Massacre in Samarra

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.

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.
‘All the people in town today are asking for revenge,’ said Majid
Fadel al-Samarai, 50, an emergency-room worker at the Samarra General
Hospital. ‘They 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. ‘I 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. ‘So the Americans shot
the man,’ he said.”

this is the first ~1/3 of the article - the whole thing is here:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/iraq-d03_prn.shtml
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Why we went to war: hear recordings of the lies, directly from the
mouths of  the bush regime right here:  http://2trak.com/remindus.swf
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i know that the US soldiers are good boys, but it's clear that by
supporting the Bush regime, are about as clueless as the Nazi soldiers
were under Hitler - and they can't be blamed because the spectacular
American propaganda machine - prevents them from seeing the truth.
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SUPPORT THE TROOPS!  GET THEM THE HELL OUT OF THERE!