Wedding Party Massacre? Doubtful.....

In article , Kevin Brooks
wrote:

oh, well; bang goes my ration of one off-topic post per month


snip of entirely reasonable points about how Bush's remarks have been
brutally edited

while leaving out those parts about difficult and dangerous work ahead of
us, bringing order to dangerous areas, etc., that don't suit his particular
goal at present.

Never mind that, Mr Brooks. It is appallingly apparent that the US, for
reasons that are not at all clear, is screwing things up in Iraq. It
was never going to be easy (as G Bush said himself, in what I snipped
above). Now I know as a matter of personal experience that the US is
by no means unsupplied with intelligent and indeed honourable officers
and NCOs: what the hell is going wrong? The Abu Ghraib thing was
disgusting, but the US Army is in the midst of cleaning out its own
house (although the cost of those shameful digital photos will yet be
paid by honest troopers in the future); what about the several
nonsenses around Fallujah? Political **** showering combat commanders?
I don't know, but none of it looks good. And in that part of the world,
as in many others, how you look can be as important as how you do.

The wedding party.... well, if Iraqis in what is still something of a
war zone will insist on their fireworks, they shouldn't be entirely
surprised if the shooting is misinterpreted. Even so, clumsy is the
best that can be said for the Good Guys.

--
"The past resembles the future as water resembles water" Ibn Khaldun

My .mac.com address is a spam sink.
If you wish to email me, try atlothian at blueyonder dot co dot uk

"Paul J. Adam" wrote in
news
In message , Michael P.
Reed
writes
In message , "Paul J. Adam"
wrote:
It's not a "war zone"

??????

Many keep saying so.

- major combat operations ended last year.

ISTR that they did. This is not the modern British Army (as it
appears as things are judged "over there." A few companies
skirmishing with small groups of insurgents hardly constitute a major
battle. There has been no large scale (corps/army) maneuvering, since
the fall of Baghdad.

So a virgin could walk the length and breadth of Iraq with her bosom
full of gold, and none might raise a hand to her?

Women cannot do that in ANY Moslem country.Not if her bosom is exposed
enough for that gold to be seen.Virgin or not.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik-at-kua.net

"Leslie Swartz" wrote in
:

Name me *one* territory on the surface of the entire planet that isn't
"occupied land" from somebody's perspective.

That whole "occupied lands" thing is a farce.

The palestinians have their country/homeland. It's called Jordan.

Steve Swartz

"Tamas Feher" wrote in message
...
So Hamas isn't a bunch of terrorists. It's a militant group, or a
so-called "terrorist" group.

As long as Palestine and East Jerusalem is occupied, Hamas is free to
blow up whatever they want. Just like the WWII soviet partisans, Tito's
yugoslavian partisans, the french armed resistance or the anti-Quisling
norwegians did it. Trains, buses, automobiles, bridges and buildings,
anything israeli or Third Reich. It is their unalienable right to scare
the invaders off their occupied land. It is harder to do now, cause
palestinian do not receive any foreign supply comparable what Tito got
from the USA and USSR. They are practically fighting bare handed (AK-47
and homemade junk against heavy tanks).

But be sure, Allah is patient, and arabs have time on their hands, like
sand in the desert. Years are like seconds for the almighty. Some time
the sons of Allah will regain their land.

I think israelis should move to California and live there. They have
done so much harm and terror to the middle east in the last 55 years
(invasions, 200+ nuclear bombs, biological weapons of ethnically
selective mass destruction, ethnic cleansing, etc.) that you really
cannot expect arabs to live in peace with them ever. Damn it, jews they
still didn't pay the gov't of Lebanon for all the destruction they did
in those 22 years of occupation of the southern part of the country.

Regards, Tamas Feher.






Supposedly,the WestBank was not "occupied territory" when Jordan ruled it
from 1948 to 1967. In actuality it was "disputed territory".It was never
formally assigned to be part of some proposed "Palestine",either.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik-at-kua.net

On Tue, 25 May 2004 11:30:47 -0500, Alan Minyard
wrote:

Being an apologist for Saddam and Al-Q is not the road to
credibility.

Mr. Minyard, you're a living example of that 'rock-headed,
love-it-or-leave-it chauvinism' that I mentioned in another context on
this thread. How, exactly, does wanting to get to the bottom of this
event -- hell, for that matter doubting the official American accounts
of it -- make me an apologist for Saddam and/or al-Qaeda?

And quite right, I do read the news, pretty often in fact. IIRC, you
were one of the people vociferously objecting to the possibility that
those news reports from 18 months ago, talking about abuse of
prisoners by Americans, might be worth investigating...

