US 'Victory' against Cult Leader Was 'Massacre'

'There are growing suspicions in Iraq that the official story of the battle outside Najaf between a messianic Iraqi cult and the Iraqi security forces supported by the US, in which 263 people were killed and 210 wounded, is a fabrication. The heavy casualties may be evidence of an unpremeditated massacre.

A picture is beginning to emerge of a clash between an Iraqi Shia tribe on a pilgrimage to Najaf and an Iraqi army checkpoint that led the US to intervene with devastating effect. The involvement of Ahmed al-Hassani (also known as Abu Kamar), who believed himself to be the coming Mahdi, or Messiah, appears to have been accidental.

The story emerging on independent Iraqi websites and in Arabic newspapers is entirely different from the government's account of the battle with the so-called "Soldiers of Heaven", planning a raid on Najaf to kill Shia religious leaders.'

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0131-02.htm

for certain factions in Iraq, which is not the vision I have for the soldiers in the military.

Msongs
www.youtube.com/videos/msongs

And honestly, until this is more widely reported, it is advised to be quiet, because this suspicion may simply be false. Though, it should be noted that various types of official stories have been given before in other matters, most recently in the kidnapping of the American soldiers in that odd raid on their base. Another was the Haditha mess.

So honestly, suspicion for the original story given by our government, is not totally out of line, but to believe this new story without much other corroborating evidence is not advised.

is that the wounded are not being permitted to talk to the media. That sounds like some type of cover up, because why not let them talk?

a combination of the 2, what ever it is, it should be on the news

warfare, according to Dahr Jamail. The victims were anti-Iranian Shia who advocated cooperqation with the Sunni. Nothing the Negroponte, Cheney vampires would ever want.

The following is from: http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/iraq/000534.php#more

We were going to conduct the usual ceremonies that we conduct every year when we were attacked by Iraqi soldiers," Jabbar al-Hatami, a leader of the al-Hatami Shia Arab tribe told IPS.

"We thought it was one of the usual mistakes of the Iraqi army killing civilians, so we advanced to explain to the soldiers that they killed five of us for no reason. But we were surprised by more gunfire from the soldiers."

The confrontation took place on the Shia holiday of Ashura which commemorates Imam Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad and the most revered of Shia saints. Emotions run high at this time, and self-flagellation in public is the norm.

Many southern Shia Arabs do not follow Iranian-born cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. They believe the religious leadership should be kept in the hands of Arab clerics. Al-Hatami and al-Khazaali are two major tribes that do not follow Sistani.

Tribal members from both believe the attack was launched by the central government of Baghdad to stifle growing Shia-Sunni unity in the area.

"Our convoy was close to the al-Hatami convoy on the way to Najaf when we heard the massive shooting, and so we ran to help them because our tribe and theirs are bound with a strong alliance," a 45-year-old man who asked to be referred to as Ahmed told IPS.

Ahmed, a member of the al-Khazali tribe said "our two tribes have a strong belief that Iranians are provoking sectarian war in Iraq which is against the belief of all Muslims, and so we announced an alliance with Sunni brothers against any sectarian violence in the country. That did not make our Iranian dominated government happy."

sunk like a rock in the middle of the night...

We are being played by Al Sistani and the Iraqi gov.

and well and living on DU, among other places. It is all to easy to post some a few bits of idiotic blather and get a hundred contentious replies on each while factual information gets read a few times and slowly sinks.

I missed your post, but had heard Cockburn speak about this on Democracy Now! and searched out his essay, which was a bit hazy, and then used the tribe names to find the Dahr Jamail interviews. A lot of noise on DU, but a still, a lot more than noise also.

The people who were massacred were assembled to go to Ashurah. They would NOT have attacked other Shia at that time even if they were enemies. Since they were all together, some of Al Sistani's and the Gov's crew thought it would be a good idea to pull the trigger and let the Americans do the dirty work.

Obviously, they lied through their teeth to get it done (gave the American's false intelligence). What the incident does is speak volumes about the incompetence and the inability of our troops to do anything positive in Iraq. They have to come home. We are now serving as pawns in the Iraqi civil war.

nt

From the linked article:

American helicopters then arrived and dropped leaflets saying: "To the terrorists, surrender before we bomb the area." The tribesmen went on firing and a US helicopter was hit and crashed killing two crewmen. The tribesmen say they do not know if they hit it or if it was brought down by friendly fire. The US aircraft launched an intense aerial bombardment in which 120 tribesmen and local residents were killed by 4am on Monday.

raining down, i'm not saying i agree with it but you can; i can feel a hellish release coming

Drop a few leaflets, then murder everyone. Israel did this in Lebanon, the US did this in Vietnam and Panama, Russia did this in Chechnya. Maybe some psychopath sent a note before murdering his neighbors. That makes the slaughter OK, eh? Well, OK, that's your value system, and you can keep it.

I just wonder if this turkey shoot involved civilians casualties and how many actual militia were killed, the MSM won't be trampled in the stampede to report the facts on this one.

This shows how low this administration has sunk. The WH is reporting the use of disproportionate force as some of the 'good news coming out of Iraq'.