Destroying Iraq, one city at a time

[Updated]

Pity the poor American pilots. Having "flattened" Fallujah, there they were with idle time on their hands. Time to move on and start the process of flattening another city:

"An explosion at a house south of Mosul killed 14 people and wounded five early Saturday, the owner said. The U.S. military confirmed that an air strike hit the building, but said five people died.

"'The house was not the intended target for the air strike. The intended target was another location nearby,' the statement said. 'Responding forces reported that five individuals died in the strike.'

"The house owner, Ali Yousef, said the strike happened at about 2:30 a.m. in this village 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Mousl and American troops immediately came and surrounded the area, blocking access for four hours.

"The brick house was reduced to a pile of rubble, according to an Associated Press photographer at the scene.

"By evening Saturday, all 14 dead -- including seven children -- had been buried in a nearby cemetery, Yousef said."

Note the way in which the U.S. media do their best to cover for the American atrocity. First, by leading the story with the misleading phrase "an explosion at a house" as if it might have been a gas main leak, rather than a 500-pound bomb dropped on the house. Surely the proper lead is "A U.S. airstrike on a house south of Mosul..." And second, be reporting the totally non-credible claim from the U.S. military that "responding forces reported that five individuals died in the strike," and then by using that figure in the headline, which reads "U.S. Bomb Error Kills at Least 5 in Iraq". Article after article now uses that figure. Interestingly enough, an earlier release (just two hours earlier) of the AP story carries a reading "Explosion at Iraqi House Kills 14, Hurts 5".

How on earth, even if they were telling the truth, would "responding forces" have been able to determine that "five individuals" died? The bomb was dropped at 2:30 in the morning! Did they go in personally in the middle of the night and dig through the "pile of rubble" to count the bodies? Since there's no evidence that they did, or that they went to the cemetery to count the number of new graves, surely the word of the owner of the house as to how many members of his family he buried is the only credible information in this story, even disregarding the history of misinformation that pours out of the U.S. military on a daily basis.

[Special note to linguists - note the spelling of the word "cemetery," which certainly fooled me until I looked it up; I thought it was "-ary". Indeed, a quick peek into Bill Bryson's "Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words" finds that error noted as a common one.]

Update: This gets even "better" (or worse). Here's today's update on the AP story, with a new lead about yet another American war crime:

"American troops opened fire after their convoy was struck by a roadside bomb at a checkpoint south of Baghdad, killing at least two policemen and three civilians, police said Sunday, a day after the U.S. military acknowledged five people were killed when it bombed the wrong house during a search operation in northern Iraq."

Skipping over the murder of another five innocent Iraqis by American forces, note how the word "acknowledged", typically associated with known facts, is used, rather than the word "claimed". This despite the facts buried in the next paragraph, which clearly have a lot higher credibility than the military's "acknowledgement", particularly as they involve observatios by the AP itself (!):

"The owner of the house, Ali Yousef, said 14 people were killed when the 500-pound GPS-guided bomb hit at about 2 a.m. Saturday in the town of Aitha, 30 miles south of Mosul. An Associated Press photographer at the scene said seven children and seven adults died. The discrepancy between the death counts could not be reconciled."

Let's see, how to "reconcile" this problem. The owner of the house says 14 people died. The AP photographer on the scene says 14 people died. Some American military spokesliar not on the scene says 5 people died. What a quandary. Who to believe?

The next paragraph is even more unbelievable:

"The U.S. military later released a statement saying it regretted the loss of 'possibly innocent lives' in the strike, which occurred as U.S. ground troops searched for 'an anti-Iraqi force cell leader.'"

"Possibly innocent"? Are you kidding me? The owner of the house and the AP photographer have verified that seven children were among the dead, so whoever the adults were, even printing this preposterous claim is tantamount to slander. We'll ignore the absurd use of the phrase "anti-Iraqi," which is at least a direct quote from the American liars, and instead note something that AP doesn't - what kind of "search" was this? The Americans dropped a 500-pound bomb on a house at 2:30 in the morning! That isn't how you "search" for people! And it isn't even a legal (by Iraqi law or international law) way to deal with them if you have found the person you're searching for. You drop a special forces team from the air, surround the house, and move in. Either a firefight ensues and someone who is at least a bonafide enemy combatant is killed, or else they are arrested. You don't drop bombs on houses in which you have no idea who's inside! This is a prima facie war crime, and yet, not a single editorial in an American paper, nor a single American politician, will offer any criticism.

The proper way to report this story? AP should report the facts as they know them, which is that 14 people, including seven children, were killed when the U.S. dropped a bomb on their house, and, at the very end, in a final paragraph, add, "The U.S. military claims that only five 'possibly innocent' people were killed in the strike as they attempted to assassinate a suspected insurgent leader." In my paper, the sentence would start with the word "Improbably," but I'll allow the AP to leave that out.

Further update: As an example of what happens when the story moves from print to the broadcast media, CNN Headline News today reports the story like this: "The U.S. military apologized today for accidentally bombing the wrong house. Five people were killed in that incident." No inclination of the slightest uncertainty about that number. The U.S. government said it? Good enough for them.