U.S. Slaughters Civilians, Calls Them Insurgents

http://nytimes.com/2003/12/02/international/middleeast/02IRAQ.html?hp

December 2, 2003
U.S. Sees Lesson for Insurgents in an Iraq Battle
By DEXTER FILKINS and IAN FISHER

AMARRA, Iraq, Dec. 1 - American commanders vowed Monday that the killing of
as many as 54 insurgents in this central Iraqi town would serve as a lesson
to those fighting the United States, but Iraqis disputed the death toll and
said anger against America would only rise.

Accounts of a three-hour battle fought in the alleys and streets of Samarra
on Sunday diverged radically, with Iraqis saying only eight people had been
killed, several of them civilians.

At the morgue, Adnan Sahib Dafar, 52, an ambulance driver, pointed to a dead
woman on a steel tray. The woman, Mr. Dafar said, had worked at the city's
big pharmaceutical factory and had walked into the crossfire between
American forces and Iraqi guerrillas that began with an attempted ambush of
an American military convoy.

"Is this woman shooting a rocket-propelled grenade?" he demanded, standing
over the body. "Is she fighting?" There was only one other body, that of a
gray-bearded old man, in the morgue.

Speaking in Brussels at a NATO defense ministers' meeting, Gen. Peter Pace,
vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, portrayed the fight here,
apparently the most deadly since Saddam Hussein was ousted in April, as a
grim lesson for America's foes.

"They attacked, and they were killed," General Pace said of the insurgents.
"So I think it will be instructive to them."

Speaking at the same meeting, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said such
attacks were being mounted by "a limited number of people who are determined
to kill innocent men, women and children." They are "being rounded up,
captured, killed, wounded and interrogated," he said.

But on the streets of Samarra, an hour's drive north of Baghdad and just
down the road from Tikrit, the hometown of Mr. Hussein, the lessons of the
battle, and even its precise nature, seemed far from clear.

It appeared from the anger among Iraqis in Samarra that America faces a
fundamental dilemma: As it steps up the pressure on the insurgents who are
killing Americans and Iraqis in growing numbers, the very Iraqis they are
trying to win over may be alienated.

"If I had a gun, I would have attacked the Americans myself," said Satar
Nasiaf, 47, a shopkeeper who said he had watched two Iraqi civilians fall to
American fire. "The Americans were shooting in every direction."

While American commanders said the Iraqi body count had come from precise
reports filed immediately after a close-range battle, hospital officials
said Monday that they could account for, at most, eight dead, with most of
those probably civilians.

The commanders said they were not surprised by the dearth of bodies. They do
not routinely collect the enemy's dead from the battlefield, they said, and
the guerrillas were unlikely to take their dead to the morgues.

The Pentagon typically does not publicize the number of enemy dead or
wounded to avoid comparisons to the frequent enemy body counts in the
Vietnam War, counts that ultimately proved to be a poor indicator of
American military performance.

But after weeks of suffering casualties from an enemy that detonates
roadside bombs from afar and fires mortars under cover of darkness, American
military officials seemed to relish the opportunity on Monday to claim
credit for dealing the fighters a punishing blow.

"They got whacked, and won't try that again," a senior military official in
Washington said. The Pentagon insisted the body count was accurate.

The fight began when two American convoys that carry cash to two banks here
rumbled into this hard-line Baathist city on Sunday with tanks, Bradley
fighting vehicles and armored Humvees. Such convoys had been attacked
before, and the Americans were ready.

As if on cue, the guerrillas attacked, but according to American commanders,
the Iraqis suffered a devastating defeat. The battle ended, they said, with
as many as 54 insurgents dead and only 5 Americans wounded.

Sunday's battle was the largest since May 1, when President Bush declared
major combat over and the guerrilla war began.

"We didn't have the immediate intelligence that we knew it would happen, but
we had to be prepared for it," Col. Fred Rudesheim, who oversees the city,
said Monday. "And our soldiers responded as they have been trained to, with
the immediate action that they know to take."

But as local Iraqis began dragging away the wreckage and counting their dead
on Monday, it seemed clear that the guerrilla war being fought north and
west of Baghdad had entered a troubling phase.

American soldiers showed here on Sunday that they can deliver a crushing
amount of firepower. But the overwhelming military force seemed to anger
many Iraqis, who said civilians had been killed.

Colonel Rudesheim, saying he had not seen any reports of civilian dead,
contended that battles like this one would more probably win the support of
Iraqis.

"Attacks, in our view, are attacks against freedom-loving Iraqis that want
to move on with life, versus those that are trying to drag them back to
something akin to the former regime," he said. "What we hear is that the
people of Samarra are fed up."

But many different emotions were on display here on Monday. Outside the
hospital, a small crowd of Iraqis gathered around a bus they said had been
destroyed in the fighting and began chanting an old refrain: "Our souls and
our blood, we sacrifice to you, Saddam."

The guerrilla war claimed another American life on Monday, in another
Hussein stronghold. In Habbaniya, about 75 miles southwest of Samarra, an
American soldier was killed when his convoy came under attack.

By the American forces' account, what the battle on Sunday showed is that
American forces are confronting an enemy that is growing in sophistication,
carrying out bigger attacks involving more fighters.

Colonel Rudesheim and other officials said the attackers had apparently
known the time that the American troops were planning to deliver the money
to two branches of the Rafidain Bank on the eastern and western edges of the
city.

Capt. Andrew Deponai, one of the officers who coordinated the combat, said
the insurgents "split their force in half," with 30 to 40 men positioned
near each bank in "squad and team-sized elements so they could attack each
bank from all sides."

They set up ambush points, he said, on likely routes for the Americans, and
stored explosives and bombs there. They concealed themselves in back alleys
in BMW sedans, taxis and pickup trucks.

It was, Captain Deponai said, "a well-planned attack."

There was considerable evidence of combat on Monday, with walls and houses
across the city pock-marked with bullet holes.

As for the bodies, most Iraqis interviewed around this city said they had
seen only a few. Told of the American claims of great carnage, many shook
their heads.

American soldiers seemed convinced that the survivors had waited for the
shooting to stop and carried their dead away overnight. In interviews,
soldier after soldier recalled the night's events in great detail.

Specialist Sergio Silva was manning the 25-millimeter cannon atop his
Bradley fighting vehicle when, he said, an Iraqi guerrilla darted from
behind a wall and prepared to fire a rocket-propelled grenade. Specialist
Silva said he had swung his gun around, aimed, fired and watched the enemy
fighter come apart.

"He just exploded," he said.

Sheik Khatan al-Salem, a Samarra town official with a decidedly
anti-American bent, predicted that the battle on Sunday would ultimately
prove to be something less than an American victory.

"Why is the resistance increasing now?" the sheik asked. "Simply because the
Americans misbehave with the people."

"All their actions motivate the young people to do such acts, not because
they love Saddam," he said. "They do not love Saddam. They love their
country."



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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long as I'm the dictator." - GW Bush 12/18/2000.

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---Theodore Roosevelt

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-- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz,