayeen or whoever 
attacked us, you might get a better answer."

Lieut. Col. Ryan Gonsalves, commander of the 166th Armored Battalion in 
Samarra, said the body count was "based on the reports we got from the 
ground." The AFP acerbically noted, "The mystery [of the absent bodies], 
which borders on solving a mathematics equation, further deepened with 
Col. Gonsalves' report. According to him, a total of 60 militants, divided 
into two groups, attacked two convoys escorting new Iraqi currency to 
banks in the city.... If the US troops killed 46 and captured 11 of them, 
only three of the survivors would have been left to pick up the corpses."

To what extent self-delusion, as opposed to simple prevarication, played a 
role in producing the Samarra "body count" and the US military's general 
picture of the gun battle is impossible to determine with precision. 
American commanders undoubtedly feel the need to boost the morale of their 
troops and supply the Bush administration with "good news" on the military 
front.

In any event, the Samarra episode contains features that reveal the 
character of the war as a whole:

1. Massive and ever-growing Iraqi popular opposition to the American 
occupation. Both US soldiers on the ground and Iraqis agree that when the 
US forces started firing at everything in sight, as Newsday put it, "some 
residents went to their homes to retrieve their guns and began firing at 
the US troops. TThese were normal people who were not involved in the 
resistance,' [one witness] said. TBut they saw how the Americans were 
firing their machine guns and tanks in every direction, and they wanted to 
fight back.'"

By their actions in recent months and Sunday's display of indiscriminate 
firepower in particular, the US forces have aroused the outrage of 
Samarra's population, under the old regime a hotbed of anti-Hussein 
sentiment. A similar process is at work in much of the country.

2. The deterioration in the morale of US troops. The mental state of the 
increasingly demoralized American forces in Iraq must include many 
conflicting and contradictory sentiments: opposition to the war, 
disorientation, bewilderment, fear, frustration, as well as a fury that 
can take homicidal forms.

The US soldier quoted above at Soldiers For The Truth no doubt reflects a 
common worry among American troops when he writes, in regard to the 
Samarra fighting, "I am very concerned in the coming days we will find we 
killed many civilians as well as Iraqi irregular fighters.... We are 
probably turning many Iraqi[s] against us and I am afraid instead of 
climbing out of the hole, we are digging ourselves in deeper."

3. The general perplexity of American ruling circles, politically and 
militarily. US policy in Iraq can take only one of two paths: the 
withdrawal of American forces from the country, which is strategically 
unthinkable for the Bush administration and the American ruling elite, or 
the physical elimination of thousands of Iraqis and the transformation of 
the country into a vast prison camp.

The launching of "Operation Iron Hammer" and the unleashing of vast 
firepower given any excuse, as in Samarra, demonstrate that the US 
military's response to its present predicament is to step up the level of 
violence and terror against an increasingly sophisticated Iraqi resistance 
and the population as a whole.

4. The recourse to falsification and wishful thinking, with the full 
assistance of the American media. The military's lying about the gunfight 
in Samarra is the sharpest expression of the basic lie at the heart of the 
entire Iraq operation. This is an illegal war, justified with falsehoods 
about "weapons of mass destruction" and Saddam Hussein's Al Qaeda 
connection, carried out against the wishes of the majority of Iraqis and 
in the face of massive global opposition. The invasion and occupation have 
predatory, colonial aims, none of which can be acknowledged by the Bush 
administration or the US press and television.

The Samarra battle is a small foretaste of the disaster the Bush 
administration is preparing for the Iraqi people, the American population 
and the population of the entire world.