Truthdig: Did America Slaughter Iraqi Pilgrims?

[marmar]

Did America Slaughter Iraqi Pilgrims?


Posted on Feb 1, 2007


A startling new report in The Independent (UK) by respected journalist Patrick Cockburn suggests that a U.S. airstrike may have unnecessarily killed more than 100 members of an ostensibly peaceful Iraqi religious cult.

Cockburn, a veteran foreign correspondent reporting from Iraq, wrote that the official story of the deadly Jan. 28 clash outside the city of Najaf, between a shadowy Iraqi cult and Iraqi security forces supported by the U.S., may be a “fabrication.” The journalist said that, reports by the Iraqi government and in the U.S. media to the contrary, the cult members had been engaged in a peaceful pilgrimage when a violent incident involving Iraqi security forces outside the city gates snowballed into the cult’s annihilation by U.S. aircraft.

Cockburn based his assertion on independent Iraqi newspapers and websites. He acknowledged that competing accounts could not be substantiated.

This complex tale is best told by Cockburn (click here).

The very complexity of the account drives home a central point: What the U.S. national media originally reported as a model example of Iraqi security forces partnering with U.S. forces to combat insurgents was in fact a still poorly understood set of events that bodes poorly for the U.S. mission in Iraq: As in Vietnam, where U.S. forces often could not distinguish friend from foe, U.S. forces find themselves unleashing horrific weapons of war against a populace whose language and cultural markers they are largely ignorant of. ....(more)

The rest of the article is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/did_america_slaughter_iraqi_pilgrims/

[brentspeak]

1. "He acknowledged that competing accounts could not be substantiated..."

In other words, his article is meaningless.

[marmar]

2. Because we should naturally believe everything we're fed by the U.S. military, right?

:shrug:

[seriousstan]

3. No, we should naturally believe everything else?

[brentspeak]

5. So, therefore, we should give credence to a speculative report based on

things culled from the web and various news articles? Doesn't make any sense.

[SpiralHawk]

6. We should believe everything purlished by the corporate media, right?

I mean, the corporate media has been so honest and thorough around the whole Iraq war, right?

Bwa ha ha ha ha

I wonder what Timmy Russert has to say about this? We can trust him, can't we?

Bwa ha ha ha ha

[Benhurst]

9. No, but we can always trust whatever

Dick Cheney and George Bush tell us.

[magellan]

4. Dahr Jamail is reporting the same

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x107991

[marmar]

7. Thanks for that link, Magellan.

It would be hard to dismiss Dahr Jamail as an illegitimate news source.

[Bonhomme Richard]

8. I said in another post when the original story broke that...........

what they were reporting made absolutly no sense.
The big mystery is why a couple of hundred Iraqi's would take on the Iraqi/US military when they know they wouldn't stand a chance. It didn't make sense and that is being born out now.

[magellan]

10. A couple of hundred Iraqis, including women and children!

According to the US and Iraqi governments, this "dangerous" cult including women and children had traveled to Najaf to take over a mosque. In a city of approximately 500,000.

[Bonhomme Richard]

11. Also, the blatant use of the word "cult" is meant to put the reader...

in a particular frame of mind.
Blatant propaganda.

[pampango]

12. You know things are going badly in Iraq when an innocent group of pilgrims

can shoot down an American helicopter and kill 25 Iraqi soldiers. There aren't too many pilgrims in the rest of the world that carry around enough firepower to do that.