Scott

On Tue, 25 May 2004 11:16:31 -0400, "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:

Yeah, no doubt they were all fabricated before they were shown to the media
folks at that press brief yesterday, right?

Nope. You were ascribing the fact that news agencies weren't carrying
those slides to the fact that such outlets would prefer to run
anti-American material, seditious beasts that they are. I'm merely
poiting out that the Pentagon didn't provide 'em with the transcripts.
Seditious beasts.

Well, when they started shooting at US forces, they kind of crapped up the
ol' "OK, everybody put your guns down and let's talk..." approach, now
didn't they?

Problem is, they say that they weren't shooting...

Your paraphrasing again leaves a lot out.

Not a whole lot. As I said, there's a bifg difference between an
insurgent hideout and a bunch of smugglers. And the insurgent
celebration (what is this, 50 Years of Jihad?) doesn't fit well with
the resr of it, either.

Same source on the 24th: "These are the passports of Sudanese citizens that
were involved in the raid." Note the use of plural "passports".

Quite right. My mistake.


A medical examinationtable on the site. Syringes.
This is a 'pretty grand portable field medical set '? AKs and an
RPG.... in Iraq.

Kimmittt: "More weapons, battery packs that we typically associate with
those that are used for improvised explosive devices, a full-sized medical
treatment bed for hasty operations in the field; top right, as we've showed
before, the binoculars that had reticle patterns in them that one typically
uses for adjusting artillery, adjusting mortar rounds."

Right. As I said, your 'pretty grand portable field medical set' is a
bed and some needles. And binoculars with reticles for adjusting
artillery? A few years ago, they were selling them for about $10 close
to the site of the Berlin Wall, in Berlin.... they'r probably all over
Iraq. I like the quick correction, though: "Oops, the insurgents
aren't using artillery, better talk about mortars..."

Well, if we have smugglers running RPG's and ammo, then they sound like
a
viable target to me. Those RPG's are killing our guys, don'tcha know?

So are AKs. Are you going to declare open season on everyone in Iraq
who owns an AK, as well? A pistol... don't forget, there were some of
those found, too. Do you want to kill everyone in Iraq who owns a
pistol?

RPG does not equal pistol. You need to get back to the basics of
weaponeering--you obviously are having a bit of difficulty with basic
concepts.

I think that it's best to leave that exchange in there, since it shows
how you tend to take a statement and then run way beyond teh bounds of
meaning with it.

The jury is still out on that one, from what I have gathered.

Quite likely it is. But on nothing that Kimmitt says, eh? That is, a
priori, all true?

Your continuing "damn the US at all costs" sentiments come through loud and
clear, as usual. I guess the possibility of bad guys manipulating the media
(not that it requires a great deal of manipulation in most cases) is to be
discounted outright, too, eh? Gosh, some of the terrorist networks even have
websites these days! Not to metion their other stalwart support sytems, like
Al Jazeerah..and you?

Oh, dearie me, I'm a terrorist supporter because I don't believe that
everything Central Command says is golden? I'd expected better of you,
Mr Brooks, you're not usually that crude. One of the very best things
about the USA is that the country as a whole tends to be able to get
beyond this kind of stupid, dishonest smearing, where everyone who
doesn't agree with you-you-you is a terrorist. Your country is in
general a lot better than this, Mr Brooks.... quite a shame that you,
and some of the other net.kops on these groups, can't live up to it.

And no, I've thought of the possibility that this is an elaborate
hoax. It seems unlikely to me, for the same reason that the TWA800 and
similar hoaxes that bother these groups seem unlikely: it's too big,
too elaborate. Videos in the desert, faked burials, grieving widows...
If it turns out to be true, the USA in Iraq is in a lot of trouble,
'cause they are waaaayyyy ahead of you. But it's not impossible, I
quite agree.

Scott

"Leslie Swartz" wrote in message
...
John:

1) Leave your bogus ad hominem attacks for someone else; I don't buy them
("very young, indeed!"). The naive person is the one who believes that by
casting dubious a[psersions on the character or nature of the person
presenting hte argument, they have somehow "scored points" in the argument
itself.

2) I never stated- I never implied- that lies/propaganda have no power.
Go ahead and argue against that straw man if you like; once again, it also
(see ad hominem above) says more about you as a person than the nature of
your- or my- argument.

3) Add the straw man about "the whole war is faked" to the existing
bonfire, will you?

4) And nice go of adding a couple of other gratuitous (and irrelevant, and
reflective to your position) ad-hominem slanders and strawmen at the end
as
well. You missed the obvious tin foil hat and trilateral commission ones
though.

