"Scott MacEachern" wrote in message
...
On 22 May 2004 22:59:32 GMT, (Dav1936531) wrote:

http://tinyurl.com/2qklu
Dave

"Kimmitt said troops did not find anything -- such as a wedding tent,
gifts, musical instruments, decorations or leftover food -- that would
indicate a wedding had been held."

Funny. I wonder what those ripped-up speakers and the microphone
stands (not musical instruments, I guess...) in the NYT pictures from
the site were doing there, then?

Never heard of terrorists using such equipment, eh?


Note as well that Kimmitt is now admitting that (a) there were women
killed there and (b) there may have been some sort of celebration
going on. And, shamelessly quoting from another post of mine...

Not quite. What Kimmet really has said is:

"To the allegation that there was a wedding going on, there was no evidence
of a wedding," Kimmitt reiterated. "There were no decorations, no musical
instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one
would expect from a wedding celebration and no gifts.

"The men were almost all military-aged, no family elders that one would
expect to see at an event of this type," he said.

To help substantiate his comments, the general showed reporters slides of
items found at the site, which included a significant number of weapons,
battery packs used to power improvised explosive devices and a host of other
non-wedding-related items.

"There were also a number of terrorist training manuals (and) suspected
forged Iraqi IDs," he said.

Kimmitt said there may have been some kind of celebration going on at the
said, but not a wedding. "Bad people have celebrations too," he noted. "Bad
people have parties too. It may have been that what was seen as some sort of
celebration may have just been a meeting in the middle of the desert by some
people that were conducting either criminal or terrorist activities. That's
the conclusion we're continuing to draw the more we look at the material,
intelligence, post-strike, and follow-up intelligence." end excerpt

Looks like BG Kimmet has drawn very different conclusions from what you
have, Scott. And if you are going to quote the guy, at least do so by
paraphrasing his entire statement. Which brings into question that
oh-so-heart-wrenching previous post of yours claiming we were butchering
kids in this raid--as Kimmet noted:
""But there are still not reports of any children being killed." Kimmitt
said a videotape distributed to the media showing at least a dozen bodies,
including small children, wrapped in blankets for burial, being unloaded
from a truck doesn't look like the video taken at the site of the attack.
"None of the geography in those videos match the geography of this open
area," he noted. "But there are still some inconsistencies. We still remain
opened-minded about this. We'll continue to look into everything that's
provided to us in the way of evidence." "

http://www.dod.mil/news/May2004/n052...200405221.html



Having spent some time working in border areas in Central/West Africa
-- Nigeria-Cameroon-Niger and latterly Cameroon-Chad-CAR -- there are
smugglers all over the place, and they haul all kinds of good with
them. Finding large amounts of clothing, bedding and so on wouldn't be
surprising at all in such cases -- think of it as capitalism at work.
I'd be very surprised if that wasn't how most of the consumer goods in
Baghdad made their way there.

And all of those smugglers have terrorist training manuals in their
possession...yeah, riiiight.

Brooks


Scott