Monday, May 24, 2004

"Witnesses" Forget Their Lines

There is some reason to doubt the reliability of witnesses who claim that Americans bombed a wedding party.

Yesterday’s Guardian headline was unequivocal: the Americans were behind a “Wedding Party Massacre.” No scare-quotes. No qualifiers. There was a wedding and there was a massacre. It’s not unlikely, of course. The Unites States military has made grave errors in the past (recall the wedding party in Afghanistan, the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and the Chinese embassy in Belgrade).

But I am skeptical of this “massacre” for a variety of reasons, not least the conflicting eye-witness accounts.

One “massacre” survivor told the Washington Post that “the wedding party was in full swing – with dinner just finished and the band playing tribal Arab music – when US fighter jets roared overhead and US vehicles started shining their highbeams. Worried, the hosts ended the party men stayed in the wedding tent, and women and children went inside the house nearby, the witnesses said. About five hours later, the first shell hit the tent.”

But other ‘witnesses’ forgot their lines, saying that “revelers had fired volleys of gunfire into the air in a traditional wedding celebration before the attack.” The response—like in Afghanistan—was just a big misunderstanding.

So were they hiding in the house for five hours or did the American military–who just happened to be in the area—nervously overreact to a raucous party?

UPDATE: Skepticism over the “wedding massacre” in the New York Times. In the Times account, notice that the slain “wedding singer” has, in death, decided upon a name change.

“Among the dead was Hussein Ali, a popular wedding singer.” - Washington Post (5/20)

“Among the dead, by several accounts, was Nazar al-Khalid, a well-known Iraqi wedding singer who often traveled to Syria.” - New York Times



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