O.K., so the crux of your argument is thus:

"I believe the wedding story is true, therefore you must be a big doody
head."

O.K., if I guess that's all you can come up with we can move on . . .

(note: I'm the guy who posted the analogy to the Jenin mythology and how
the power of "Arab Truth" is stronger than the power of "Western Truth"
mainly because while our truth is based on reason and evidence, arab truth
is based on faith and culture. Truths based on reason and evidence are
harder to demonstrate than truths basedc on "it sounds right to me and
fits
my assumptions and preferences." That's why it's irrelevant- to you-
whether or not the "evidence" of the "wedding massacre" are in any way
"true" or "false" in a western sense. The pictures are purely authentic-
no
fakery required- in that they represent what they represent- it's just
that
what they represent have nothing whatsoever to do with what the providers
are *claiming* tehy represent. Nice chatting with you anyways.)

(snip)

"John Mullen" wrote in message
. net...
"Leslie Swartz" wrote in message
...
Sure, Tamas, several hours of "video of a wedding party" must be real
hard
to come by. Pictures/video of dead women and children must be rare
indeed.

Does anything- anything at all- tie any of this to the events in
question?

Anything?

For that matter, perhaps the whole war is being faked in Hollywood.
Maybe
none of it is real. Could you prove to me that it was?

Your post marks you as very naive. Maybe you are very young. A hint:
wars
are not won or lost by the provability of facts. You may be thinking of
court cases?

This incident, whether it really happened or not, has caused terrible
(maybe
fatal?) damage to the continued US occupation of Iraq. FWIW I believe it
really was a wedding.

John

PS Do you think all the torture pics and video were also maybe faked?
How
about the moon landings...

Aw!

Sorry if I hurt your feelings!

You may not be as naive as I thought, as it seems you do sort-of understand
the point I was making. I don't buy the 'Arab truth' vs 'Western truth'
dichotomy though. Truth is truth. But in war, perception is reality.

Why are you so sure the wedding photos were faked? They look real enough to
me. Do you have inside information, or is it just your preconceived ideas
that guide you here?

Top-posting is a crime against Usenet!

Nice chatting to you too!

John

On Tue, 25 May 2004 21:44:59 +0100, Alan Lothian
wrote:

Never mind that, Mr Brooks. It is appallingly apparent that the US, for
reasons that are not at all clear, is screwing things up in Iraq. It
was never going to be easy (as G Bush said himself, in what I snipped
above). Now I know as a matter of personal experience that the US is
by no means unsupplied with intelligent and indeed honourable officers
and NCOs: what the hell is going wrong?

Asymmetrical warfare requires asymmetrical media coverage.

The axiomatic assumptions that requires are firmly in place - notice
things like the relative coverage of weapons found in mosques in
Najaf, or the suicide bomber-belts discovered in Falluja, i.e. none.

This is a victim-culture bonanza, with the media shoe-horning
everthing into their pre-existing shorthand cliches of "Palestinian
intifada" and "Vietnam quagmire". We're in the land of hysteria and
hyperbole, with every Iraqi an innocent victim (even those
volley-firing rocket-propelled grenades from ambulances and
suicide-bombing the UN) and every American a brutal,
firepower-addicted oppressor.

The Abu Ghraib thing was
disgusting, but the US Army is in the midst of cleaning out its own
house (although the cost of those shameful digital photos will yet be
paid by honest troopers in the future); what about the several
nonsenses around Fallujah? Political **** showering combat commanders?

Actually, for once the US commanders deserve some credit for trying to
sort out something on the ground that came short of decisive military
action to conquer the town, with all the catastrophic political damage
that would have caused. On the other hand, the failure of the US
forces as a whole to grasp the importance of avoiding alienation of
the local population, no matter how irrational and prejudiced those
locals might be, is a real failure. Couple that to the idiotic
slackness about post-war planning, and the institutional arrogance
that "we don't do occupations" (well, you should have learned before
embarking upon the occupation of 25 million Iraqis...) and there are
plenty of grounds for legitimate criticism of the American approach.
But not as much as could reasonably sustain the mass of critical
reporting that actually surrounds their efforts.

I don't know, but none of it looks good. And in that part of the world,
as in many others, how you look can be as important as how you do.

The wedding party.... well, if Iraqis in what is still something of a
war zone will insist on their fireworks, they shouldn't be entirely
surprised if the shooting is misinterpreted. Even so, clumsy is the
best that can be said for the Good Guys.

Take a long, hard look at the stats of who is killing who, Alan. The
media perspective is "American military repression": the dead are
revealing that the real story is Iraqis killing each other. But they
generally don't meet the demands of media preconceptions, and so they
get airbrushed out of the picture.

Iraqis killing Iraqis? Quick, blame the Americans.

I've been staggered by the extent to which media coverage has simply
amounted to the media satisfying their own wihsful thinking, whether
al Jazeera acting as the mirror of Arab prejudices about the
intolerability of American violence against fundamentalist thugs and
the invisibility of Iraqi responsibility for anything that happens; or
British and American newspapers slavishly sucking up staged photos of
soldiers abusing or raping Iraqis. The Amnesty and ICRC reports are a
good case in point: try and compare the coverage of successful
reconstruction and aid efforts with the Abu Ghraib frenzy. Now, I'm
not arguing that one cancels out the other, but this does seem to be
the media position which can't address anything other than American
excesses and abuses to the exclusion of all else.

The last I heard was that civilian deaths in the past year were
estimated at 10,000, or 60,000 less than Saddam was believed to murder
on an average yearly basis according to the last HRO/NGO report I
read. That doesn't excuse Anglo-American errors and abuses, but it
does raise serious questions about the sense of proportion and moral
credibility of pundits who think that the current situation, bad as it
is, is similar or worse to what happened under Saddam.

Gavin Bailey

--

Now see message: "Boot sector corrupt. System halted. All data lost."
Spend thousands of dollar on top grade windows system. Result better
than expected. What your problem? - Bart Kwan En

Avoiding forcing everyone to slog through hundreds of lines of repeat . . .
Scott sez:

And no, I've thought of the possibility that this is an elaborate
hoax.

Scott, what is so elaborate about splicing x feet of wedding party footage
together with y feet of ululating widows/broken bodies of children/etc?
Both types of footage are readily available in that part of the world; you
can buy that footage wholesale. There are probably thousands of feet of
"happy wedding" and "crying women" video from that area- if not that
location- available to anyone interested in a quicjk set-up job. Nothing
had to be staged/faked/or even re-shot. The editing equipment is readily
available, and the propagandists are well trained (albeit unsophisticated).
The edits are aobviously "cut and paste" jobs.

The video is probably even "AUTHENTIC" in that sense. However, the "fakery"
involved is in the verbal claims ofhte person(s) supplying the video tot eh
media.

Are you saying that finding *one* unnamed person to lie about the
sourcing/circumstances of a piece of video constitutes an "elaborate hoax?"

No, Scott, in that part of the world, "faking" the "Wedding Party Massacre
Myth" is NOT an elaborate hoax at all.

More like SOP.

Steve Swartz


"Scott MacEachern" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 25 May 2004 11:16:31 -0400, "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:

Yeah, no doubt they were all fabricated before they were shown to the
media
folks at that press brief yesterday, right?

Nope. You were ascribing the fact that news agencies weren't carrying
those slides to the fact that such outlets would prefer to run
anti-American material, seditious beasts that they are. I'm merely
poiting out that the Pentagon didn't provide 'em with the transcripts.
Seditious beasts.

Well, when they started shooting at US forces, they kind of crapped up
the
ol' "OK, everybody put your guns down and let's talk..." approach, now
didn't they?

Problem is, they say that they weren't shooting...

Your paraphrasing again leaves a lot out.

Not a whole lot. As I said, there's a bifg difference between an
insurgent hideout and a bunch of smugglers. And the insurgent
celebration (what is this, 50 Years of Jihad?) doesn't fit well with
the resr of it, either.

Same source on the 24th: "These are the passports of Sudanese citizens
that
were involved in the raid." Note the use of plural "passports".

Quite right. My mistake.


A medical examinationtable on the site. Syringes.
This is a 'pretty grand portable field medical set '? AKs and an
RPG.... in Iraq.

Kimmittt: "More weapons, battery packs that we typically associate with
those that are used for improvised explosive devices, a full-sized
medical
treatment bed for hasty operations in the field; top right, as we've
showed
before, the binoculars that had reticle patterns in them that one
typically
uses for adjusting artillery, adjusting mortar rounds."

Right. As I said, your 'pretty grand portable field medical set' is a
bed and some needles. And binoculars with reticles for adjusting
artillery? A few years ago, they were selling them for about $10 close
to the site of the Berlin Wall, in Berlin.... they'r probably all over
Iraq. I like the quick correction, though: "Oops, the insurgents
aren't using artillery, better talk about mortars..."

Well, if we have smugglers running RPG's and ammo, then they sound
like
a
viable target to me. Those RPG's are killing our guys, don'tcha know?

So are AKs. Are you going to declare open season on everyone in Iraq
who owns an AK, as well? A pistol... don't forget, there were some of
those found, too. Do you want to kill everyone in Iraq who owns a
pistol?

RPG does not equal pistol. You need to get back to the basics of
weaponeering--you obviously are having a bit of difficulty with basic
concepts.

I think that it's best to leave that exchange in there, since it shows
how you tend to take a statement and then run way beyond teh bounds of
meaning with it.

The jury is still out on that one, from what I have gathered.

Quite likely it is. But on nothing that Kimmitt says, eh? That is, a
priori, all true?

Your continuing "damn the US at all costs" sentiments come through loud
and
clear, as usual. I guess the possibility of bad guys manipulating the
media
(not that it requires a great deal of manipulation in most cases) is to
be
discounted outright, too, eh? Gosh, some of the terrorist networks even
have
websites these days! Not to metion their other stalwart support sytems,
like
Al Jazeerah..and you?

Oh, dearie me, I'm a terrorist supporter because I don't believe that
everything Central Command says is golden? I'd expected better of you,
Mr Brooks, you're not usually that crude. One of the very best things
about the USA is that the country as a whole tends to be able to get
beyond this kind of stupid, dishonest smearing, where everyone who
doesn't agree with you-you-you is a terrorist. Your country is in
general a lot better than this, Mr Brooks.... quite a shame that you,
and some of the other net.kops on these groups, can't live up to it.

And no, I've thought of the possibility that this is an elaborate
hoax. It seems unlikely to me, for the same reason that the TWA800 and
similar hoaxes that bother these groups seem unlikely: it's too big,
too elaborate. Videos in the desert, faked burials, grieving widows...
If it turns out to be true, the USA in Iraq is in a lot of trouble,
'cause they are waaaayyyy ahead of you. But it's not impossible, I
quite agree.

Scott

"John Mullen" wrote in message .net...
"Leslie Swartz" wrote in message
...
Sure, Tamas, several hours of "video of a wedding party" must be real hard
to come by. Pictures/video of dead women and children must be rare
indeed.

Does anything- anything at all- tie any of this to the events in question?

Anything?

For that matter, perhaps the whole war is being faked in Hollywood. Maybe
none of it is real. Could you prove to me that it was?

Your post marks you as very naive. Maybe you are very young. A hint: wars
are not won or lost by the provability of facts. You may be thinking of
court cases?

This incident, whether it really happened or not, has caused terrible (maybe
fatal?) damage to the continued US occupation of Iraq. FWIW I believe it
really was a wedding.

John

PS Do you think all the torture pics and video were also maybe faked? How
about the moon landings...


Actually, it turns out a fair number of the pictures were faked it
turns out, pictures of GI's raping Iraqi women apparently came from a
Hungarian porno sight and a number of the Brit accusations appear to
be faked also.

So far, I havent seen only a few torture pictures, though Ive seen a
number of harassing and embarassing pictures, with some soldier
definately acting inappriately.

John Mullen wrote:
"Leslie Swartz" wrote in message
(note: I'm the guy who posted the analogy to the Jenin mythology and how
the power of "Arab Truth" is stronger than the power of "Western Truth"
mainly because while our truth is based on reason and evidence, arab truth
is based on faith and culture. Truths based on reason and evidence are
harder to demonstrate than truths basedc on "it sounds right to me and fits
my assumptions and preferences." That's why it's irrelevant- to you-
whether or not the "evidence" of the "wedding massacre" are in any way
"true" or "false" in a western sense. The pictures are purely authentic-no
fakery required- in that they represent what they represent- it's just that
what they represent have nothing whatsoever to do with what the providers
are *claiming* tehy represent. Nice chatting with you anyways.)

You may not be as naive as I thought, as it seems you do sort-of understand
the point I was making. I don't buy the 'Arab truth' vs 'Western truth'
dichotomy though. Truth is truth. But in war, perception is reality.

John


John -

I suggest you become more informed on cultural differences worldwide.
There are many ways worldwide of defining 'truth'; many do not depend on
reason and evidence. Mr. Swartz's observation on "Arab Truth" vs.
"Western Truth" is very close to the mark.

I work worldwide and have to deal with such frequently. One guide I have
used for years is "Kiss, Bow or Shake Hands: How to do Business in 60
Countries". Aside from providing useful info on business and personal
customs, it also discusses cultural orientation such as cognitive
styles. Let me quote from their section on Saudi Arabia (since they
don't have an 'Iraq' section):
"Saudis find it difficult to accept any outside information that does
not reflect Islamic values... Generally, a Saudi's faith in Islamic
ideologies shapes the truth, but it is also affected by the immediate
feelings of the participants. Objective facts seldom overrule one's
thinking."

Care to apologize to Mr. Swartz?